Every year or two, I ask readers to submit questions they want me to answer. That time has arrived once again. Any question. Any subject. Please leave your questions in the comment section or send them to me via email. I will try to answer them in the order received.
I look forward to reading and answering your questions.
Revival “I Lie for Jesus” asked:
How much sleep is being lost that the babies are gonna live in Arizona? Baby killers having a fit.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I am not losing any sleep over Arizona banning abortion. Women’s lives and rights are in the balance, so there is no time for me to sleep. Instead, I am doing all I can to legalize abortion, not only in Arizona, but every state in the Union.
A baby is a fetus that can live outside of the womb on its own. When the egg and sperm unite, potential life is formed. This potential life grows from a zygote to a fetus to a baby. I support unrestricted abortion up until viability. Most abortions take place in the first trimester.
It is forced birthers who are having a fit. They know they have overplayed their hand, and now they must contend with pro-reproductive rights initiatives on state ballots. In every state where abortion has been on the ballot, reproductive rights initiatives won. I proudly helped legalize abortion in Ohio last year. If this makes me a “baby killer,” so be it.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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I don’t presume to answer for Bruce- who is quite capable of addressing questions himself, I DO want to add to this Arizona law comment, though,that the citizens of that state won’t permit those strict statutes to become the permanent law of Arizona – they’re going to fight it. Heard this on NPR today.
This whole thing sucks, but yes, forced birthers are now having to deal with the rising tide of backlash that has resulted from their orgasmic fever dream of removing women’s reproductive agency. Even Trump and Sean Hannity admit that full restriction is not a winning strategy, and they care more about winning than about holding fast to 100% abortion bans.
There are a lot of women, and a good number of men, who are incensed that a relatively small number of people are actively working to remove women’s reproductive agency. Decades of women and families have until recently been able to plan out their family sizes. Thos includes contraception for those who want fewer children, fertility medicine for those who want to have children, and pregnancy care for those that have problems during gestation. We took this for granted. This cannot stand, and whenever the question has been put directly to voters, they respond by saying they want to maintain reproductive agency. Even Trump and Sean Hannity openly say draconian bans are a losing strategy. These bans do keep me awake, but from the standpoint of wanting my daughter, nieces,relatives, friends, and strangers to be able to have the same agency that I had throughout almost all my reproductive years – the ability to control my reproduction. The size of my family allowed my husband and me to provide our kids with quality childhood (emotional needs met through quality attention, physical needs met, some wants met, and debt-free college education). Every parent should be able to decide how many children they are able to care for in the best way they see fit. If that’s 1 children or 10 children, that’s their choice that should not be forced on them.
While I’m distressed that the overturn of Roe has and will cause many women to lose agency over their reproductive health care, there is a silver lining that is bright as the sun. Now that the issue is back into democratic discourse, rather than by judicial fiat there will be a net positive. (Though It’ll probably take about 10 years to fully get back to the pre-Roe landscape.) The problem that the Roe decision* is that it allowed social conservative nuts to put their fingerprints over everything–and they did. Social conservatism is a syndrome, and while the most conspicuous symptom is being a pro-life wackadoodle, a lot of other craziness is part of the package. People who were fiscally conservative could safely vote for them to further their fiscal conservative interests and not have to worry about crazy abortion law being the result. As it is the theocrats had 50 years to work on Roe vs. Wade, along with them we’ve ended up with a court that is full of nuts. The result of democratizing abortion will be marginalizing of the religious right.
*In addition the Roe decision left a lot of archaic abortion laws on the books as only a handful of states had liberalized their abortion laws by 1973. Court decisions do not remove laws that are in violation, it merely prevents their enforcement. So now we have this Arizona problem in many states.
Heard on NPR today that pregnant women are being turned away from emergency rooms in states with these draconian laws about reproductive rights. Now I wonder,why would they do this, if it puts the women and fetuses in danger??