Women's Issues

[ginny]

Women's Issues If Art imitates Life, what does Literature show about the place of women in our society? From the Red Tent to the new movie Anna Karenina,  to Malala Yousafzai in the news, has the state of women changed? What IS the state of women today, in your opinion? Let's talk about how women are portrayed in the press, and in literature, and how accurate it is.   How does advertising reflect, if it does, how women are portrayed?  (Remember heels and pearls to sell refrigerators?) How does it seem to you that women are portrayed today? Let's talk! National Women's History Project

[ginny]

By the way, welcome, Rey Hardin!! It's very nice to see you here!

Scott is an evil man who verbally abuses everyone who works for his company.

 

You've seen this show before!!  He does that all the time? How does he get away with it?  I noticed in this episode that the sub contractor refused to cut thru cement and had to talk him into getting an x ray of the cement about the hidden  stabilizing bars (which WERE there) and had it not been for the man refusing to cut it he'd have gone ahead and someone might have been hurt.

The only feedback I can find is not for their programming at all, but instead for their "online support," which of course has nothing to do with the content of their programming, and I don't see anything remotely like forums on their online. Not sure what requires "support."  Hopefully somebody forwarded it? I may have wasted my time.  Not much help but I can't find anything else, here's the page:  http://www.aetv.com/support

In Edit:  I just found another one for feedback and this one allows an email: aefeedback@aenetworks.com 

[MaryPage]

Time after time after time, I find myself going back to the old (and I personally believe true) case for birth control and against over population.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun

Do you remember studying about that when we were, well, when I was young?

I believe over population brings about a lack of a sense of community, a fear of depersonalization, and a lack of civility.

The outright lies politicians, talking heads, propagandists, business owners, lawyers and others are telling these days frighten me to death.  I keep having this sort of over all sense of wonderment that they are not struck dead by lightning!  No! No! No!  That is not a serious expectation on my part, but a leftover footprint from my childhood.

[MaryPage]

I saw a comic strip type cartoon a few months back, and I cut it out of the newspaper and had my son in law laminate it for me.  I cannot reproduce it for you here, but can give you the words for each panel so you can follow in your mind's eye.  Two men are speaking:

It's a proven fact now!
I don't believe in your facts!

Facts are facts!  Not a belief.
That's your opinion!

It's not an opinion.  It's a fact.
From your side!

There are no sides!  Just facts!
But I don't think so!

Just because You don't think it's a fact doesn't mean it isn't!
Well, I have my suspicions!

ARGH!! It's useless arguing with You!!
Now, THAT'S a Fact!

[Steph]

I like hidden objects too, but the ones on my IPAD do not play fair.. Dark dark scenes and then the object is partially hidden. darn.. Must find another source since I love them on the IPAD.. I have been the Flipping Vegas show. The man is a lunatic and his wife is not any better, since she always without exception goes over his budget. I think the point is to provoke the rages.. I do not understand the whole idea.

[ginny]

He's absolutely repulsive... But that went over the line.   That was assault.

That's  cute, Mary Page. I always find it interesting how people argue or debate a position. Shows so much about themselves.  

The ones it always interests me to see, quite amusing, really, are the ones that don't actually debate your counter ideas  at all. In an attempt to turn away your argument they focus on the person (you) making the argument, and what psychological traits or motivations you might have that caused you to have that view.  It's a well known diversionary tactic  called the "ad hominem "  trick. Anything to avoid speaking to your ideas.  

[MaryPage]

Oh, Ginny, I do so agree!

I see that over and over and over again, and it puts me into a fit of apoplexy, and I find myself hollering at my TV set:  Answer the question!  Answer the damn QUESTION!

[mabel1015j]

 

[BarbStAubrey]

Have not seen this guy Scott and it sounds like I have not missed much. All these reality and family TV programs turned me off some years ago - the verbal abuse between folks blew me away. It has become that I now only watch TV a couple of times a week with 90% of the programs on PBS - I just decided life is too short to fill it up with what does not make me feel better.

A larger seemingly out of control population is a challenge and it appears to take a government conscious of that challenge - example Hong Cong had one of the world’s densest populations where water was at a premium as well as food, joblessness that was at epidemic rates. Unlike China, Hong Cong did not impose a birth limit but did raise the standards through raising the people with - access to education, new water and food sources - by focusing on developing their people Hong Cong became a thriving economic powerhouse and with this came economic success - Singapore did much the same - there is an Island in the Philippians that had created a culture that men could embrace of limiting the size of the family and they unlike the main areas of the Philippians still have a fishing industry as well as, now with smaller families all the children can attend school and with fewer pregnancies the women are adding to the economy.

