Anyone feel like weighing in on a comment I received? I’m having a tough time with the comment since, on the one hand I appreciate human feelings and I’ve no fundamental problem with gay or transgender people. That’s because basically I’m a live and let live kinda person, being respectful and kind to each other is what matters. (Of course, this is an ideal and I make no claims to always having lived up to it, but it’s the standard I strive for and am getting better at as the years pile on.)
Still I’m really flummoxed by the comment I received regarding this sentence and it has made me realize I don’t know much about what a transgender person is actually supposed to be about.
When push comes to shove, a just law would clearly acknowledge that a woman’s life is more precious to her existing family and society than an unborn potentiality.
The comment reads:
If you limit this discussion to women, you are unwittingly keeping trans people out of the conversation. Not all people who can get pregnant identify as she/her or woman. Therefore it may be more appropriate and inclusive to refer to “women and pregnant people.”
“Pregnant People” simply doesn’t compute for me, even after chewing on it a few days.
Identify as you must, since I believe most often it’s driven by biological circumstances.
Choose to call yourself what you want, live your life the way you have to, but gestating and birthing a baby is what female is all about biologically speaking.
Of course, we’re in this insane human-is-god phase of our evolution and these days a test tube can theoretically birth a child. So does that mean all bets are off and that we should start adopting the notion that any “person” can produce a child? It doesn’t make sense to me.
I mean even trans people have an obligation to respect others along with physical reality, so taking offense at the notion of believing only a woman gets pregnant (regardless of what she “identifies” as), ergo it’s women who are the ones exposed to the personal crisis of an unwanted pregnancy and having to face the abortion option. Being offended by that seems out of bounds for me.
Any thoughts?
On the Abortion Rights Question, Considering The Fundamentals
I want to start with the greatest truth humanity has achieved: we are born out of Earth’s processes. It’s a truth born out of our increasing understanding of human history going back into the dimmest reaches of Earth’s deep time. Beginning with geology, then biology joined in, then complex biology, then living sensing creatures that created environments and ecology on an ever changing Earth. Folds within folds of cumulative harmonic complexity flowing down the cascade of time, rushing into a future inhabited by humans.
Birth and death is our lot. It has always been part and parcel of our human condition. It can’t be moralized out of existence by idealistic extremists who believe “God” is personally speaking with them.
Pregnancy is never a guarantee. A fetus is a germinated seed, a being, a human potentiality. Spontaneous miscarriages, natural abortions happen all the time. A fetus may be a human, but it doesn’t take on the mantle of personhood until those first breaths of life-giving air are infusing its lungs and pumping through its arteries and veins.
It should be significant that the fact of practicing abortions is older than civilizations, with Jewish scripture going into details on the topic, explaining why within particular circumstance abortion is a sad inevitability and that it is okay in the eyes of their God. (God never promised us a rose garden!)
Beyond that, in a free society, legally speaking, why doesn’t a woman deserve the Right to Self-Defense along with Sovereignty Over Her Own Body?
Pregnancy is a difficult gauntlet, always will be, there will be deaths. Those deaths aren’t confined to unborn beings, all too often the mother is also at mortal risk.
When push comes to shove, a just law would clearly acknowledge that a woman’s life is more precious to her existing family and society than an unborn potentiality.
Another factor all too often forgotten is that facing an abortion situation is nothing any woman (or young girl & her family) ever wants, life thrusts the situation upon her, and it is foremost she, herself, who must continue carrying the consequences of her choices, as others lose interest with the passage of time.
Another unspoken matter is that most often she’s also acting with the best interest of the unborn life within her at heart. The fetus inside of her will always matter more to herself, than to any moralizing bystanders. Women should be entrusted above all others, with the responsibility of making their own best informed choices about their own pregnancies.
