A couple neat posts
Danielle Bean has a great post today with a really cute story about one of her kids - really made me laugh out loud!
Cash for Crabs
Another good one on a totally different subject is Jane Galt's smack-down of some of the European response she's seen regarding Katrina. I thought it was quite well put together and an altogether entertaining and enlightening read.
"Myth" Busting
My favorite paragraph is towards the beginning: "The area that was devastated by the hurricane is approximately the size of Great Britain. Tell me again how the EU would have gotten everything under control in a matter of hours had 90% of England, Scotland, and Wales been flattened by an Atlantic storm that also knocked out electricity to Ireland and France." She also has some interesting comparisons about the climate differences (among other things) between the US and Europe. Galt just recently returned from living in London for several months, which has given her a rather interesting perspective on a number of subjects.
And last but not least, this fantastic post by Kate Cousino, titled Why This Young Woman is Pro-Life. She aptly calls it her "Pro-Life 'Manifesto'". If I could write half as well as she does about things I care deeply about, I would be jumping up and down for joy. It really made me reflect on my journey from completely pro-choice to completely pro-life, a journey that started about twelve years ago and only ended about 6-8 months ago. I was raised to be totally pro-choice by my mother, so much so that I didn't even think about it at all until a comment from a school friend after biology one day. We were talking about the birth process, and I said something about the fetus entering the birth canal. My friend said to me, somewhat sarcastically (and I will never forget this) - "Now that the baby is moments away from being born, do you think you could start calling it a baby now?" I think it is funny how little things like that stick in one's head and start far more than one would ever think possible from one little remark. It really made me think about that transition point and how you could ever possibly define it. Until I was pregnant with my daughter, I held to a sort of fuzzy "until the point of viability" acceptance of abortion, but it wasn't something I felt particularly good about. I figured that once the baby could survive on his or her own, then we could call the baby a baby, and thus the baby's life deserved to be honored and protected. As I learned more about just how fuzzy that point is and how impossible it would be to create a good and lasting definition for it, and then as I experienced a pregnancy of my own, I grew to reconsider this position. I backed up my acceptance to only within the first trimester, but still I wondered how even that could be acceptable. What makes week 11 ok, but not week 12? What changes so dramatically in that short period of time that would make something so irrevocable and life-changing and life-ending not acceptable? If I were to base this on some sort of pregnancy milestone, what then if the dates were wrong (which happens a lot more than people realize)? I realized that once I started accepting that this life is a human life and not just a clump of cells, there was nothing I could do but follow the slippery slope all the way to the other side, to a position I couldn't even fathom holding in earlier years. Anyways, I have probably gone on longer than I should have, and I know there are other turning points that came along this path (one of them being the realization that in 1983, the year before my brother was born, almost a quarter of all pregnancies ended in abortion - what a huge number of people who were just wiped off the face of the earth!). I really don't mean to start anything, I write this more because I want to share a post that I read recently that really affected me and also because I am still marveling at the changes I have undergone over the years. As I keep thinking about things from a variety of viewpoints, working them over in my mind, and learning more and more I have found myself drifting in directions I never would have expected. Not to sound like an idiot or anything, but I just have a hard time believing that I have changed as much as I have - and sometimes I wonder (and wish!) it would just stop for awhile.
And, yes, I do read a rather eclectic collection of blogs. Someday I should put out the list of blogs that are in my RSS program on my blog just for fun. Or I suppose I could just do a blogroll... I meant to just write a brief post, and here it is, a half an hour later. I really need to go out and do my errands!
Cash for Crabs
Another good one on a totally different subject is Jane Galt's smack-down of some of the European response she's seen regarding Katrina. I thought it was quite well put together and an altogether entertaining and enlightening read.
