Religious Freedom and Baby Killing

Came across a story today in the Washington Post--a sad tale of a woman with a highly treatable form of leukemia refusing transfusions and dying, taking her almost 8 months-gestation fetus with her. The reason?

Can you guess?

That's right--Jehovah's Witness.

She was offered the opportunity to save this fetus via c-section, which would have made chemo possible for her.  For pregnant women who follow this course of treatment, there is an 83% remission rate.

She refused.  Because c-sections for women in her position also necessitate blood transfusions.

Think on this.  This woman was so deluded, so completely enthralled by mythology that she allowed herself and her child to die.  Her whole hoped-for future gone because she couldn't see past the ridiculous fairy tale she'd been hammered down with.

That's "freedom of religion" for you.  But the end result?

Dead baby-to-be.

Where is the screaming?  This happened in 2009, but it's just now getting attention.  Where is the outrage?  Where is the freaky "right-to-life" crowd?  I'll tell you where they are--they're hiding, because they have no answer here.  Because they believe their right to religious freedom entitles them to crawl into people's lives, their faces, and bully, insult, and threaten.  If they challenge HER religious right to kill that baby, they also challenge their own religious right to be overbearing douchebags who do all they can to legislate their ridiculous mythology.

And while we're at it, where is the "sentence the junkie whore to life in prison because she used drugs while pregnant" crowd?  Often the same crowd, yes, but sometimes not.  Where are they?  The folks so quick to hate and condemn and threaten women in the throes of addiction?  Why aren't they shouting?  I see a whole bunch of "Oh, what a sad thing" and "Gosh, what a terrible situation for her to be trapped in."  But I'm seeing a serious dearth of "crazy, stupid woman killed herself and and her baby" shouting.

So is it about LIFE, or is it about people toeing a particular line, regardless of whether or not that fetal form is preserved and brought to fruition?   My money is on the latter.  Because if "a life is a life," that applies to ALL, even the convicted killers, even the rapists, even the drug dealers, and even the hungry children of the aforementioned "junkie whores".

And yes--even the fetuses at eight months gestation who could easily have survived a c-section, had the woman carrying it not been a religious nutbag.

And before anyone gets wadded up, I am absolutely pro-choice.  My issue here is the sick hold religion has on people and the hypocritical way the "lifer" crowd is looking the other way rather than using their formidable collective whinging to decry the "murder" of this "baby" by its mother.

Gay Baby Feet Abortion . . . AND ENGLAND!

So, this garbage came across my Facebook feed today, drew from me an immediate and strong response.

The garbage:

"If most of my Facebook friends are going to support people who are gay by posting the red equal sign, I am going to post two feet, the feet represent the millions who never get to breathe the air of this world, who never feel love let alone get married, those who never have the chance to have children or go to school or do anything many gays are afforded the privilege to do. They are never given this chance because a human decides that their life is unimportant because of a defect or being an inopportune time for the person who conceived them. This is for the millions of children aborted yearly. Talk about rights being denied."

And my Response:

No need to consider the rights of women who are told that they must bear children against their will, their bodies used and their lives torn to bits because a bunch of people seem to think it's their right to impose their faith on others, though.  Right? Even if we accept that a fetus is "a human life" (and I don't--it's a human life like an acorn is an oak tree or an egg is a chicken), since when do we force one human being to support another human being, against their will, using their own body? What next? Blood "donation" squads grabbing you off the street and forcing you to give blood because someone needs it? How about organs ala Monty Python? Seriously, you don't need that WHOLE liver, you don't need BOTH kidneys, so FORK OVER because someone else NEEDS it to survive! What, that's not okay? That's wrong? The government shouldn't be allowed to require you to use your body against your will to sustain someone else? Hmmm. Maybe you're not so "pro-life" after all. Maybe you're just "pro-fetus." Or, taken at its most basic, most obvious, maybe you're just "anti-woman." Or "pro-slavery."

Okay, the crappy "gays have a lot more rights than ABORTED FETUSES" stuff aside (I know, it's hard to push aside, practically need a bulldozer it's such a weighty pile of manure), and the sickening "I'm going to hop on this bandwagon both to push my agenda AND to lessen the impact of the original movement" thing notwithstanding, what the hell, you know?  I seriously question the stability and psychological wellness of people who spend their days crying over aborted embryos and fetuses when there are real, live PEOPLE all around us who are suffering.  Who need our help.  There are tens of thousands of REAL children in our foster care system who will never know a loving family.  And you want to boob about the imaginary lives non-people might have had, had they actually developed normally in the womb and become humans? 

