Effects of Abortion

"Julie" speaks truth ("Abortion Should be a Personal Choice", 22 November) when she says "choosing to abort a child is a deeply difficult psychological choice that haunts women for the rest of their lives". In fact, research shows that many women (64% in one study) feel pressured into abortion. Problems multiply after the procedure. Studies find higher rates of suicide among post-abortion women (600% higher in two studies from Finland), higher probabilities of depression (65% in one American study), and greatly elevated rates of drug and alcohol abuse (500% higher in one study). Physical problems, including sterility and perforated uteruses, also come along with abortion. Indeed, abortion is hard on women. Julie is right that abortion can bring a "personal hell", physically and psychologically and spiritually.

Julie says that she would never have an abortion herself. That is good. She continues: "but my choice should not be inflicted on others." If you have the 22 November copy of the Times nearby, look at the photo in the centre of Julie's letter. It has a photograph of "A foetus sucking his/her thumb in the womb". The choice of abortion is always "inflicted on others"-namely, the child growing in her mother's womb. Abortion aims to kill that child. Abortion is an extreme form of inflicting a choice on others.

Julie says "there are millions of unwanted children who grow up to be unfeeling adults as they have never been cared for-no one loved them." In fact, the United States has a list one million couples long of husbands and wives who want to adopt a child. Approximately one million children get aborted in that country each year. I suspect that most, if not all, unplanned pregnancies could be absorbed by loving couples eager for a child. There are unplanned pregnancies; there are no unwanted children.

Let us spare women and children the trauma and death of abortion. Let us give women life-affirming support in crisis pregnancies. No to abortion; yes to life.

Rudy Poglitsh via e-mail

Here is some stuff we worked up but did not put in the letter to the Times.
Julie makes some interesting points, but I am not sure how valid some of them are.  For example she says, "I believe in a woman's right to choose what happens to her own body and no one should interfere with that right."  Now that seems to make a lot of sense until you think about other situations.  What about if you have a woman with two healthy kidneys.  For some reason she decides that she wants to cut out one of them and throw it into the garbage can.  Is that a "right" that everyone would acknowledge?  For her to excercise that right, can she force a doctor to do an unnecessary operation to remove that kidney?  What about the doctor's right to only do things that help her patients?  If someone wants to kill themself we don't say, "Oh, they have a right to choose what happens to their own body."  We restrain them and keep them from harming themselves.

Julie also says that a woman should have a right to an abortion but "she should also be ready to take on the personal hell that abortion can bring.  The karma associated with taking another life is a massive burden."  I appreciate that Julie acknowledges that abortion is the taking of another's life, but I don't see how that should make it legal.  On page 7 of the same paper (22 November, Thursday) a judge sentenced a man to jail for 35 years for killing one woman and raping another.  If we applied the same idea that Julie is advocating, we would have to say that murder and rape will bring you personal hell and bad karma, but we should not restrict someone else from doing them.  We should make it legal, but just encourage people to know that they will suffer a personal hell if they choose to excercise their right to murder or rape someone else.

Julie is afraid that an unplanned child will become an unloved child who will become a menace to society.  But abortion contributes to unloved children.  Many women who have had abortions suffered difficulties bonding with the children that they later have.  The guilt and personal hell that Julie refers to affects not just the woman, but all of her children.  A good friend of mine said that he felt his own life was so arbitrary because he knew that his mother had aborted a sibling.  "It could have been me."  This did not contribute to him growing up feeling loved or safe.

If someone wants to harm themselves and another person, the loving thing to do is to prevent the harm. 

Killing for Financial Convenience

Zombodze Emuva MP Johannes Ndlangamandla gave his full-throated support for legalizing abortion in Thursday's issue of the Times. He said "I'm ready to argue my point and see what others say." Fair enough.

First off, abortion hurts women. Reams of evidence attest to this fact. Babe Ndlangamandla should visit www.afterabortion.org and read what he finds there. Women suffer physical, mental, social, and spiritual harm from abortion.

