First of all, since this is a new blog, I’ll outline my stance on abortion: I think it should always be a choice; I think it should always be the wrong choice.
Having said that…
What kind of stupidity is this “Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act“? It would “ban abortions performed because of the race or gender of the fetus”.
Now, first of all, how many white women go to an abortion clinic and say, “I don’t want to have a Chinese baby. So best to just kill it.” How many black women go to an abortion clinic and say, “I don’t want to have a black baby. If the baby had been white, I’d have it… but I’m pretty sure this baby is going to be black. So abort! Abort! Abort!”
So, race? Banning abortions based on race? That’s just retarded.
Second, banning abortions based on gender? While there is claimed to be a test that can determine gender at 6 weeks (1-1/2 months) of pregnancy, it is not considered reliable and most people do not find out the gender of a baby until 20 weeks (5 months). Only 1% of abortions happen after 20 weeks, and nearly 100% of those abortions occur due to the fetus not being survivable outside the womb.
So, gender? Highly unlikely… close to 100% unlikely.
And, let me just pass along a bit of information to the law makers that they probably had not considered: If you make abortions based on race or gender illegal (even if such abortions actually existed in the real world — which they don’t) all a woman has to do is NOT TELL the abortion clinic that she is having an abortion because of the baby’s race or gender, and nobody will ever know.
I swear to God, anti-choice politicians really can be so dumb sometimes.
My grandmother, Dorothea, died at the age of 102 today. She leaves behind her 2 children, my father and aunt, 5 grandchildren, and 9 great-grandchildren.
Dorothea, or as she was known, Grammy, really was not “with us” in any manner for the last 4 or so years, and the closing of this final chapter of Grammy’s long and interesting life is not so much a sad reminder of what has been lost, but an acknowledgment that all good things must come to an end, leaving us with nostalgic memories of a stoic lady who was unmatched in the kitchen, a genius at the stock market, a survivor of breast cancer, and blessed with possession of a wry wit and profound wisdom that served her well until her long, terminal silence set in.
But beneath that 4-year silence, I wonder if part of Grammy was still with us: She passed her 102nd birthday just last week, and almost as if on cue immediately started her final decline that ended today, on my father’s birthday, as if she were letting us all know that her passing was not something to mourn, but to instead acknowledge with a smile of recognition and satisfaction at the gift of life that Grammy lived so well and passed on to all of us through her children.