My concern is secondary the size of a population - Yes, a concern with climate change and the loss of wild areas and sea life. I do think this country wants to use its money and resources to keep our powerful position in the world rather than focus on investing in people. That may be an unspoken concern driving the attitude towards immigration especially among those who are seeking the protection and advantages of the US who have a reputation for large families however, my knee jerk concern is not if you do or not have large families - it is over the idea of personal freedom, choice, and creating rules that take choice away from women. Legally denying her choice makes her a chattel to a government represented by some who want to impose the religious views of some on all women, keeping women as less, without the same freedom as a male. Just the basics laws of physics you would think would connect that where ever there is an imbalance of power there is abuse -

[mrssherlock]

As clear as the division between the main two philosophies is, I try to keep in mind that how a person interprets the question, much of that interpretation is the result of factors so deeply embedded that we cannot discern them.  In other words, we are not completely free to decide.  Men are from Mars.  Individually many of today's intelligent sophisticated men would respond to an abstract expression of the women issue favorably but when it becomes subjective, they change.  There must be something profoundly atavistic about being a father. 

[ginny]

I agree with the deeply imbedded bit, and I think the responses are,  too: that is, the way a person chooses to respond to what he perceives as a challenge to his own dearly held ideas may in fact reflect more of who HE is and his deeply imbedded way of responding to things than it does the issue itself.

The old passive aggressive mow em down by slaughtering their character tactic, (ad hominem)  instead of bothering to address the issue raised  is actually something found in a lot of abuse situations, and I agree with MaryPage it's maddening. It's intended to be, it's a diversionary tactic to shift the attention from a civil discussion of the parts of an issue over to the person giving the opinions, maybe even throwing in, sometimes with fake sadness, allusions to his opinion being aligned with something or someone detestable. We've all seen it.

I think people who do it are unaware they are doing it, but most people responding to an issue don't want to be psychoanalyzed just  because the person hearing their opinion can't or won't bother to discuss it.

But that is exactly, as you watch debates on TV, or on the internet,  what happens, and where the name calling also comes in. The issue or whatever points raised go right out the window as the person who is now being attacked then, unless he realizes what's going on,   emotionally defends himself or herself.

It's just a trick, and a patronizing one, at that.

[Steph]

Interesting argument. I have a friend up here in the mountains, who dislikes riding in anyone elses car or not driving and then if she is allowed to drive, you find yourself going to wherever she wanted to go, not what had been decided, because she knows better than you what you want. I refuse to ride with her any mor.. Control can be ugly

[BarbStAubrey]

A young women was the first in line to enter this nation from Ellis Isle when it first opened - Annie Moore, age 15 - traveling ALONE!

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/07/child-migrant-ellis-island-history

[mabel1015j]

I get a newsletter/blog titled "In the Words of Women". 4 women wrote a book of that title and they post a page of a letter or a journal of a woman from the Revolutionary War time.

http://www.amazon.com/Words-Women-Revolutionary-Birth-Nation/dp/0739150197/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1308499750&sr=1-1

Last week she posted a letter from Charlotte Chambers to her Mother Catherine.

 Two things were of interest to me: CC talks about her defending her right to read novels and why it made sense to do so!  ; the blogger mentioned at the beginning of the blog as an introduction that CC's father was James and he was a General in the Rev'y War (actually i discovered that he was a colonel in the war, he was not promoted to General until after the war when he was in command of a "national guard" company during the Whiskey Rebellion). That same statement said he was a judge in Franklin Co, Pa. I know from my mother's cousin genealogy study that i am descended from Benjamin Chambers who founded Chambersburg in Franklin Co, Pa. So i thought James had to be a relative, bcs brothers James, Robert, Joseph and Benjamin came to the Cumberland Valley in the 1730s.

I clicked on the link to CC's Memoir at the bottom of the blog page. Lo and behold, the preface to the memoir had the whole story of the brothers coming to and settling in Pa and CCs father James is the son of my ancestor Benj and the preface includes James' letters to Catherine while he was in the Rev War for 6 yrs. very, very interesting.

