KALI DHARMA X SHAKTI DHARMA

by PostModernity's Red-Headed Step-Child

"Um, yeh, like, I'd like to exchange this paradigm? It's tew scratch-ehy."

4.4.06

Culture of Life I (Roe)

Part I, Roe v. Wade

Most of our discussions about women’s freedom of choice, privacy, and a ‘culture of life’ are incoherent. I am not sure that what I’ll offer here is less so, but I decided to clarify my positions on these and related matters, mostly for me, and secretly in hopes of finding some policy suggestions that make sense.

The Right is upset at the number of abortions per annum in this nation. Check the statistics. There number of abortions and number of incidences of violence against women are about equal on average, and far more than the annual number of breast cancers, but I don’t hear big voices calling for changes regarding violence against women. I don’t see Yoplait campaigns against rape, sexual battery, incest, spousal abuse. I don’t hear calls for education that would convince men that victimizing women shows your fear and weakness and insecurity in your own identity, NOT your masculinity or strength. Crickets, on these points. There is a cultural subtext here that generations of feminists have made quite clear. That I find it morally repugnant is a matter for another day.

Let me state at the outset that I believe abortion should safe, legal, and rare; that women and their lives are NOT worth less than children or men and their lives; that sexual responsibility rests on the shoulders of both men and women equally; that danger to a woman’s physical or psychological health is an acceptable reason to terminate a pregnancy; that sexual education should be thorough, honest, and involve lots of discussion of the intricacies of sexuality and relationships and cultural attitudes about sex, sexiness, and love, etc. – it should be a semester-long class in every single high school in US (because humans are sexual beings); that our sexuality is one of the most sacred aspects of our humanity; that parents should learn that part of parenting well is discussing (both talking and listening are involved in discussing) sexuality with their children in clear and responsible ways without embarrassment; that I love children and men and women; that women and men should be raised and schooled is such a way that they respect the power and complexity of sexuality and relationships; that sex should not be treated as a toy or a mark of accomplishment or an amusement or a way to become popular or acceptable by one’s peer group; that our cultures simultaneous hedonism and prudishness are an ambivalence that we need to get over; that Chastity Until Marriage proponents should realize that young people who take their vow get up to all kinds of sexual shenanigans that are dangerous to their physical and emotional health while maintaining a girl’s “technical virginity;” that not having sex is in no way a sign of personal failure or social oddity; and that sexual predators of all stripes should be jailed for life with each other and separate from other prisoners; and that the beauty of choice is that no one is required have an abortion. Choice personal and moral decisions to the individual in relation to their family, their life circumstances, their conscience, and their God as as secular humanists are perfectly content to accept.

Let us for the moment bracket all the very true fluff that until the creation of decent medicine, the number one killer of women was childbirth, that pregnancy is the most dangerous physical condition a woman can endure next to domestic abuse and fighting in war, and the whack-o idea that women in countries like, say, India should use abortion as a form of birth control and sex selection because boys are so much preferred. Let us also bracket the historical fact that the US is founded as a secular nation following the principles of a philosophy reviled by the Right known as secular humanism. Let’s put that down for now. We can pick them up latter.

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