Second, human life begins at conception, when egg meets sperm. That is a scientific fact. Abortion, therefore, kills a human being. Legalized abortion means a nation has decided it is ok to kill some individuals because they are unwanted. In Babe Ndlangamandla's case, he suggests legalizing the killing of unwanted preborn children because they become OVCs and then financial burdens. This is killing for money, which is the job of an assassin. Surely it is unSwazi to behave as an assassin, to kill for money.

The answer is support for women with unintended pregnancies, and not subjecting them to the trauma of abortion in order to kill children. May Swaziland continue to display the best of African hospitality and generosity by supporting women and children through unplanned pregnancies. May the kingdom choose life instead of death. No to abortion, yes to life.

Rudy Poglitsh
via email
more letters at www.letterstotheTOS.blogspot.com

Abortion: A War on Women

In 2003 Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, late founder of the Institute of Women's Studies at Emory University (USA), wrote an article entitled "Abortion: A War on Women". How could she claim that abortion  is actually an attack on women when its supporters frequently present it as a human right and something necessary to set women on equal footing with men.   Highlights from her article follow:
"We need not linger over the evidence of many women dead from hasty, botched, or unsanitary abortions, although we know there are enough to make one cry."

"We do...have studies that point to a link between abortion and breast cancer. The precise nature of the link still invokes heated debate, but is becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss its existence out of hand."

"The devastating emotional consequences of abortion are beginning to be even more widely documented. Women who have had abortions are at high risk for serious and lasting depression, and they are more likely than women who have not had abortions to suffer drug or alcohol addiction or even to commit suicide."

"Not all women can bear children, and not all women wish to do so, but the potential to do so lies at the core of being a woman. By trivializing and even denigrating women's ability to bear children, legalized abortion has stripped women of their dignity as women; it has shredded the primary tie among women of different classes, races, ethnicities, and national origins; it has seriously diminished women's prospects for a lasting marriage; and it has exposed them to unprecedented levels of sexual exploitation. Welcome to the brave new world of freedom, ladies-and gentlemen."

"Legalized abortion begins as a war against women, whom it tells that in order to be worthy, they must become like men.  Perhaps worse, in severing the binding tie between women and the children they conceive, legalized abortion dismisses women from the company of responsible persons who are capable of sacrificing a piece of their freedom for the good of others-especially the children who embody our future."

On a positive note, Fox-Genovese says: "we must first acknowledge the importance and justice of women's participation at all levels in the worlds of work, politics, and the arts. We do not aspire to return women to subservient domesticity-much less deprive the world of their considerable talents...Our challenge is to turn the clock forward by offering women new visions that do not pit their lives against the lives of their children in a Darwinian struggle for survival."

She concludes: "The life issues, which begin with abortion, are emerging as the most important issues of our time, and women are their front-line custodians. It remains to be seen whether we will rise to the challenge."

May Swazi women and men, and all people of goodwill, protect women from the assault of abortion. No to abortion; yes to life.

Obama's Attack Ads

In the past two weeks the Times of Swaziland has reported on Obama's charges that Mitt Romney is a "corporate raider" and will be "outsourcer in chief" if he gets elected. "I think voters entirely, legitimately want to know what exactly is his business experience" Obama was reported as saying in the 17 July Times of Swaziland. Team Obama has continually insinuated, and reports in the international news section of the Times of Swaziland have aided and abetted, allegations that Romney violated business law and shipped American jobs to China and Mexico.