But i thought you might enjoy reading Charlotte's letter to her mother on her defending the reading of novels


Memoir of Charlotte Chambers
May 4, 1792.
MY DEAR MOTHER:—
The first of March I arrived at Woodbine. How dreary was the scene! cold stormy winds, naked hills, muddy roads and pensive hours. Now rosy-footed May, ushered by gentle zephyrs, has clothed the fields in fragrant verdure. The birds warble melodiously through the blooming grove, and the time glides imperceptibly by in cheerful friendship.
At dinner to-day the reading of novels was denounced without mercy, as an unprofitable waste of time and a dangerous amusement for young ladies! I became for the occasion a champion in the defence as a means of rational entertainment, and inquired if they had ever known an instance of very great injury resulting from the perusal of fiction? They were obliged to confess they had not. I am sure history affords many instances of heroic exploits, tender attachments, inviolable friendships, as suddenly commenced, and perhaps as imprudently, as can be found in the field of fiction. If such examples are dangerous, young ladies should not read history, for truth must make a greater impression than fable! I would as soon be compelled to subsist on meat, without fruit or vegetables, as to be confined exclusively to sober matter of fact study. In ancient history we read of obscure barbarians rising to fame and glory by force of arms, with the horrid accompaniments of carnage, cruel oppression, massacre, envy, despair, revenge, and death! until we almost contemplate the human species with abhorrence; and can scarcely forbear pronouncing it a race of monsters only tamed by art. Even in books of travel, we read of arid deserts, burning sands, frozen seas, ferocious animals, poisonous serpents, stinging scorpions; and every variety of human misery. How delightful after those repulsive scenes are the pages of a well written novel or poem; where in the luxuriant images of peaceful valleys, virtuous peasantry, shady groves, roses, myrtle, love and friendship, we become reconciled to life.
I fear, dear mother, you will pronounce my opinions heterodox.
Your devoted daughter

Nice sense of humor and very smart argument. And an even nicer surprise was that Amazon has the Memoir. I bought 2copies. BTW, i am not a person who believes that i am special or important bcs my ancestors came to the colonies in the 18th century, or fought in the Rev'n. I just enjoyed reading some about their day to day living. Now, i must admit that really enjoyed a later letter where Charlotte meets and is befriended by Pres and Martha Washington when they lived in Philadelphia. That impressed me.

Jean

[Steph]

I know what you mean, My ancestors (paternal is mostly Dutch) came very early to the US and were involved in upstate New York settling Albany-Schenectady area.. It is and always has been fun to look up books and portraits for that area to see what my ancestors looked like and what they did.

[MaryPage]

I am on the same page as you, Jean, and Steph.  The anecdotes of their daily personal lives is what fascinates me about my very own ancestors.  One of my, let's see, she was my great great grandmother's sister, so I guess she was my great great great aunt, kept a journal type diary of her lifetime, and I have a copy that was made of the original portion of the civil war years at the family plantation in Fredericksburg, Virginia.  It is an amazing chronicle, full of dinner parties for famous generals and such like, plus details of my great grandmother being put on the train for Richmond with her toddler because she was pregnant with my grandfather, who was born in Richmond instead of Fredericksburg because of that war, while the 3 older children stayed with their grandmother, said great great grandmother, at the plantation, and so on and on.  She writes of a morning when "Mr. Mason," that was my great grandfather, stopped by the plantation with a wagonload of my great grandparents best furniture from their house in town, and stored it there for the duration.  She writes of the terrible difficulties they had in producing food for the dinner guests.  Wild turkey filled the bill many a time!  Oh, I just love that stuff!  My great grandfather was not for the war, and not at all military minded, but like everyone else, he enlisted and was given a commission as an officer.  At one point in a lull in the fighting, he was rowed across the river under a white flag of truce and had tea with General Burnside in his tent!  You see, before the war Burnside was roommate to General Dabney Herndon Maury at West Point.  When Maury married my great grandfather's sister at his family's plantation in King George, Virginia, Burnside was a groomsman.  In those days, travel involving what it did, people went and stayed A WEEK for a wedding!  So (and Burnside himself told this in his memoirs, as did also Maury) it was that Burnside fell in love with the Mason family, and thus he was fast friends with the Virginians, albeit they were fighting on the other side!
I love that stuff!  As far as I know, my earliest American ancestor from England was Adam Thoroughgood, who came over to Virginia in 1621.  Except that on my Yankee mother's side I have Mohawk blood!  I guess that makes me very, very Early American!

