From PBS Newshour's South Dakota Bans Abortion, March 3, 2006
(South Dakota Senator) BILL NAPOLI: My calls have been running 3-1 in favor of this bill.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Napoli says most abortions are performed for what he calls "convenience." He insists that exceptions can be made for rape or incest under the provision that protects the mother's life. I asked him for a scenario in which an exception may be invoked.
BILL NAPOLI: A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.
Senator Napoli reminds me powerfully of Senator Opal, a fervent Dry with a large following, who was caught in a mixup of envelopes when he'd written to his bootlegger to complain about an overcharge. P.G. Wodehouse exposed him in Hot Water, but even then, it was only between the sheets.
This is probably the right time to say publicly that I was raped but at the time I wasn't a virgin, and I had also, unfortunately, outgrown my religiosity. Nor was I sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, but I did think I was gonna die, and he did say he was gonna kill me, and he did pull me into a park that was so dangerous that after it happened I had to ask him to walk me out of it so I'd be safe. But I guess that doesn't count, as when it happened, I was on my way to my boyfriend's house, to fornicate.
This is also the time to say that I have had an abortion, and it was not convenient. Nor was it convenient to the mother of five in the same room who had a hard time paying to travel from a state in which abortion was banned to where it was legal and safe. It was not convenient to the other teary mess of a girl in the room, the kind described as face like the back of a bus but you don't have to look at her in the dark. She thought he loved her . . .
Abortion is never convenient.
Nor is it murder.
However, this sort of thing is.
See it in action, but don't look if obscenity disturbs you.
This is a very sad controversy. Both sides have good points and strong opinions. It will be one that society will eventualy have to decide. I belive that abortions for convinece are wrong, but I am not going to graple with the whole issue just yet.
ReplyDeleteMark Morford of SFGate dealt with the issue in his Friday column: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2006/03/03/notes030306.DTL&type=printable [Dunno if that format will make it a real link, but here's hoping.]
ReplyDeleteGood to see you're back! --Faren
Powerful post!!!
ReplyDeleteIt is really starting to get frustrating to see how the facts on this issue continue to be so distorted.
ReplyDeleteThis is NOT an attack against women's rights! It is about protecting human life - period!
The killing of any human being has been outlawed in this state/nation for years - right down to people being held responsible for “accidentally” killing someone! For that matter - anyone who ends the life of an unborn child by way of automobile accident (such as in drunk driving cases) or any other indirect way such as by killing the pregnant mother is held accountable and is typically charged with at minimum - manslaughter. In cases such as this, the unborn child all the sudden is considered a “human being” and is “allowed” a “right” to life, yet it’s acceptable for a woman to deny that right if it interferes in her life and she should be allowed to end it? Hell of a contradiction, pro-choicers!
My guess is that the majority of people who support abortion are hung up in the “right to choose” issue more than the reality of abortion.
Tammy, First, it is an attack on women's rights, so don't distort. Second, I'm not talking about killing human beings, except in the case that forcing women to have illegal abortions, as your attitude does, has killed many women and still does. Distort is what you are choosing to do to facts by considering a fetus, which is what I'm talking about, a "human being", and as for that other bit of claptrap that you probably believe in: considering the fetus that I'm talking about, the "weakest member of our society"--those who spout this stuff should be condemned to eat batter. After all, it's cake.
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