[Magdalen] Today's DC "pro-life" rally: Pence.

[Sally Davies]

The pro-life march sounds horrible, as is Pence, but there were some
aspects of last week's festivities that could make a genuinely pro-life
person feel uncomfortable.

I want women to have a reasonable say and control, and not to have their
lives ruined and their bodies "owned" by others - including, arguably,
offspring. And women cannot choose until they know there is a choice to be
made, which usually involves some skilled helpers.

But children and infants are also entitled to a fair chance at life and to
support. They are not mature but they have personhood and dignity; and
birth is also an arbitrary line since babies can survive premature birth.

We are already drawing an arbitrary line and those who argue that life
begins at conception, at least have logic on their side.

In any case it is clear that society at large hasn't reached anything like
consensus on the human rights of the unborn child, therefore it is a
reasonable assumption that a great many people can't identify as "abortion
positive".

My problem with the so called pro-life movements is that they hold little
or no value to women's lives, and appear to promote the value of fetal or
even embryonic life without doing a thing to protect or develop the lives
of children who are already born and suffering in poverty, sickness or
ignorance. That is not being "pro life", it's just anti-abortion.

It's even more sickening that such people are often also involved in
movements to take personhood away from others or to preserve the right to
kill (the gun lobby for instance or pro death penalty activism).

I can't see that anti-abortionism can be anything but oppressive to women
unless it goes together with greater respect for women's lives and desires,
a body positive education for girls, gender equality, promotion of women's
health, the elimination of double standards and the proper correction of
gender and sexual violence. If no doesn't mean no, and only one in nine
rapes ever gets prosecuted (never mind the many coercive situations that
don't get defined as rape but could be), then women must have the right to
choose and to be fully informed so that they can make a choice they will be
able to live with.

And if women's health centres are closed, who will help them - certainly
not the church in any of its current forms, so hung up about sex and so
willing to shame women in a hundred different ways for not being pure or
selfless enough, whilst failing to hold men to anything like the same
standard.

But despite all those very valid complaints, I still have great respect for
pro lifers who hold these difficult ethical and bioethical issues in
balance and who can feel compassion for women caught in impossible
situations as well as for unborn life.

The Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance note that there are
thousands of sites promoting so called pro life, fewer but still many
promoting pro choice and "a mere handful" that try to provide balanced and
factual content to inform and educate.

They have done their best to be one of those few and it's a great resource
to those who don't see this debate as settled one way or the other:

http://www.religioustolerance.org/abortion.htm

Sally D

On 27 January 2017 at 22:58, Marion Thompson <marionwhitevale at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Ohhhh yes!
>
> Marion, a pilgrim
>
>
>
> On 1/27/2017 3:34 PM, M J _Mike_ Logsdon wrote:
>
>> It's all making my head explode.<<<
>>>>>
>>>> Duct tape it shut, my dear.  There's so much more to come before the
>> Great and Glorious Day...
>>
>>
>