Alison Croggon wrote:

>On 25/3/05 1:53 PM, "Kenneth Wolman" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>
>
>>I have to break silence for a moment. I am one of those "sacredness of
>>life" people you seem to find both irrational and inconsistent.
>>
>>
>
>Ken, I read your email and didn't see that you were saying in one breath
>that abortion is wrong because life is sacred, and on the other hand that it
>is perfectly ok to murder doctors who perform abortions. Nor were you
>saying that life in any form, however degraded, is sacred, while on the
>other hand cheering on the deaths of 20,000+ Iraqis and 1500+ Americans or
>signing execution papers or winking at deaths in military custody. So no, I
>don't see that you are in that basket. Your beliefs as you state them are
>quite consistent, and if I differ from you, I can respect what you say and
>why you say it.
>
>
Thank you. I omitted the war stuff and the acts of people who think the
way to stop abortions is to shoot doctors. You nevertherless discerned
it, and I appreciate your acuity more than my irritability.

>I think it's ridiculous to think that abortion is consequenceless, or to be
>squeamish about what it is. Equally, I can't see that a cytoplast or a
>zygote or a first trimester foetus is the same as a new born baby. And I
>really believe that the idea that abortions are taken lightly is erroneous.
>
>
I hope you are right. I remember reading too many stories in the 1970s
about la-di-da attitudes toward abortion that blew up in the faces of
the women or the couples.

>Perhaps it's those who think it's an "easy" choice who suffer. For every
>woman who regrets an abortion, you will find another who is relieved and
>regretless, despite making a choice which involves difficulty or even grief.
>I have made that choice myself, and it was the right choice. I have never
>regretted it. I do not think the State should make that choice for me, or
>for anybody.
>
My apologies to you then. I could not have known this. And again...I
am a broken record...I want the State out of the womb, the bedroom, and
the hospital. When the US Congress stuck its snout into the
Schiavo/Schindler mess, it went so far over its bound as to become
terrifying. People will do what their consciences tell them is right,
what their lives can bear. I stated a principle that I happen to have
come to. For me to judge anyone would make me sound like one of those
assholes like James Dobson or Randall Terry. Thank you, no.

> Again, as I said, I feel so sorry for the family of this
>woman, both the husband and the parents; but it's not something the state
>can decide, and the political grandstanding is obscene.
>
Vide supra. Senators posing for their photographs over a dying woman
and her parents, who clearly are out of their minds with grief. As for
her husband...I do not know.

> I know people close
>to me who have had to make similar decisions about those they love, and have
>chosen to turn off the machine. I hope I never have to make a decision like
>that.
>
I did. In 1992. It was mild. My mother was allowed to die based on a
Do Not Resuscitate letter I wrote for the caregivers in the hospital and
nursing home. I watched the implications of that letter work themselves
out as my mother drew her last breaths. For 8 years I felt the guilt of
that moment, that I was some sort of Orestes pursued by my own private
Furies. I was released when I understood that my gesture was one of
love, of preventing further suffering to a woman who was not coming back
anyway.

> Personally, if my cerebral cortex was reduced to mush, and I had no
>hope of recovery, I would not want to be alive.
>
Which is why anyone who feels like this needs to put it in writing.
Advanced Declarations, they call them in the States. Every hospital has
the blanks.

> Turning off the machine
>would be a higher mercy. Sometimes letting someone go is kinder and larger
>than trying to preserve any scrap of life, no matter what. Denying death
>can be a real denial of life. Those Dutch doctors are both brave and kind.
>They are not punishing those terribly ill babies; they are relieving them
>from existences which can only consist of terrible pain, and against which
>they are defenceless. That too seems to be an act of mercy, if a most
>difficult one.
>
>
Here I may have to drop back a few yards. I know too many doctors. I
suppose we all have. At the worst it is the parents' choice. They will
be the ones with the burden and/or responsibility.

>I was very sorry too to hear of your brother in law. I hope that he
>recovers and that you can work out your relationship.
>
>
Me too. We do this each day as it comes. How and when it ends is
what's making everyone a bit insane at the moment.

Ken

--
---------------
Kenneth Wolman www.kenwolman.com kenwolman.blogspot.com
                 If you want patience, go to medical school.