Lots going on, only have time for this post, announcement.
Old timers around here know that from time to time I go through my activist phase, though it’s been a while. Still I’ve never stopped thinking about current issues, some more than others. With interfering in a woman’s reproductive choices seeming one of the more egregious wrongs to me. Since I’ve never understood why it has been allowed to become such a volatile emotionalized public spectacle. It’s a personal crisis deserving compassion and respect for privacy. The days of women being chattel are supposed to be over, let her make her own decisions.
That’s why I’ve kept grappling with how to distill my feeling into as concise a writing as possible. I’ve done that now and condensed it onto a postcard, and have made a test run of 250 postcards, which I will be sending out to whomever I think might be interested. I like to think there are some sticky sentences in there worth broadcasting, never know where they might take root.
Along with addressing and sending out postcards, I’ll be posting about it at my blogs. Those announcements will include an invitation to this CFI Forum thread. I’m hoping at least one or two individuals out there might want to engage in a discussion.
Could be wrong, I have been plenty of times before, still I’ll never know, unless I go and do it. Besides, hope springs eternal and is survival strategy in hopeless times.
The NYT, online, took Alito’s decision on the Dobbs case and responded to each point. It’s a great history lesson, and guidance on how to respond to the misuse of that history. I don’t subscribe anymore, so I don’t think I could find it.
I think the emotional appeals of either side have done as much as they can do. People will continue to get that emotional energy, act for a while, then run out of steam. It’s part of politics, not the part I like participating in. I could play devil’s advocate and tell you the conservative answers to your questions in the postcard, but I don’t think that’s what you’re looking for.
Thanks for pointing that out, it’s a good reference. And if I ever need to get my blood boiling I’ll know were to go - talk about self-absorbed arguments, on both side.
No one touching that document has any conception of humans as evolved creatures, it’s all me, me, me.
Drifting here, but worth noting is that even recent reading of some descriptions of humanism, they also scream me, me, me. Humanity as the light house and everything else out there, beyond our appreciation. Once one actually absorbs the lessons of Evolution and how they are reflected within your very being, physical as well as mental, the horizon looks very different. Or heck even the fact that our consciousness is produced by our biological bodies (a reflection of the body communicating with itself), is totally off the map in those circles - which is a shame, because it resolves so many internal conflicts humans live with.
Just a quick note, the most glaring; your language specifically weighs one life against another, putting the fully grown human first, the one who CAN make a choice. Their language states “all life is sacred” and claims to defend the thing that can’t defend itself. This hits an emotional note. It also avoids the discussion of the trade-off. They claim that most abortions are about a woman choosing to not be responsible, or not caring about the consequences of their actions. Truth is, almost all of them are medical decisions, made with a lot of thought, even prayers.
Even those that are for healthy fetuses, the decision is about how the future person can be cared for, or IF it can be cared for. If the same pro-life person was also taking actions to care for unwanted, unloved, undernourished children, I’d listen to them, but at the policy level, this isn’t happening. I’d focus on that.
But it can be shown all life is not sacred to them.
Turning their backs on school lunch programs.
on the light side.
Ignoring serial mass school murders??? How does that defend the sanctity of life???
And the fact that our society constantly decides to legally destroys life, human and other animals. In fact we hand out guns like candy inviting people to decide for themselves if another’s life is to be spared or blown away. And ask questions later.
So no the “Sanctity of Life” is a bogus Straw Man argument.
If we stick with the Personhood definition - the mantel of personhood isn’t acquired until the creature is inhaling Earth’s life giving air and it’s flowing through the infants blood vessels and veins.
You know CC you could also send it to various governors in red states, like Missouri. Governor Parsnip is real misogynist. He doesn’t even care that a little girl ends up pregnant due to incest, she can’t have an abortion to save her life. He doesn’t care if two people, by his definition die, because that would be “God’s will”. Someone needs to knock some sense into these red state gov’nors.
That’s what I’m saying, but do it without calling them hypocrites directly, then they stop listening. Ask, I can’t square this idea of caring, with other polices about already born children. Their avenues are then deflection or agreeing to help children. The second one is my goal.
I’m not going to repeat their stupid arguments about when life begins. They believe their terrible logic.
Definitely, perhaps the way to go is to point out this isn’t about the immorality or morality of killing.
This is about the morality of who is making the decision.
My insistence is that:
In the end, it’s the mother who possess the greatest “legal holding” in that fetus, and in the end it’s the mother that carries the scars of its death.