"Myth" Busting
My favorite paragraph is towards the beginning: "The area that was devastated by the hurricane is approximately the size of Great Britain. Tell me again how the EU would have gotten everything under control in a matter of hours had 90% of England, Scotland, and Wales been flattened by an Atlantic storm that also knocked out electricity to Ireland and France." She also has some interesting comparisons about the climate differences (among other things) between the US and Europe. Galt just recently returned from living in London for several months, which has given her a rather interesting perspective on a number of subjects.
And last but not least, this fantastic post by Kate Cousino, titled Why This Young Woman is Pro-Life. She aptly calls it her "Pro-Life 'Manifesto'". If I could write half as well as she does about things I care deeply about, I would be jumping up and down for joy. It really made me reflect on my journey from completely pro-choice to completely pro-life, a journey that started about twelve years ago and only ended about 6-8 months ago. I was raised to be totally pro-choice by my mother, so much so that I didn't even think about it at all until a comment from a school friend after biology one day. We were talking about the birth process, and I said something about the fetus entering the birth canal. My friend said to me, somewhat sarcastically (and I will never forget this) - "Now that the baby is moments away from being born, do you think you could start calling it a baby now?" I think it is funny how little things like that stick in one's head and start far more than one would ever think possible from one little remark. It really made me think about that transition point and how you could ever possibly define it. Until I was pregnant with my daughter, I held to a sort of fuzzy "until the point of viability" acceptance of abortion, but it wasn't something I felt particularly good about. I figured that once the baby could survive on his or her own, then we could call the baby a baby, and thus the baby's life deserved to be honored and protected. As I learned more about just how fuzzy that point is and how impossible it would be to create a good and lasting definition for it, and then as I experienced a pregnancy of my own, I grew to reconsider this position. I backed up my acceptance to only within the first trimester, but still I wondered how even that could be acceptable. What makes week 11 ok, but not week 12? What changes so dramatically in that short period of time that would make something so irrevocable and life-changing and life-ending not acceptable? If I were to base this on some sort of pregnancy milestone, what then if the dates were wrong (which happens a lot more than people realize)? I realized that once I started accepting that this life is a human life and not just a clump of cells, there was nothing I could do but follow the slippery slope all the way to the other side, to a position I couldn't even fathom holding in earlier years. Anyways, I have probably gone on longer than I should have, and I know there are other turning points that came along this path (one of them being the realization that in 1983, the year before my brother was born, almost a quarter of all pregnancies ended in abortion - what a huge number of people who were just wiped off the face of the earth!). I really don't mean to start anything, I write this more because I want to share a post that I read recently that really affected me and also because I am still marveling at the changes I have undergone over the years. As I keep thinking about things from a variety of viewpoints, working them over in my mind, and learning more and more I have found myself drifting in directions I never would have expected. Not to sound like an idiot or anything, but I just have a hard time believing that I have changed as much as I have - and sometimes I wonder (and wish!) it would just stop for awhile.
And, yes, I do read a rather eclectic collection of blogs. Someday I should put out the list of blogs that are in my RSS program on my blog just for fun. Or I suppose I could just do a blogroll... I meant to just write a brief post, and here it is, a half an hour later. I really need to go out and do my errands!
posted by Amber at
1:19 PM
2 Comments:
I've always been pro-life (raised that way), but you're right - pregnancy really cements the whole "life" concept.
By
Emily (Laundry and Lullabies), at 8:36 PM
Ooooo! More good stuff to read! (Who needs sleep?) Thanks for the links!
This is an interesting post. Zorak has taken a similar route, from the hands-off, pro-choice, somewhat apologetic-for-being-male stance, to a really compassionate and deeply convinced pro-life approach. He says now that he would like to think he'd have come to this same place if he had ever been confronted with the situation before we had the boys, but he will forever be thankful that he wasn't put to the test. It's not something he would ever choose to live with. And now, raising children, it's a stark reality that we will have to carefully discuss with them and help guide them through. *sigh* Big stuff.
Anyhow, now I'm rambling. Enjoy your weekend,
Dy
By
Dy, at 11:21 PM
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