[Steph]

Mohawks ... they were a matriarchy and I have a far distant one.. You became part of your wifes family.. and in many cases, your sons would be raised by their Uncles.. Interesting tribe

[MaryPage]

Mine is far distant, too, Steph.  My mother was born in Au Sable Forks, New York, which is much further upstate than your folks were to be found.  Her father's side was all English/Irish, with most lines being Irish, and they came over pre Revolutionary War.  Her mother's side was from up there, too;  but a different valley.  Her mother's great grandmother was the daughter of a Mohawk squaw, who was actually married to a French Canadian.  The French Canadian was the son of a French mother and an English father.  Those valleys border Canada.

[MaryPage]

I read today that this new ISIS group of fanatic fundamentalist Muslims in Iraq have made it their law in the areas they have conquered that all females from 6 to 46 must undergo female genital multilation.  This is torture.  This is also proof that it is almost ALL about keeping the female of our species in a slave status, unable to rise above the station of servants.  It is so exactly parallel with the goals of some forms of Christianity!  These religions name their gods differently, but they each imbue their god with a distain for women which amounts, at times, to a hatred.  A rage.  And of course, in their rantings they always blame all womenkind for their degraded status on the basis that women TEMPT MEN!  So the bottom line is that every precious baby girl born is, in their eyes, a wicked Jezebel guilty of inciting the sexual impulses possessed by men!  And so they think the solution is to keep all these filthy members of the female gender in their places as a lesser class of servants of men!

[mabel1015j]

The trailer for the movie Fifty Shades of Gray came out today - talk about taking women backwards. I understand the male protagonist is very controlling....humph.....is this today's Lolita? "We know the behavior is wrong, but it's about SEX and society is all about SEX, so in order to be hip i have to read it!?!" I remember wanting to do that when i was SIXTEEN! But obviously many more persons then 16 yr olds bought and read FSG. I suppose there will now be 100 more books and movies with the same theme.  (Sigh)

[BarbStAubrey]

People today and especially women have no clue what is abuse - verbal abuse is rampant and they have no clue what it is much less the abuse of power that shows itself in control - the churches are the worst and I am a christian but it is difficult today to sort through what is political in the church versus what is about strengthening your inner life. The political church is as controlling assuming power over others as any non democratic government with democracy being used twisting its freedom to further the power game of those who want to control - at least Black folks could turn to their church for solace during the dark time - where do women turn since churches have decided to be the battle ground?

[MaryPage]

We only have ourselves to turn to.  We need to stop worshipping men and become a sisterhood that realizes its potential and wakes up to the fact that we do MOST of the REAL work that is done in this world!

It is perfectly normal and wonderful to be in love, but we have to love ourselves enough to demand and receive respect from the men we love.  Equality and value.  Unless the man in your life grants you equal value, which must amount to more than being a sex object and a housekeeper, he should not BE the man in your life!  In short, we must start demanding a better breed of man!

I should not have been pulled in by the news bulletin about ISIS.  Read this and wait to see what the facts may be:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28466434

[Steph]

Yes, I read somewhere today that they think that this was not a true statement.. But for sure,they are throwing all Christians out. turn or die or leave.. How about if we did that.. Whew..

[MaryPage]

I hate to pass on rumors instead of news, but it was reported as the word of a U.N. official that they were mandating the FGM.

Anyway, yes, it is apparently true they are forcing the Christians to convert or die.  And the thing is, the Christian community has been living there in that precise section of the world for LONGER THAN ISLAM HAS EXISTED!

[Steph]

Yes, I read that. The community has always been peaceful and kind to all. It is so sad.. How would the muslims feel if we started banning them from oour communities, They come to the US and try to force us into Sharia and various laws,, How sad and stupid.

[MaryPage]

We have virtually the same thing here in our country as regards certain factions of Christians.  A man is running on the Republican ticket here in Anne Arundel County, Maryland (Peroutka is his surname) who believes in two things that horrify me:  One is that all law should be based upon what the Bible says,  and the other is that the southern states should form a republic of their own.  Of course, he got through the primary because no one votes in primaries around here anymore, and he got his people out to the polls;  every single one of them!

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/anne-arundel/pasadena/bs-md-ar-peroutka-20140725,0,4903658.story

[maryz]

Bumper sticker seen in California:

The Christian Right is Neither

[ginny]

That's a clever one, I had to read that a couple of times to understand what it meant. hahaha

My favorite bumper sticker (this is a seque WAY off the subject) was seen driving thru Mc Donalds a couple of years ago:

I may be fat,
But you're ugly
And I can lose the weight.