Independent research website factcheck.org finds Team Obama's charges misleading, stating "after reviewing numerous corporate filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, contemporary news accounts, company histories and press releases, and the evidence offered by both the Obama and Romney campaigns, we found no evidence to support the claim that Romney — while he was still running Bain Capital — shipped American jobs overseas." In another place, Factcheck says "in this particular case the Obama campaign failed to support its claim that Romney personally 'shipped jobs to Mexico and China.'” Factcheck quotes a former president of one of Bain's companies saying: "By the time Romney left Bain, Stream’s call centers had grown from just a few hundred people in Massachusetts to approximately 5,000 employees across the United States. Stream was not ‘shipping jobs overseas,’ but creating thousands of jobs for American workers in places like Massachusetts, Oregon, Tennessee, and Texas." Team Obama also insinuates Romney continued to direct Bain operations (and thus carried out offshoring activities) after he left the company in 1999 to direct the Salt Lake City winter Olympics. From the Factcheck report: "Late on July 1, the Obama campaign issued a formal objection to this article, claiming that Romney remained at least a 'part time' manager of Bain after February 1999. We strongly disagree. Both Romney and Bain have stated repeatedly that Romney 'has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way' since leaving to head the Olympics. Romney stated that twice on official federal disclosure documents, where a falsehood could draw a federal felony charge and possible fines and prison time if convicted. A contemporary news account describes Romney as working 16-hour days on the Olympics." Steve Pagliuca, a partner at Bain, says “Due to the sudden nature of Mr. Romney’s departure (to lead the Salt Lake City Olympics), he remained the sole stockholder for a time while formal ownership was being documented and transferred to the group of partners who took over management of the firm in 1999. Accordingly, Mr. Romney was reported in various capacities on SEC filings during this period.” Read the entire report at http://factcheck.org/2012/06/obamas-outsourcer-overreach/, under the title "Obama’s ‘Outsourcer’ Overreach".

What happened to the Barack Obama who promised "hope and change", who could "bring people together", who said "yes we can", who invoked "one United States of America"; a politician who, in the words of one reporter, was treated in some circles as "Obamessiah"? It looks like that was election-season sloganeering, and its now back to partisan politics as usual.  Why would Obama descend to mounting viciously unfair attacks on his opponent? Consider this: after 3 1/2 years as president, and overseeing the growth of American national debt to over $15 trillion ($15, 000,000,000,000), American workers are no better off now than when Obama took power in 2008. Having proven himself  incapable of re-energizing the economy, Team Obama has resorted to, as the Times called it on 17 July, "character assassination". After all, calling someone a "corporate raider", "outsourcer pioneer", or suggesting Romney has skeletons in his SEC closet is simply that-namecalling. Romney's campaign is correct to state that such behaviour is "beneath the dignity of the presidency."

Obama's character assassination campaign, though reproachable, makes political sense. After all, Obama has enjoyed a free hand with American taxpayer money, yet has not generated any sort of economic comeback for the American worker. Romney, on the other hand, has extensive business experience and numerous business successes. With polls consistently indicating Americans' biggest concern is the economy, put yourself in Obama's shoes: you'd also want to deflect attention from your own spectacular failures on the most important issue, and paint your opponent as a greedy, shady, job-destroying villain. Barack Obama's extraordinary political career proves he's very good at getting elected, but his time in the White House has shown him atrociously bad at living out the unifying and noble ideals that he presented to the American public during the previous election.

It is time for hope, change, and honesty in the White House. Romney for USA president, November 2012.

Rudy Poglitsh
rpoglitsh@live.com
more letters at http://letterstotheTOS.blogspot.com

Wait for the Best

Recently my wife and I were discussing marriage, and we struck upon this idea: the best way to defeat your enemy is to convince him to not even fight. What does this realization have to do with marriage? It is this: modern western culture tells young people that no one can wait until marriage for sex, so you might as well try it now. An additional, quieter message is that marriage isn't that great, and so sex before marriage is as good as it will get.

These two messages are complete lies. Tragically, these lies discourage young people from embarking on the struggle for sexual purity and the quest for a truly good spouse.

Fortunately, with effort and self control, anyone can save sex for marriage. And though there are lots of weak and unhappy marriages, there are lots of happy and healthy ones, too. A successful and fulfilling marriage is possible. I know this from my own marriage, and from the marriages of many of my friends.

Young men and women CAN be married happily ever after. Young people, ask God for the courage to save sex for marriage, and for direction to a good spouse. Read the Bible, especially the whole of Ephesians chapter 5, and read the book Love and Marriage: Questions Young People Ask by Bruce and Carol Britten, available in Christian bookstores. This book discusses why and how to stay sexually pure and how to prepare for and build a great marriage.

