Choices made in silence can be taken away in silence.
Barbara Ehrenreich in her latest column for the New York Times continues to demonstrate why Thomas Friedman, whom she is substituting for, should stay away permanently.
In a strong and lucid essay, she slashes away at the hypocrisy which allows women who have had voluntary abortions for fetal defects to feel morally superior to women who have had abortions purely out of “choice”.
…what makes it morally more congenial to kill a particular “defective” fetus than to kill whatever fetus happens to come along, on an equal opportunity basis? Medically informed “terminations” are already catching heat from disability rights groups, and, indeed, some of the conditions for which people are currently choosing abortion, like deafness or dwarfism, seem a little sketchy to me. I’ll still defend the right to choose abortion in these cases, even if it isn’t the choice I’d make for myself…
Whatever the reason for the abortion, she tells the 30 million women who have had abortions since the procedure was legalized, “Time to take your thumbs out of your mouths, ladies, and speak up for your rights. The freedoms that we exercise but do not acknowledge are easily taken away.”