I love that. hahahaa

[BarbStAubrey]

ewww  l like that - The Christian Right is neither...

[MaryPage]

Me, too, MaryZ.  Or to be grammatically correct, I also.  The Christian Right is neither!

[Steph]

Some bumper stickers are way too true..

[mabel1015j]

This is longer then a bumper sticker.   Read at your leisure this article by the author of a new book about Alice Paul's suffrage crusade. Unfortunately, (imo) she covers AP's life only until 1920 and the passage of the 19th amendment. I hope someone picks up the story from there bcs the second half of her life is equally thrilling and informative: getting 3 law degrees to know how to write the Equal Rights Amendment and getting it introduced for 50 yrs into every session of congress; forming the International Women's Party; housing escaping Jews during WWII in her home in Switzerland; working with E Roosevelt to get women included in the U.N. Human Rights declaration; and getting women included in the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

These are some quotes from the author's column about the book in the History News Newsletter today:
The person who once seemed a dangerous force was reborn by historians as a charismatic, courageous leader.

The public memory of Alice Paul was not erased by her death in 1977. A few years later, feminists in her home state of New Jersey took up the cause of her legacy. They purchased Paul’s estate for deposit in the Smithsonian Institution and Boston’s Schlesinger Library on the History of Women and several years later purchased the Paul family home in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. Paulsdale is now a national historic landmark housing the Alice Paul Institute. In 2004, the visibility of Alice Paul’s public memory reached new heights with the HBO broadcast Iron-Jawed Angels.

Alice Paul’s story continues in the present, as ERA advocates gear up for a renewed drive to success. Paul’s 1917 political protest can inform current challenges, whether it is understanding the aims of the Occupy movement, the motives of Voter ID advocates, or other campaigns. Though our history often forgets those who protest or dissent, these Americans truly exemplify the founding principles of our nation.

The second paragraph is the group that i have been involved with since 1985 that has saved her homestead, artifacts and papers and become The Alice Paul Institute which is working to save and include women's history in our consciousness, and has a leadership training center for teenage girls. Her home has been designated a National Historic Landmark and we've renovated it to look as it did when Alice lived there, but it is not a museum. It is used every week by teenagers and adults; all NJ 4th graders study NJ history and many of them come to Paulsdale to learn about AP, women's suffrage, the Quaker philosophy, and children's experience on farms in the 19th century.

The whole article can be read here:
http://hnn.us/article/156345

Jill, the author of the book and the column, was on the API bd of Directors in the 1990s and recently debuted the book at Paulsdale.

Enjoy some women's history!

Jean

[Steph]

mark, I am off to a coffee..

[mogamom]

An interesting development in ISIS regarding the treatment of women:

http://news.msn.com/world/the-isis-crackdown-on-women-by-women-1

[Steph]

That article is just plain sad. Women oppressing women.. I cry at the stupidity and clinging to conservative beliefs to punch those who don't. women are sometimes their own worst enemies.

[BarbStAubrey]

I had an interesting exchange with my neighbor - he couldn't be sweeter and has done me so many big favors like actually building me a new side gate and installing it and finding me a low cost handyman and always cutting the part of the lawn on the side of my driveway that is adjacent to his lawn. Yes, they make his house look better but the guy on the other side only gives me grief mostly about how my front yard plants block his view and how I like the deer allowing them in my yard and he hates the deer. Anyhow...

I do not usually say anything about my views and he shared how the Pope is looking into allowing priests to be married and I told him that during Vatican II that commission was squashed along with the one on Birth Control - he knee jerked showed upsetment saying he was the 11th child of 12 - it made me think that the issue for many is seeing themselves as children who may not be - and not as a women being caged to constant pregnancy - I did not further the discussion - he was too into his own belief but I thought how come he and his wife only have two children -

Something is not matching up - but it was an insight to how some see this issue only from the point of view of a child without regard for a women since this is her natural physical makeup - and yet these same folks are not having a child every year or a mom who does nothing but have and care for children much less what all these children could do to resources. There is an emotional kickstart here that has nothing to do with logic and suggesting because women can have babies they must with no ifs ands or buts. The days of the jolly virtuous poor are long gone in this country and in most countries that are not third world countries.

[MaryPage]

Barbara, I have had all of those same observations so very many times.  And yes, I have been arguing long and loud right here that all of our women problems could be settled if we women would just band together and speak up as a whole, cohesive group.  But so far, we don't do that.