You need to grow up.  I mean, I support your right to FEEL that way, but your right to enforce your religion or wonky idea of what is and isn't a "person" ends when it forces women to carry unwanted pregnancies.  And shut the heck up with that idiotic "if you want to play, you have to pay/if you didn't want to get pregnant, you shouldn't have had sex" garbage!  One, that is totally woman-hating--proposing that women who are sexually active somehow "deserve" the punishment of carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term.  Two, that's like telling your wife that, if she hadn't wanted her daughter to die in a car accident, she shouldn't have bought a car.  Or telling your neighbor, "Hey, if you didn't want that lightning bolt to blast apart your home, you shouldn't have built a house."  It's disingenuous vomit, and you know it.  

And speaking of vomit?  "What if Einstein's mother had gotten an abortion?"  Goodness.  And what if Hitler's mother had gotten an abortion?  What if a runaway milk cart had taken out Abraham Lincoln or a shark had meandered miles upstream to take a chunk out of Mark Twain?  What if, what if, what if?  It's a stupid question, and it doesn't mean anything.  

Sorry, sidetracked a little there.  Fact is, I support your right to FEEL however, and also support your right to then LIVE as you BELIEVE, i.e., don't ever terminate a pregnancy.  But that's where it ends.  Just as MY being pro-choice shouldn't result in YOUR being forced to terminate a pregnancy, the reverse is also true--just  because YOU don't think abortion is okay doesn't mean *I* should be forced to carry a pregnancy to term.  

*** A small note for the small number of slow, cowardly folk whose courageous defense of "the unborn" goes exactly so far as leaving anonymous comments on a blog?  ANONYMOUS!  There's not enough laughter in the world, so thank you for bringing some my way.  

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Alright, enough of that.

Our boy's oral surgeon appointment went . . . disconcertingly.  Scarily.  The only spot we've been so worried about?  No change, doctor says he's not worried.  But the new spot near the lower right wisdom tooth?  It's not new--it's on last year's x-rays, too, but it's markedly larger this year.  He wants to take a "watch and wait" approach because, again, it's down near that nerve canal.  There's another spot up near the wisdom tooth in the left maxilla.  It's small.  

What a mess.  Not sure how I feel about waiting another full year before having it checked again.  Seems . . . stupid.

Here are the x-rays for comparison:

Oh, there's also another spot, can't see it well with the scans, between the left mandibular bicuspids.  It's got that "radiolucent with a radiopaque halo" gig going on.  Whatever it is, you can see how the teeth have angled/grown around it.  He says he's not worried.  I'm worried.  I'm thinking I'm worried enough to wait six months, then seek out a second opinion.  

Just to see.

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Since I'm on a roll, let's talk about marriage equality.  Or, rather, let's talk about some of the memes going around promoting marriage equality.  Here's one in particular:

Okay, straight up, flat out--who cares?  I mean, I get the sentiment, but who cares?  Whether you embrace the particular mythology or no, religion has no place in our government.  So who CARES if Jesus or whomever did or didn't wax whatever on whichever subject?  Doesn't matter.  What does matter?

That homosexuals are.  That's really it, the central thing--they ARE.  And therefore, they should be entitled the same rights and opportunities as everyone else.  

And I KNOW that's not in the Bible.

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I saw a really, REALLY horrid wallpaper-carpet combo yesterday--let me go find it!

Ta Daaaaaaa!

Oh, and I nearly forgot--I just wanted to say I LOVE ENGLAND!  I do, you know?  I love England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales.  Just love the living daylights out of them.  And yes, I absolutely recognize the differences, issues, and histories of each.  So, while I love England, I also think maybe she needs a bit of a serious dressing down for being such a bully for so long (good thing the U.S. stepped up to accept the "World Bully" mantle, huh?).  I adore Llewelyn Fawr, Robert the Bruce, and Brian Boru.  Oh, and Simon de Montfort.  That would be Simon de Montfort, the 6th Earl of Leicester and 1st Earl of Chester, not the other Simons de Montfort who came before.  What a guy, huh?  Sure, flawed as all get-out, but what a guy.

Mostly, I'm just pandering here.  It's not that I don't love the "British Isles."  Oh, I do--so much so that we have, more than once, tried to figure out how to move there in the long term.  But I'm writing this for a baser reason--I want more readers from that part of the world.  I would love to make that "leap across the pond."

So, was that butt-kissy enough?  Will you give me a read?  Come on, you know you want to!

Do not reprint without permission. © KAQ