Abortion, your (lack of) choice..

[MajGenl.Meade]

It is now clear to me that you just can't (or indeed refuse to) see the point being made by Scooter, SMF and myself. I'm not going to waste any more time in trying to explain it to you... Feel free to carry on twisting their words.

I’d like to know which words I twisted – was trying to be careful about that.

Oh judgemental on this board; say it isn’t so, Jo! I was actually mirroring Loca’s (?) comment, using the same words, to express an opposite idea. But yes, I do judge that abortion is the killing of a human life. Other people judge that it is not and say so. I respect that they disagree and that they judge me to be wrong on this. What’s the deal about that?

Now how do you get that I’m refusing to see Scooter’s point? To directly contradict you Sean, I understood and agreed with Scooter’s point more than once as exemplified below.

No I could not force my wife to have an abortion. No I could not yank her off the operating table etc.

If you want to say that her decision was to defer to my decision and I made that decision - and thereby it really was "her" decision in the first place I have no objection to you putting it that way.

Obviously I could not physically have an abortion. You are quite right on that score.

I did not understand the Sister to refer to a physical capability and I still find it difficult to believe she intended something so obviously banal.

Until you have walked a mile in someone else's shoes and had to have made that decision, one that in most cases is not made lightly you can stick your comments where the sun don't shine...fuckwit!

I firmly believe that I have “walked a mile in someone else’s shoes and had to have made that decision” - to abort a baby. Which is all I claimed and for which much abuse followed.

A fair judge might ask exactly who it is who can’t (or indeed refuses to) see a point and I don’t mean you, Sean.

Yrs
Meade

[loCAtek]

I really should get back to disagreeing with you Genr'l, but I'd like to add as to why I support your position of marriage giving you the perceptive to have a valid opinion on this. The example was given that my parents had no say in my decisions, I agree with that because that relationship is representative of my past. It is the natural course of things that I (or anyone) grow out from that relationship, and become independent of it.
A marriage is a relationship course in the other direction: the future. That should be one that you grow into, and nurture so you aren't independent from it.

All decisions made effect the other; and it would have been a sign of great trouble in the relationship if your wife had decided on something as big as the abortion independently. That certainly could have detrimental to your future together. So, saying the decision is ultimately the woman's, in your case, is not entirely accurate.

[Long Run]

Until you have walked a mile in someone else's shoes and had to have made that decision, one that in most cases is not made lightly you can stick your comments where the sun don't shine

Seems to me this statement can be read both ways that it is being argued. It is not unreasonable that MGM would read it that he has never felt the difficulty of having to make this decision; in fact he went through much pain in arriving at the decision he and his wife agreed upon. In that sense, he walked a mile in the shoes. It is also true that the ultimate and final decision was made by his wife, and to the extent that burden is greater or different than the husband's, he could not share that part of this sad journey.

[Sean]

Thank you Long Run. Insightful and eloquent as always.

Have you considered mediating in the Middle East peace talks? I reckon you'd have them shaking hands and divvying up the land in 10 minutes!

[SisterMaryFellatio]

Meade...Call it banal if you like but I was referring to the fact abortion is physically impossible to you therefore you have no right to judge others or call it wrong!

I am NOT in anyway trivialising how a guy feels when a female has an abortion. Let me make that quite clear!!

However until YOU have signed the paperwork, YOU are in a hospital gown, YOU are lying with your legs in stirrups, YOU are the one having a cold hard speculum stuck into YOUR vagina, YOU are not the one going through it. To hold someone else's hand going through the experience is a damn sight easier than going through the experience. I can say that because I have been on BOTH sides!


YOU have not.

Therefore I stand by my statement...FUCKWIT!

[MajGenl.Meade]

Meade...Call it banal if you like but I was referring to the fact abortion is physically impossible to you therefore you have no right to judge others or call it wrong! I am NOT in anyway trivialising how a guy feels when a female has an abortion. Let me make that quite clear!! However until YOU have signed the paperwork, YOU are in a hospital gown, YOU are lying with your legs in stirrups, YOU are the one having a cold hard speculum stuck into YOUR vagina, YOU are not the one going through it. To hold someone else's hand going through the experience is a damn sight easier than going through the experience. I can say that because I have been on BOTH sides! YOU have not. Therefore I stand by my statement...FUCKWIT!

I understand and agree with most of your points (with the exception of the last word). Thank you for sharing some of your experience; be assured that I (vicariously, if you will forgive the expression) share somewhat in the pain and difficulty you allude to.

Had your original post said anything about rights to judge or to call anything wrong or "going through it", my response would have been entirely different. Instead you judged I was wrong on the grounds that I had never "had to have made that decision” (to abort a child) which is what I disputed. It is now clear that we were talking about two different forms of "decision" - which I long ago conceded to be the case.

I don't doubt for one moment that my wife's experience was of a different and more immediate kind and degree than my own. It was not, she reported, all that physically difficult by which I'm sure she meant that I, could I experience it as a man, would have been calling for general anaesthetic, three weeks recovery time in hospital and morphine all at once.

It is invalid to claim that a person who will not experience a particular thing has no "right" to make a determination as to the rightness or otherwise of that thing. Were it so, the justice system would be negated - although it might bring more clarity to "jury of one's peers".

Neither I nor anyone else are likely to own Crown property in the UK, yet it is perfectly in order to declare the ownership of Crown property to be "wrong" and the subject of legal redress. No man will experience hysterectomy but evidently men as well as women in public service have a right to regulate the who, the how and the where of medical practise. Presumably none of us will hunt whales or club baby seals but apparently there exist "rights" to perform those acts as well as a "right" to protest against them and to pressure governments to restrict such actions.

In conclusion, we probably both do our best not to judge others. Had my daughter had an abortion instead of my granddaughter, it would not have reduced my love and support for her in the least. I judge acts, just as you do, and stand by my statement: abortion is the taking of a human life, which no-one indeed should take lightly.

Sincerely
Meade