Apparently the only debate surrouding abortion these days is that it costs too much.
"Vera Drake," Mike Leigh's tough tale of a working-class mother who is caught performing illegal abortions in 1950s England, scooped up the prizes at the Venice Film Festival Saturday, including the coveted Golden Lion.No word yet on whether babies prefer "discreet and legal" or "back-street".Its star, acclaimed British stage and film actress Imelda Staunton, also won the best actress award for her portrayal of a back-street abortionist who acts not for financial gain but out of concern for girls and women in trouble. ...
The film raises difficult questions about abortion in a world where the wealthy have access to discreet and legal abortions and the poor throw themselves on the mercy of practitioners like Drake.
"The audience must walk away with a debate and struggle with it. These things are not black and white," Leigh said.
No word from the babies, or from their mothers, one might add....
Women deserve better than abortion, whether it is "back street butchers" or high priced doctors, or the neighborhood Planned Parenthood. Note that Planned Parenthood itself says that 84% of women have abortions ONLY because they feel that they have no other choice. Other (pro-life) organizations place this higher. As a feminist, I ask, is it more empowering to continue to provide this heart wrenching "choice," or to address the root causes that drive women to abortion?
Michelle: Are you refering to options such as adoption, and prevention by way of abstinence?
m: Yeah, although the mothers make the decisions, abortion is a sad indictment of our whole society and our callous attitude towards the weak, the needy, and the desperate.
MW: "our callous attitude towards the weak, the needy, and the desperate."
Callous in the sense that conservatives don't want any public dollars going into government programs that help the weak, needy, and desperate.
Private groups aren't callous at all.
Mark: Who said anything about money? There's much more to compassion than mere money. Of the people who cherish abortion, the vast majority do so because it seems like such an easy way to make a problem go away. That has nothing to do with money.
Mark: I can't speak for political parties, but as for myself, it's not good government programs that I don't want money going into. It's killing babies that I don't want to finance.
Besides, most abortions aren't performed on weak, needy, and desparate women- they're performed on women who didn't plan for a baby, want the easy way out, and quite strongly push for their "right" to kill their unborn children. What's weak and needy about that? (although I'll grant you the "desparate" factor)
JP: "Besides, most abortions aren't performed on weak, needy, and desparate women"
The "weak, needy, and desperate" thing wasn't a reference to the particular women who have abortions, it was more of a general attitude.
MW: See above.
ah. My confusion.
I think Mark is falling into the fallacy that because conservatives don't want the government distributing charity money, they don't want it distributed at all. Most conservatives I know donate heavily to private charity, and believe that charitable contributions should be distributed by individuals, not government.