Pray For Yourselves, Too

The following quote appeared on the front page of the Bucks County Courier Times today from this story...

“I firmly believe in the right to live. People don’t understand what they’re doing when they have abortions. Sometimes we get women to change their minds once they realize that they are already parents and that we care about them.” - Dolores Kunkel

(I really wanted to stay out of the Roe v. Wade anniversary yesterday, but I feel like I can’t.)

After reading that quote, I have only this to say:

I don’t ever, ever, EVER want to hear about some so-called “Christian” fundamentalist, “values voter” (or whatever the media-approved phrase will be for the lockstep right-wing zombies who will trot to the voting booth in the next election and vote Republican with almost no consideration of other issues) complaining that “liberal elitists” talk to them as if they’re stupid.

“People don’t understand what they’re doing when they have abortions.”

By uttering those almost unbelievable words, Dolores Kunkel is telling anyone who is pro-choice that they’re so vacuous and dumb that they don’t know what is entailed by the medical procedure of aborting a fetus.

Now I’ve never met Dolores Kunkel. She may be a very nice lady who just happened to utter some horribly unfortunate words. However, she has a lot of company in that regard.

And that would include the Washington Post, reporter Shailagh Murray in particular, who began a story on abortion with this lede:

Eager to avoid a resumption of the culture wars, the new Democratic leaders are trying to tiptoe around the abortion issue by promoting legislation to encourage birth control and assist women who decide to proceed with unwanted pregnancies.

“Culture wars?” “Tiptoe around the abortion issue?”

Somewhere, Frank Luntz is smiling.

And of course, the WaPo story repeats the time-worn lie that former PA governor Bob Casey, Sr. wasn’t allowed to speak at the 1992 Democratic convention because he opposed abortion (no, it was because he didn’t support Clinton for president – maybe I’d better give up trying to debunk that one; it may be hopeless, especially when repeated by Casey Jr. during the election last year).

Well, since I find absolutely NO representation from the pro-choice side in our media, I thought I’d better go out and get some, such as Angela Bonavoglia at The Huffington Post here and The Blog Project For A Woman’s Right To Choose here.

One of the women I’ve read about who admitted to having undergone an abortion is actress Polly Bergen, who was rendered infertile by a botched procedure in someone’s kitchen (I have vague memories of her speaking tearfully about this on a talk show many years ago – it was probably Mike Douglas; he was pretty forthright about that stuff). However, a Wikipedia entry on Bergen notes that she did have a biological child, but no citation for that is available.

I just posted a few minutes ago about Dubya’s scheme to make health care more expensive and less available, and I linked to a story that noted that health care costs can lead to bankruptcy and divorce.

That includes the costs for a child with profound developmental issues requiring dependent care for the rest of his or her life, however shortened that life may be, to say nothing of the quality of that life. And we know couples who’ve had to deal with issues like that, which are painful beyond words. And they’ve had abortions performed despite haranguing from pro-life friends, to say nothing of what they hear from the pulpit and the stirrings of their own beliefs.

That’s life in the real world. That’s a choice that is made. I could never, ever imagine doing that instead of giving birth to our son and helping to raise him, but everyone’s story is different and no one has the right to pass judgment.

Abortion is safe and legal, and it is the law of the land. And for medical reasons above all others, it should stay that way.

And I won’t say anything else about that – I feel like enough of a hypocrite commenting at all, since I’ll never be “in the stirrups.”

I just wish there were more pro-lifers (and pro-choice men too, I suppose) who felt the same way.