Interestingly, I thought the compassionate forumites did bring up issues that others usually do not: AIDS in Africa, eradicating poverty, Darfur. Given the historical connections of religious missions and imperialism, it’s no surprise that mega churches want to help the little brown ones oveseas. Of course, it would be nice if we went international in another way: abortion rights. How many countries in the Americas (to think locally) even have legal abortions? The right wingers have managed to create a fight in the US over something that is guaranteed by Roe v. Wade and, as a result, I wonder if abortion rights has remained largely a domestic debate.

That’s an interesting possibility, although I should say that, having attended Catholic schools growing up for 12 years, and being exposed to tremendous amounts of abstinence education, the practice never really took hold, at least for the people I knew. The religion and the schools could deemphasize contraception all they wanted, but we knew better.

The resistance to contraception is one of the main reasons that I can’t take the pro-life movement seriously. If these people supported policies that were most likely to reduce the number of abortions (whether legal or illegal), I think there would be more common ground to tackle abortion as a social issue, rather than a moral one. Nobody looks forward to getting an abortion.

I’m looking forward to reading Fea’s book. I attended a seminar he gave some years back as a dissertator and it’s a very interesting project. Plus, how often do you get something set in the deepest wilds of early New Jersey? A famous early American historian at an unnamed college in Providence, Rhode Island, once counseled an advisee that no one writing a dissertation set in New Jersey would ever get a job or eat lunch in that profession. Seemingly an exaggeration, I suppose.

My take on the abortion and generation issue is that the pro life movement has been extremely effective in shaping the argument for my generation. We grew up in the 1980s, when anti-abortion rhetoric seemed to be everywhere, but we weren’t around in the 70s when lack of access to abortions was a political issue. So we’ve really only seen one side of the issue, I think.

Maybe I should keep my mouth shut.

http://www.campusprogress.org/fieldreport/2406/complications-at-conception

Of course, the signature-solicitor is lying when she says that this isn’t about Roe v. Wade. But, in my experience, people working to get signatures will say anything to get you to sign. (Many of them are paid by the signature, they’re not even volunteers, so I’m doubtful about her claim that she’s working to avenge her dead friend.)

On a related note, I was accosted outside of King Soopers last week by a woman attempting to get new legislation on the ballot to say that life begins at conception. Her rationale was that her friend was murdered when pregnant and she only “counted” for one life. When I refused on the ground that I was pro-choice, she said that had nothing to do with her mission. Genuine confusion or an attempt to undermine abortion rights, I don’t know, but disturbing nonetheless.