Pro choice or Pro woman?

I was watching Boston Legal the other night which happens to be one of my favorite TV series. One of the reasons why it’s so dear to me is the fact that it deals with a lot of controversial and/or contemporary issues and, even though sometimes it is clear which side is favored, most of the times both sides are heard. The particular episode that intrigued me was dealing with the issue of abortion from a different, yet not entirely new, angle. It discussed the rights of the man, the father.

The right of a woman to her body, the right to determine her life and thus the choice to have a baby or not is kind of a given for me. I never hesitated faced with that question: I am pro choice. But when it comes to the man is there a choice? It takes two to have a baby. Why does it take one not to have it?

Why is it that we only talk about a father’s participation and contribution, in fact we demand it, only after we decide that we want the baby? Isn’t this a little, excuse me, a lot selfish?

If you think about it though, you can’t force someone to carry a baby. A pregnancy is no small deal your body is changing and your lifestyle has to change with it! Its strenuous, its long, its committing. I guess that’s where the difference lies. But then again, they get no say whatsoever?

We could at least establish that they have a right to know. It is unfair to decide beforehand that he’d rather not know and use that as an excuse for not telling him. It is selfish to assume that you are doing him a favor by keeping him out of it. Not only is it bad for him and possibly for you but is also perpetuating a disturbing notion that fathers are only there either because they were forced to by court with child support orders or because a woman was cunning enough to force them into marrying her. What is this? Fatherhood might not be the dream we implant into little boys heads nor do we expect them to play with baby dolls and take care of them at the age of five, but for all I know having children is an understandably scary and difficult yet fulfilling experience for them as well. To tell you the truth I believe it’s today’s women that have done a lot to alienate men from the idea of having children. We want that many children, we believe it is only our right to chose when and how we will have those children etc, we only want men to just acknowledge the fact that they are responsible for the creation of a child and pay for it. We cultivate the image of the man that doesn’t care and doesn’t want to take part in the upbringing. Keeping men out of the decision making process for an abortion is one of the ways we have achieved that. By saying “It’s none of your business” we make it none of their business.

I believe men should have the right to chose if they want to become fathers but a woman’s right to her body is of greater importance. As a result I am defending a man’s right to know and hopefully somehow contribute to the decision because it is his life too, it is his child too and because fatherhood is a right not a death sentence.

Man I sound melodramatic sometimes. :)

That's what you get..

I have been thinking i should write something about the conflict in Georgia. I guess it’s too late now and in any case people who know more than me and have a better understanding of the situation should be the ones criticizing, analyzing and pin pointing the real issues. But I feel that I have to mention something that has been bugging me. When the news about Georgia was still fresh I was staying at a friend’s house and the topic came up during lunch. Naturally more than a few people at the table had really strong opinions concerning the conflict and one of them said and I quote “They deserved what they got” referring to the Georgian side, “that’s what you get for messing with Russia”. To those who know me it would be needless to explain I was infuriated. It’s not that I believed the Georgian side was right (or wrong for that matter) I didn’t have an opinion. My concern was that it wasn’t the government that took the hit but the people of Georgia. It is always the people! Villages and towns were bombed, innocent people were driven away from their homes. When I voiced my concern the only response I got was a repetition of “that’s what you get when you mess with Russia”.

I have a friend in Georgia and the first news I got concerning the issue was from an e-mail sent by her. She was so scared that I got alarmed, she described how things were there and the reality just shook me. It’s another thing to watch or hear the news and another to know that a person you know a person you have eaten with and spoken to and laughed with is in the middle of this mess. I tried explaining that to the people at my table at the risk of ruining lunch but they didn’t seem to get it. It seems that the “reality” of politics and the concept of “war is necessary” is easier for us to grasp, when we are outside, than the concept of human tragedy and the loss of innocents.

Its simply sad that we have become so accustomed to wars and military interventions that we watch them and talk about them with the same calm calculation that we would comment on a "Age of empires" or "Rome total war" session on our pc.

It is always the people that get hurt. That’s what you get for messing with "guns"..

Morality = choker OR agreed upon code of conduct?

My good friend E*** and I were discussing a couple of weeks ago about morality. I admitted that I envy her because she seems to have been born with an internal alarm that seems to go off every time something is “morally wrong”. She never hesitates or doubts, she just knows. I on the other hand have to think through everything in order to decide if I am “morally” opposed to it. In that sense I have replaced morality with logic. In my opinion our society in general is doing the same thing. (Maybe as a way to solve the problem of moral relativity?) The problem with going down that road though is that one starts using arguments to explain something that should not and can not always be broken down and analyzed logically. We end up not asking ourselves “why?” but “why not?”and the answers are becoming less and less convincing and the little voice in our head that is suggesting with ever growing hesitation “maybe you shouldn’t be sleeping with him, after all he is your best friends ex that broke her heart” is dying out.

Our moral boundaries seem to stretch endlessly as we discover more and more things that “weren’t so bad” after all. Things are no longer good and bad just things we have done and things we haven’t done...yet!

For example the other night we were having a conversation with a friend about relationships and sex. Now she seemed to believe that it is morally colorless to sleep with a guy whom you know to be involved with someone else but it is disgusting and abominable to make out with your lesbian girlfriend in public because: “You can’t force the people around you to see THAT, it’s disgusting!”

The reason being she obviously has been sleeping repeatedly with guys that were in a relationship but hasn’t experimented with any of her girlfriends...yet! Same way H**** thinks that it is possible to cheat on your boyfriend even though you love him but it is cruel to stay with a person if you are not interested in them and E*** thought sex out of the relationship was also out of the question until she tried it.

Is this really a moral decadence or are we just tearing down the faux preconceived moral ideas that were implanted in our heads even before we could speak?

Are we just taking off the choker??