The only constant is the tasteless tactics of those who insist on limiting the right to choose.
Last week, children from two Roman Catholic day-care centers in the port city of Setúbal were sent home with a most unusual note: a fictional letter from a fetus to the woman who conceived and aborted it.
“Mommy, how were you able to kill me?” the letter read. “How were you able to allow me to be cut up in pieces and thrown into a bucket?”
The Rev. Miguel Alves, the day-care center director who sent the letters, defended his action as perfectly normal, adding, “There’s no reason for indignation.”
No reason for indignation? Ahh, excuse me, but this borders on mind rape. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not aware of huge numbers of women going around saying "I can't wait to get pregnant just so I can have an abortion."
As a man, I will never fully understand the thoughts a woman might experience when making a decision to have an abortion. However, I think I'm safe in assuming the experience is no joyride, and these guilt trips inflicted by suppressive control-freak religious organizations certainly aren't helping anyone.
“This is an important moment for Portugal because it’s a chance to shed the image that we are in the Middle Ages,” said Maria de Belém Roseira, a Socialist deputy and a former health minister. “We had the Inquisition here, and we still have people who want to publicly punish women. That a woman who ends an unwanted pregnancy can be sent to prison is unacceptable and hypocritical.”
Women who have been prosecuted for having abortions have been punished not with prison but with suspended sentences and a fine. But health-care professionals have been punished more severely. In one highly publicized trial that ended in 2002, a hospital nurse spent four years in prison for conducting illegal abortions.
Is this something we can look forward to in the US? It's quite possible. The answer could become much clearer by 2008.
Crossposted at B3
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