Young people: do not believe the lies that sex can't wait, and that marriage isn't that great. Don't allow yourself to be defeated before the battle begins.  Make the effort to stay sexually pure, and to find that good spouse and build a great marriage. In doing so you will benefit yourself, your spouse, your children, and the entire nation.

Rudy Poglitsh

Safe, Legal, and Rare?

Former USA President Bill Clinton used this phrase to express his abortion position. He stated that he wished abortion to be safe for the women, legal, and to take place only very rarely.

Abortion is still legal in the United States, and 1,200,000 abortions took place in 2008. Legal yes, rare...no. How about safe for women?

Dr. Warren Hern, a leading American abortion doctor, told the 18th Annual Meeting of the National Abortion Federation: "I have to say this: There's a lot of crummy medicine being practiced out there in providing abortion services, and I think that some of the stuff I see coming across my desk is very upsetting...We have to do this right or we shouldn't do it."

The state of New York (USA) legalized abortion in 1970. Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a medical doctor instrumental in legalizing abortion in the state, was challenged with preparing a recently-opened abortion clinic for inspection. The administrator of the clinic told him that the doctors there were "atrocious...sadists, drunks, incompetents, sex maniacs, thieves, butchers, and lunatics...half of them don't even wash their hands anymore before doing an abortion...they refuse to use masks or caps, and their mustaches are dragging into the suction machines." Nathanson then toured the clinic and, according to the book Lime 5, found it "chaotic, crowded, inadequately lighted, ill-equipped, poorly run, poorly staffed, dirty, and operating with no back-up emergency hospital". Nathanson did manage to improve standards at the clinic in time for the inspection. After one incident-free abortion performed for the state inspector, the clinic received approval. Unfortunately, the next woman who underwent an abortion at the clinic suffered a perforated uterus and was rushed to a local emergency room. Nathanson himself grew increasingly disillusioned with abortion and became a pro-life advocate.

The problems at the clinic Nathanson so briefly improved continued. In 1988 a 19-year-old woman died after an abortion at the clinic. That same year health department inspections concluded the clinic regularly put its patients at "continuing and serious risk" by using "procedures and equipment that were grossly irresponsible and in contravention of accepted medical practice". The 1988 inspection listed over a dozen other deficiencies at the clinic, including expired emergency medicines, a lack of hand-washing sinks in the examination room, and no staff qualified to give anaesthesia.

Such is the state of abortion in the most medically-advanced nation in the world. It is hard to imagine that health care systems in developing nations like Swaziland would provide vastly better abortion care.

Instead, let us support mothers and children in life-giving ways during pregnancy, childbirth, and beyond. Let us work for healthy moms and children. No to abortion, yes to life.

Rudy Poglitsh
rpoglitsh@live.com
more letters at http://letterstotheTOS.blogspot.com

Early Feminist Voices

In accord with their human dignity, many individuals and groups see the need for Swazi women to participate in civic life alongside men. American women were not allowed to vote (a right sometimes called "suffrage") until 1920. A number of American women led the charge to give women the vote. What did these early champions of womens' rights have to say about abortion?

Susan B. Anthony, 1820-1906, and president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and driving force of the women's suffrage movement-"Guilty? Yes. No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; But oh, thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to her crime!"-in Anthony's newspaper The Revolution

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who worked with Susan B. Anthony for 50 years to get women the vote: regarding prostitution and the "murder of children either before or after birth": "For a quarter of a century sober, thinking women have warned this nation of these thick coming dangers, and pointed to the only remedy, the education and enfranchisement of woman...We believe the cause of all these abuses lies in the degradation of women." in The Revolution, 5 February 1868

Victoria Woodhull, first female presidential candidate, 1870: "The rights of children as individuals begin while they yet remain the foetus."

Last off from Susan B. Anthony: "All the articles on this subject that I have read have been from men. They denounce women as alone guilty, and never include man in any plans for the remedy." -July 8, 1869

May all of us-both men and women-stand with these forward-thinking women in their defense of both women and children. No to abortion; yes to love and life.

read more at www.feministsforlife.org/history/foremoth.htm

Rudy Poglitsh
rpoglitsh@live.com
more letters at http://letterstotheTOS.blogspot.com