I lost a friend tonight.
She’s a devout Catholic, and I normally respect that – but she’s so rigid in her religious beliefs and so unwilling to consider any other point of view that I finally lost my last shreds of patience. I admit I let loose. I was well and truly sick of tiptoeing around what I believe in order to protect her feelings.
The subject at hand: abortion. She posted a link to an article that cited all the reasons abortions could and should happen. Then the author blithely chose to ignore them and go on with his diatribe on why the abortion issue is inarguably wrong – to wit: because nobody should do it because God says so. (Paraphrased, but not by much.) He didn’t elaborate on which God, but I gathered it was the Christian one.
It’s her daily routine to post that kind of crap, posing as an absolute.
Tonight I asked her, in essence: what about the realities of life? What about the parent facing a child who’s impossibly deformed and will never live outside of misery? The family for whom medical care isn’t even a remote possibility? The snowballing criminalization of poverty? The victims of rape/incest, some too young for words? The women who will die because they’re denied their only medical hope of survival, such as with ectopic pregnancies?
In short, I called her on the blindfold she ties over her eyes every day, knowingly and willingly.
For the record, I don’t love the idea of abortion either; but nothing is black-and-white. For a God who loves us, He/She allows a whole lot of shitty stuff to happen. He/She also apparently requires followers to exacerbate the shittiness at every turn.
When the long-term acquaintance let me know she was un-friending me, it stung for a second – we’ve known each other for 20-some years. I got over it quickly because I realized when religion blinds you beyond all empathy, beyond all humanity, you’re a part of the problem. And I don’t need any more problems. I’ve got plenty already.
The last straw for me was the legal shitshow in Texas, though other states are in the running. I’m appalled by ghastly measures being fired through state capitols like cannonballs through soft butter. Texas takes the cake, with its determination to enact a death penalty for women already facing impossible choices. This is pro-LIFE?
Not according to my dictionary.
The “Heartbeat Law” isn’t much better. If someone’s brain-dead but their heart is still beating, they’re not alive and we acknowledge that. (At least for now. I wouldn’t put it past this bunch to also make it murder to pull the plug even when it’s the obvious and only solution. Better for hospitals to further bankrupt desperate families.)
We need to stop the pretense that wars are about human rights. Washington points a finger at the Islamic extremists while it commits the same or worse crimes against our citizens. And don’t get me started on the concentration camps at the southern border. Hint: Just because they don’t pass out yellow stars to the prisoners doesn’t change intent.
We need to stop using the term pro-life when it refers to people who encourage shooting immigrants and minorities, rip apart social safety nets, and actively seek to curtail or end women’s rights. I can’t think of any politically-correct term for the element. Then again, there’s nothing correct about them. You can call them KKK, or bigots, or any possible number of euphemisms. I’m out of patience tonight, so I’m just calling ’em like I see em: Nazi bastards.
Those red MAGA hats are the new brown shirts, and by kowtowing to entrenched religious prejudices they’re able to recruit far larger numbers than if they’d stuck with just their core Alt Right message. I’m sorry your friend has fallen prey to their inflexible dogma and superstitions.
So am I. A part of me is relieved not to see the constant stream of vile and hateful content; however, I also know pulling the proverbial shades isn’t the answer. You can’t fight it if you don’t know what they’re doing 🙁
Alas it seems there is no conversation possible with the brainwashed “pro life” types. I have been in heated battle with them since the late 70s and even with real life experience working in a facility nothing I say will change their litany. I sincerely hope the womb nazis are voted out asap, women’s lives depend on it.
I know, and the womb Nazis are only the tip of the iceberg. These people are heinous.
I couldn’t have written my viewpoint on this subject better than you have just done. It just overwhelms me to think that men…and some women…think their way is the only way. I put a comment on a friend’s wall regarding a motto that any woman who has a full term abortion should be forced to have a hysterectomy. I commented that was HARSH and we would need to know the circumstances. No one agreed with me.
I can’t understand why this is divisive in the first place. Don’t want an abortion?
Easy. Don’t have an abortion.
If you choose death in an ectopic pregnancy, more power to you. It doesn’t empower you to legislate my death sentence for choosing another option.
It’s one thing when someone with criminal intent seeks to kill a mother and/or unborn child. But if that person is a man, they’ll likely get a slap on the wrist (if that.) But let a woman try to save her own life, and the state’s out to see that one way or another, she dies.