kelpiewilson

Abortion and the Earth

Abortion and the Earth
By Kelpie Wilson
t r u t h o u t | Environment Editor
Tuesday 29 January 2008

On this recent thirty-fifth anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, pro-choice activists are calling for a new approach to the issue.

Frances Kissling, former president of Catholics for Free Choice, and Kate Michelman, former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, wrote in an OpEd article in The Los Angeles Times: "Our vigorous defense of the right to choose needs to be accompanied by greater openness regarding the real conflict between life and choice, between rights and responsibility. It is time for a serious reassessment of how to think about abortion in a world that is radically changed from 1973."

Kissling and Michelman acknowledge that the anti-choice movement has made great inroads into the consciousness of America, which now has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the developed world. Part of the success of the anti-abortion message comes down to advances in technology, they say. The ubiquitous ultrasound images of fetuses and the survival of premature babies at earlier and earlier stages has established the unborn as a category of persons with rights in the minds of many people.

As the specter of back alley abortions recedes and women no longer die by the thousands from botched abortions, the old arguments about a woman's life and her right to autonomy over her own body are holding less sway. Kissling and Michelman warn: "If pro-choice values are to regain the moral high ground, genuine discussion about these challenges needs to take place within the movement."

The moral arguments about abortion rarely consider the physical limits of the planet, but if they did, and if abortion were put into the context of the long history of human attempts to avoid starvation by regulating population growth, we might come to a different conclusion about what "pro-life" really means.

An increased awareness of the fetus and its rights is not the only change in the moral landscape of reproduction since 1973. The other change that must be acknowledged is that we have far exceeded the capacity of the planet to sustain our numbers, and that human life and civilization are now deeply threatened by resource depletion, toxic pollution and climate catastrophe. Already, shortages of food, fuel and water are making it difficult to meet the basic needs of the 6.5 billion people on the planet and no one has any idea how we will feed the 9.1 billion people projected to be here by 2050.

Many women and couples in Japan who have terminated a pregnancy choose to honor the soul of the child through a practice called mizuko jizo. In this ritual the parents purchase a doll, adorn it and enshrine it in a temple, where it is cared for by priests.

Detroit Parties On, Republicans Approve

Detroit Parties On, Republicans Approve
By Kelpie Wilson
t r u t h o u t | Environment Editor
Thursday 24 January 2008

It is really too bad that the Democrats shunned Michigan's primary last week, if only because their participation might have forced the media to look a little deeper at Michigan's and the country's economic woes. Even more so because the nation's economic dysfunction was prominently on display in Detroit at the opening of the glitzy media extravaganza known as the North American International Auto Show.

Republican candidates Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and John McCain all dropped in on the spectacle to heap praise on the big three US auto manufacturers and troll for union votes.

Regarding the shaky financial situation of GM, Ford and Chrysler, Romney put on his rose-colored glasses. In a speech to the Detroit Economic Club, he vowed to revitalize the auto industry and said he would convene a summit meeting between the auto industry, organized labor and Congress during his first 100 days in office to reconsider recent CAFE fuel mileage increases. He called the new fuel mileage standards that Congress approved in December a job-killing "unfunded mandate."

Romney also accused rival McCain of supporting "a new kind of energy tax" in the McCain-Lieberman climate bill, saying that a carbon cap and trade policy would raise energy costs to manufacturers and drain even more jobs from the state.

O Little Town in Oregon

By Kelpie Wilson
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Tuesday 01 January 2008

A recent edition of the local paper in my little Oregon town contained some real shockers. First came the news that our former mayor had been murdered by a young man he had once sheltered. The 19-year-old, likely a schizophrenic, had allegedly thrown the 70-year-old man to the ground and repeatedly pounded his head on the pavement. Friends say the mayor, fearful of the young man's violence, had phoned the police earlier, but got the usual response people get in this impoverished rural county: "Sorry, we don't have the manpower to answer your call."

The next disturbing news came, in of all things, the five-page spread of children's letters to Santa. Many of these letters were intensely heartwarming, funny or even irritating in the way that children have. I had to roll my eyes at the long lists of brand name toys desired by children, including one child ready with the helpful hint, "Santa, you can get this at Wal Mart."

On the disturbing end was a five-year-old's letter: "I wish I really had so much Army stuff and I wish I was in the real Army. I wish I had so much guns too."

But the letters that really startled me were the ones from children who wanted help with big problems in their lives. They asked Santa to stop their parents from fighting and to heal the sick people in their families. They asked Santa to repair the city pool that never has enough funding to stay open, because "it is no fun without it." They asked Santa to reopen our county library system which had shut its doors last year: "Please Santa, I want a library book."