While I've been in the "Anybody But Bush" camp all along, I've grown to like John Kerry more and more over the course of the debates. He's obviously articulate and intelligent, I think he has a genuine desire to take the country in a better direction than we�re heading now, and the ability to look at various sides of an issue. I find his even-tempered demeanor to be reassuring and I like the fact that he is all about cutting the deficit, though I am skeptical of his ability to make much headway, considering the mess we�re in right now. But I like that he has it as a goal. Bush is like a impulsive college freshman on a drunken spree with his first credit card. With my fucken tax money! If he was my kid I�d snatch his Visa away, kick his stupid ass and put him on a repayment plan with CCC posthaste.

But I digress.

I absolutely LOVED Kerry�s position on abortion. He doesn't personally embrace it as part of his own moral code, but supports and enforces the right as it exists. Yes! Thank you! He�ll mind his own mortal conscience and let me mind mine, as well he should.

I also really respect his stance that it would be more effective and compassionate to work to reduce the number of abortions through counseling women on other options, eductating about abstinence, etc.

I think of this myself EVERY SINGLE DAY when I see those self-righteous pricks standing in mournful judgement outside of a local clinic I pass on my way to work. It seems to me that, if a person were really interested in saving embryos and fetuses, there might be better ways to spend their free time. I'm sure there are a lot of agencies, such as Pl@nned P@renthood, who counsel and educate women on a variety of reproductive choices that would appreciate a donation of time and/or money, as would agencies who provide services to help support pregnant women who want to keep their babies, and those who assist and support women through the process of carrying the baby to term and putting it up for adoption.

Personally, I suspect most abortion protesters are less interested in saving "babies" than they are in feeling righteous for making their moral stand. There seems to be little compassion amongst the right-to-life crowd... more of a gleeful "you made your bed now lie in it" mentality towards those abominable sinners who were too weak and licentuous to keep their legs closed and now need to reap their due penalty either by raising a child regardless of the personal hardship it creates, or by giving it away to strangers (obviously the preferred choice, as obviously it would be a better world if children were not raised by whores.)

In right-to-lifer�s minds there are no gray areas where rigid moral code meets the realities of human nature, no compassion for the ruined lives of the unwilling parents-to-be, and certainly no points given in Heaven for saving a few fetuses by offering practical solutions. The only option is strict adherence to the grand ideal that abortion is Wrong, and what is Right is having the correct moral position and attempting to coerce others to your point of view, regardless of how ineffective your methods. Even if no one is convinced and abortions go merrily on being performed in the meantime, at least your snowy white HEART is in the right place,and it matters not that your head is rammed firmly up your ass. Better that than to pull it out, take a good look at reality, and decide that it might be a good idea to try and help educate some sinful tramp about effective birth control. Why, that would be like admitting you approved of pre-marital sex, and that would be WAY worse for your personal morality than to let the tramp get pregnant and have an abortion. Though I guess that might sound like the more moral choice, if part 2 of the plan is to stand outside the clinic every morning from 7 to 9 to stop the abortion by holding up a hand-lettered cardboard sign while shooting Magic Disapproval Rays at the clinic with your eyes.

There used to be a right-to-life commercial on TV that irritated me to no end. A curly-haired blonde cherub in ruffled pinafore runs smiling in slow motion across the gleaming hardwood floors of a spacious, sunlight home, and out onto a storybook porch of the kind where good, upper-middle class people sit and drink lemonade and eat homemade cookies and watch the sunset over their wholesome white-bread neighborhood from the comfort of their antique rocking chairs, and beam warm, cozy waves of parental love and approval at their adorable adopted children and the golden retriever.

Then a Demi-Moore-Keds-wearing-smug-Yuppie voice purrs the slogan: "Life... What a Beautiful Choice."

Please. How many unwanted pregnancies and subsequent abortions are there amongst people with big, expensive homes? Not all that many, I'll wager. What the commercial is really saying is, how rude and selfish of you to abort that perfectly good fetus when there are rich white barren Americans who would pay good money to adopt it.

I don�t think abortion is a wonderful thing. The idea of it makes me sad� but then again, I�m the type of person who shudders to think how my life would have been vastly different if I�d have given a blowjob on a certain long-ago (probably drunken) February night, and wonders how many other life-altering blow-jobs I may given? (But then I do realize that if you start thinking of every sex act as a potential child, pretty soon you�re in Monty Python territory where Every Sperm is Sacred, and what a horrible thought that out of all the bazillions of sperms I�ve coaxed out of men�s penises over the years, it�s entirely possible that at some point I spat the next Einstein or Ghandi into an ashtray on the nightstand. But then again, maybe the conception of the Antichrist was narrowly averted the time that Dick pulled out and accidentally squirted his semen into my eye, so maybe it all evens out. One never knows.)

But I digress. Bad.

As I was saying, I don�t think abortion is wonderful, and if I ever had to make that choice it would be a difficult one. But I believe that it is only a flight of fancy that allows someone to imagine a clump of cells to be a thinking, feeling person, crying out to live. There is a school of thought that all human life is sacred, but personally, I tend to be more respectful of consciousness and suffering than just �life� per se. While I personally am uncomfortable with late-term abortions, it does not move me to compassion to think of the death of an embryo who is not even aware of its own existence. It never had any hopes or dreams and it has no �desire� to be born and live. Its existence and growth is a simple biological process. I will be the first to admit I can�t defend this view or prove it, but neither can anyone who says that life begins at conception. And if it can�t be proved, then why not leave the choice of whether to abort up to the conscience of the living, feeling, thinking individual whose life would be most profoundly affected by an unplanned pregnancy? If there is a moral absolute of the universe regarding abortion and it turns out that that person chose wrongly, I think God or karma or whatever is capable of handling the situation without human intervention. Who died and made you God�s Little Hammer of Judgement? Never mind� don�t answer that.

Anyway, that little rant aside, I thought Kerry did a good job of explaining his views on abortion without too much fence-straddling. Feeling the way I do about the subject, I can believe that his stance is real and heartfelt and not simply an attempt to play both sides of the issue. I liked that he didn�t babble and obfuscate his opinion like I�ve seen happen more than a few times on various subjects in the debates. (Yeah, I�m looking at Edwards too.) Bush I don�t think has to obfuscate� I think he really doesn�t KNOW what he thinks. Except that he wants to win the war on Tara, because Dred Scott might be thinking about nucular weapons. Or something like that.

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Crappy job crap, weird neighbor, and someone whose baby I apparently want to have - 2006-05-08
Live from the dump - 2006-04-09
Kind of like a muzzle for your brain - 2006-03-29
...and then she fell ass-first into my cereal bowl - 2006-03-28
Playing catch-up - 2006-03-27

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