Martha Mendoza’s Dead Fetus
From Ms. Magazine comes this succinct example of why having a president who bases his decisions solely on political calculation, rather than considering what experts think about the impact the resulting policies will have, may not be the best way to run a country: Between a woman and her doctor.
Link via Rivka of Respectful of Otters.
September 13th, 2004 at 1:53 pm
This story sets up a classic straw man to frighten unsophisticated readers. Both the Democrats and the Republicans have been demagoguing the abortion issue for years, pandering to people’s fears on all sides, while advocates and opponents do their best to stifle real debate on the issues involved for their own agendized purposes, not the “rights” they claim to want to protect. Don’t buy this crap.
September 13th, 2004 at 2:11 pm
In what sense is a first-person account of her experience of being unable to find a physician trained and willing to perform the extraction of her dead fetus “crap”? You can argue that it isn’t representative, or that it is outweighed by all the good being done by virtue of making late-term abortions of actually living fetuses less available, or something, but you haven’t actually done that.
If you want people to accept your characterization of the story as having set up a straw man, you should say why that’s the case.
September 17th, 2004 at 8:04 am
the problem with the pro-abortion crowd is that they are demanding the right to kill living children, not already dead ones. It has become an issue because of all the politics involved on both sides of the debate. The real issue, it seems to me is whether gov’t has a role in this at all. But, that also means getting rid of any type of subsidies. My issue with abortion is a moral one. Do I have the right to kill a child that I participated in creating in the first place. I know that there are a few exceptions, but not as many as some would have us believe.
September 17th, 2004 at 8:04 pm
I wouldn’t choose an abortion for my own life, but it would be wrong to make them always a crime. So you would say it would be better to go back to the day when abortion was illegal? A time when young women who didn’t want their unborn child would die from having one performed with a coat hanger? I think not. Abortion isn’t something to be proud of, for sure. But outlawing them isn’t the answer.
January 4th, 2005 at 10:18 am
excuse me do u have a dead fetus on ur head? i like it