Nancy Pelosi on partial-birth abortion (quoted in the SF Chronicle).
This is about a procedure that any parent would want her daughter to have access to if she needed it. And to frame it as an abortion issue is doing a disservice to medicine and to our young women and our country. So I hope we can get the focus back on the fact that this Supreme Court is deciding what medical procedures are necessary for child-bearing women.
Any parent. Um . . . yeah.
Wow.
(I find it telling that Speaker Pelosi — probably subconsciously — discounts, dismisses, or disdains the role of fathers by saying “her daughter” instead of “their daughter”.)
HT: JT
6 comments ↓
Well, from a grammar-nazi point-of-view, using “their” in place of “her” is not proper English (singular noun being used with a plural pronoun). Of course, the proper term, in that case, would have been “his,” since we don’t have a gender-neutral singular pronoun and are supposed to use the masculine pronoun as a substitute. That’s probably not what Pelosi was thinking when she said it, but… thought I’d point that out (though I’m sure you thought of that, being a grammar nazi, yourself.)
And while I won’t get into the debate on the ethics of partial-birth abortions, I will say that while Pelosi probably overspoke when she said that every parent would want that as an option for [their] daughter, you can’t deny that there are a lot of people who support it and do want it available as an option.
Yeah, I know the grammar-nazi implications, and figured that someone who knows my grammar-nazi tendencies could well end up calling me out on that. (Thanks. ;-)) I actually cringed a bit when I typed that sentence out. Still, it kind of made me wonder what was going on in the Speaker’s head. Was it purposeful? Has she just trained herself over the years to default to the feminine because she herself is a woman? Was it just what happened to come out of her mouth. Makes me wonder.
I know it shouldn’t be shocking that the issue isn’t so black and white for everyone because of the evil that exists in the hearts of those who don’t know God…but it is still absolutley shocking to me that any human being would even remotely think PBA or any form of abortion it is “ok.”
If someone wants to have an abortion, they should have to watch someone else’s abortion taking place first, and see the baby being crushed or burned to death or sucked apart to death beforehand. (Obviously, I’m not saying that if they were ok with it it at that point that they should be able to have it. haha.)
People need to stop making abortion into a women’s rights issue and start considering that it is the baby’s rights issue. Among other things. Like God’s right.
ai ai ai. don’t even get me started.
Sick.
Interestingly enough (at least in my mind), I actually might agree with the Speaker on one thing: this is not an “abortion issue” — at least not only an abortion issue. Of course, I find abortion to be murderous in general, but the brutality involved in this particular procedure makes it even more heinous and unconscionable. I honestly can’t imagine any parent actually, when the rubber meets the road, encouraging her (or his!) daughter to go through with such a thing, but I’ve been proven ignorant on these things before.
I catch your posts occasionally on the LJ “friends” page of a friend and always appreciate them.
When I first read Speaker Pelosi’s words in your post, I actually felt validated by them - it’s so rare to hear the female pronoun being the only one spoken. I worked last summer in Liberia and didn’t realize how oppressive it feels to have all one’s leaders and language be male when you are female until I heard the president introduced as “Madame President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.” A whole new world opened up in that one phrase. I understand where you are coming from, because there is a problem with the perceptions of fathers in this country, but it’s a tough balance, because not all that long ago it would have been ONLY fathers mentioned and the mothers ignored because the family belonged to the father.
Anyway, thanks for making me think!
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