kamut

     Before I disclaim anything else, I thought I’d like to mention that, thanks to Planned Parenthood who e-mail my friend Sam who e-mailed me who e-mailed Dr. Sunwood about an Alaska Legislature hearing concerning use of public funds for access to abortive services, Dr. Sunwood was able to call in to the hearing, for the whole panel and everyone across the state listening to hear, and give them her (and I think our) opinion about the necessary nature of the availability of abortive services to women of all statuses. I am pleased that I can have had a part in the process.

     This is anyone’s cue to give me their opinions about abortion and the meaning of life, et cetera. If you comment on my post, I promise to comment on yours.

     Now, instead of my regularly scheduled program, I thought I’d dispense a brief treatise on abortion, just to get it out of my system for a while. My disclaimer is that my opinions do not have the slightest weight to them because their author doesn’t have a uterus, ovaries, or personal experience of the cultural stresses associated with being “female”. If what I’m saying makes you want to dig me a nice 6-foot hole to . . . chill in . . .  feel free to inform me that my opinions are backwards and hurtful and should stop at the source.

     From what I hear, or often decide not to hear for extended periods of time, abortion is fought with arguments in favor of saving precious human lives, often supported with evidence about the appearance of brain waves, heart beats, and other movements of a fetus/zygote at very early stages in the first trimester. I am perhaps stuck in a habit of not researching curios, but to my understanding, there is no internationally recognized definition for life, as it is commonly referred to (my evidence comes from my high school AP Biology class). This brings me into another point of contention with the right-to-life hypothesis: if none of us can unequivocally claim that we are alive, and if it is reasonably easy to regard a developing blastocyst with a fair amount of indifference, why do people care so much? What about rape-zygotes whose mother would have no economic facilities for child-rearing? What about zygotes whose clinically-tested reputations for being stillbirths precede them? What about the fact that there are more than 7 billion humans are already trying to use 1.5 times the biocapacity of this planet? This last bit finally releases my pent-up inability to leave the word “precious” alone, in context of human lives. I don’t mean, of course, that murder is a moral means of human population control: rather, I see not being allowed access to an abortive procedure as being less respectful to the planet than allowing the zygote of a rapist and an impoverished woman to remain unborn.

     I think that may actually be all I wanted to say about that. Again, if you have time, let me know if I’ve been offensive. And one more thing, in the entropic style, is the fact/well-stated opinion from one of the articles in the “Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions” textbook that virginity, that icon on our sexually indeterminate and tumultuous culture, similarly has no concrete social definition. Though I was smart enough to forget my book somewhere out of reach, I seem to remember some difficulties with pinning virginity down including whether penetration is a requisite, or if terms are to be taken from pornography where soft-core acts wouldn’t constitute a “breach” of virginity. There is also the revealing fact that “men” are never choked with the standards of virginity as their counterparts are.

     Stay safe everyfolks.