===========================
I have a rewrite:
In the end, it’s the mother who possess the greatest moral "holding” in that fetus, and in the end, it’s the mothers who carry the scars of a fetus’s death. Let it be, outsiders don’t have a clue, they aren’t God, if you believe in God, let God handle it and stay out of other’s private lives, as you want them to stay out of your business.
Are Jews across denominations arguing that anti-abortion laws infringe on their religious freedoms?
Yes. It’s an argument being put forth by advocates like the National Council of Jewish Women. It holds that since Jewish law supports reproductive rights, abortion restrictions violate Jewish people’s right to make choices about their lives in accordance with Jewish law.
This position has many strengths. It reflects decades-worth of higher-level Torah learning by women that has allowed them to interpret core Jewish texts. More women now have expertise in Talmudic and Jewish legal texts and the confidence to apply their understandings to their own lives.
It is also a point upon which Jews across denominations can agree.
Finally, the argument may have a higher likelihood of success, given that the Supreme Court’s current conservative justices have been responsive to religious freedom claims but unsympathetic to claims rooted in women’s equality.
Lisa Fishbayn Joffe is the director of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and director of the Project on Gender, Culture, Religion and the Law which explores the tension between women’s equality claims and religious laws. Her research focuses on gender and multiculturalism in family law and on the intersection between secular and religious law. She is a co-founder of the Boston Agunah Task Force, devoted to research, education and advocacy for women under Jewish family law
For more than 20 years, HBI has not only embraced but emboldened those who seek to explore, understand, question and re-envision the rich and complex interplay of Judaism, women and gender.
The genesis of HBI can be traced to a 1995 report of the Hadassah-sponsored National Commission on American Jewish Women, chaired by Brandeis sociologist Shulamit Reinharz. Titled “Voices for Change: Future Directions for American Jewish Women.” The report summarized existing research and concluded that while information on Jewish women’s history, lives and culture existed, there was need robust support for future research. Thanks to a generous grant from Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, HBI (originally known as the International Research Institute on Jewish Women) opened at Brandeis University in 1997. …
I don’t know about Jewish religious rights, but the abortion bans definitely violate women’s rights, because it denies women health care that can be lifesaving, as well as helpful.
I’ve gotten those 250 postcards sent out and want to reorder. Though a little editing was definitely called for. I think I’m getting closer at least that’s all the polishing I can think of for now. It’ll be interesting to see how it looks in a couple months.
It’s feeling pretty close to final final draft. You know I need to add it, since though the flaws in the previous draft were relatively minor, they were big enough to demand a little more editing, er polishing.
At that point, the mother would have to give birth early, if hers and/or the baby’s life is in dangers. That’s the treatment for diagnoses such as H.E.L.L.P Syndrome.
Yes, it get’s complicated,
But, I don’t think any of those variable details do much to detract from this bottom-line:
A fetus certainly is human, but its a potentiality, a person in the making, the fetus doesn’t take on the mantle of personhood until those first breaths of life-giving air start infusing its lungs, arteries and tissues with oxygen.
In a free society, legally speaking, why doesn’t a woman deserve the Right to Self-Defense - along with Sovereignty Over Her Own Body?
Why wouldn’t a just society clearly acknowledge:“A woman’s life is more precious to her existing family, and to society, than an unborn potentiality?"
Life can force impossible situations upon people, who are we to judge her? Why not some compassion for the most difficult decision in a person’s life.
I agree. It is complicated. When I was pregnant, I wanted the baby and while we were one and it was nothing more than just a parasite, it was my baby growing inside me. On the other hand, if a woman wanted to terminate the fetus, then I distance myself and consider it nothing more than a parasite and that’s all it is. Just because it’s a fetus, whether or not it is nothing more than a parasite or an eventual baby, depends on what the woman wants or whether the pregnancy is viable or the woman’s life is at risk. If the woman wants the pregnancy and there are no other complications, then it’s her baby. If her life is at risk, it’s not viable, or she doesn’t want it, we must distance ourselves from the parasite and not consider it an eventual baby. Sounds cold, but it’s the only way to deal with pregnancy, IMO.
Well I found a couple typos, fortunately punctuation, so not totally obnoxious, simply unfortunate. Something to fix if it gets another printing. But it does added up and has exceeded my budget, so I’ve taken a step I never thought I’d consider.