And yes, there is a complete lack of empathy from the majority of men regarding what women go through with pregnancy and birth and child rearing.  They observe just one thought:  if she has sex, she is going to get pregnant;  and she MUST have that baby, as God has given it a soul and wants it born!

Like they know this!

The Roman Catholic Church already has and allows married priests.  They just need to make it universal.  And they will!  Anything to get more men to take up the priesthood as a vocation.

When Eastern and Western Christianity split up (the Great Schism), the Eastern Orthodox kept the right for priests to marry.  The West, in the form of Rome, denied this right, but continued to allow the Ukranian priests to marry so that they would remain under the Pope in Rome.  So it is that to this very day, Ukranian priests marry and have children.  This is yet another tie those people have with the West as opposed to Russia.  It never seems to be mentioned in the news, however.

[mogamom]

I surely would have been aborted also,   (so would Beethoven) but my objection is what it has done to so many women (and that this issue isn't seriously studied) and how I perceive its effect on the culture.  I read an article recently that seems promising - the development of an implant that regulates female hormones to prevent pregnancy.  It even has a remote so that it can be regulated externally, especially when pregnancy is desired.  Some wondered if anyone would use it because they thought an IUD could do the same thing.  However, an IUD can cause serious problems if fertilization and implantation does occur.  I think they are also researching a similar device for diabetics - to regulate insulin.  

Also, I heard somewhere that the reason the Roman Catholic Church denied priests the right to marry primarily because they did not want them passing down their wealth to their heirs?  but to keep it in the Church?  I am certainly not an expert on the subject, and I would in no wise attempt to dismiss the church's teachings - just wondering if this might have been part of their reasoning?

It is really sad what women do to women who do not agree with them; and I don't quite understand why this happens if the point to the argument is choice?  Of course, women are not likely to want to band together with people they feel dismissed, ridiculed, demeaned by?  just a thought...

[BarbStAubrey]

This is where I think we are talking about apples and oranges - I do not think most of our mothers would abort and to be so afraid is to not trust our mothers - We are all here by an accident of biology but to allow the fear of our past birth 'maybe' not happening to decide women are not worthy of deciding and the government must decide for them is basing a law on our fear of something that never happened in the past.

I could even see the concept of government deciding for women if the government also decided which men could impregnate a women - if all sperm was in a bank to be doled out by the government so that all boys deposited their sperm at a very young age upon maturity and then had a vasectomy - then a child could be conceived willingly with both in agreement -

I never did see anyone say anything in all my reading about Beethoven that his mother considered an abortion - he had a rough childhood - yes, and a father who brutalized him - raising children was very different in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Also, a safe, Doctor assisted abortion has only been available in our lifetime.

Aborting is not a decision we in this discussion have to make - like you, I do trust my children and grandchildren as I am sure everyone in this discussion trusts their family to do the morally right thing - to stop trusting women to do what is right just because we do not personally know them is painful to hear - and then to make it a law based on that lack of trust - oh oh oh sounds no different than the concern that we cannot trust women or blacks to vote because they may choose a candidate that is not good for those who preferred women and blacks did not vote.  

However, there is no sense in this line of discussion - It is certainly not in keeping with this discussion about the strength and  resourcefulness of women, the wonders we have brought to society in education, entrepreneurship and service as we change women, their opportunities and the world.   

[MaryPage]

In my 85 years, I have known of, either first hand or second or third (by that I mean, I have been told, as I am sure you have, by so and so that her daughter, niece, sister, BF, or whatever had one, or heard by yet a third party or more) that a certain woman had an abortion.  And I have known of two in my own family (there were probably more), but never once, never in a single case, have I heard of regret regarding the termination;  only relief.  All guilt, and the only guilt, where there has been any at all, which is rarely the case, seems to be focused on having gotten pregnant in the first place.  Anyway, I do not feel it is the concern or business of ANYONE outside of the doctor and his patient to attempt to intervene on the decision of those two regarding HER body on the basis that she might have regrets.  That is HER business.  There seems to be no uproar by the anti-Choice folks after these children are born to make sure they do not suffer hunger or abuse because they are poor or unwanted.  All attention is focused only upon the rights of women to determine their own destinies as regards their reproductive lives!  It constitutes such an intimate interference in my personal bodily functions that it quite takes my breath away just to contemplate for even a second that my body seems to be the property of the GOVERNMENT and not governed by ME!  And this from the very same and identical set of people who are, in almost every OTHER instance, dead set against government!  Go figure!