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| Abortion Has Once Again Risen To The ForeFront
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With the recent 33rd anniversary of Roe vs. Wade and the nomination, confirmation hearings, and now the swearing in of now Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, the abortion issue is once again on the minds of many Americans: The Right To Choose vs. The Right To Life.
Here Is One Reader's Opinion:
(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
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In as much as abortion is again center stage, I thought it might prove instructive to consider what things were like for women before Roe vs. Wade. As most of the clamor by those opposed to legal abortion focuses on the fetus to the exclusion of the factors weighing upon the pregnant women, a look at the other side of the equation seems in order.
In 1959, 14 years before Row vs. Wade, I was an intern at Los Angeles County Hospital. My obstetrics experience was divided between a month of normal
deliveries and a month of "infected obstetrics." The latter was a euphemism for botched abortion.
Night after night, we treated a continuous stream of women in hemorrhagic and septic shock after they had been instrumented by themselves, some relative or some not-so-well meaning quack. Most would have died had they not been taken to the hospital, and some died anyway, despite our efforts. No amount of moralizing is going to stop unwanted pregnancies, and desperate people do desperate things. This is the other side of the moral equation. Nobody thinks that abortion is a good thing, but the alternative is very much worse.
AW, M.D.
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| More About Last Week: Rummy's
Pentagon Briefing By KT
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(Molly Riley/Reuters)
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PLEASE, MR. PRESIDENT, IF YOU ARE NOT GOING TO FIRE THE DONALD, PLEASE KEEP HIM OFF TV.
I don't have any doubt that Mr. Rumsfeld is a smart man and an experienced one, but he appears to have the capacity to screw up a two car funeral possession(I know my favorite phrase these days, but so true).
Watching him during the Pentagon briefing last Wednesday simply made me shake my head. The Donald can't even put good spin on the war in Iraq; and, with television, he is hurting the cause.
During the Pentagon briefing he dismissed two reports, one commissioned by his own office and another done by a former democrat Secretary of Defense, that said the military was stretched to the limits with both the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.
At one point Rumsfeld said he had not read the 136 page report done by a former general(ordered by his own office which said the Army is stretched to the "breaking point.") but said "it's clear that those comments do not reflect the current situation. They are either out of date or just misdirected." At another point, he said regarding these two reports, that "anyone with an ounce of sense would see it exactly opposite." The Rummy definitely has his mindset, regardless of any reports to the contrary.
Rumsfeld has served his country honorably even if somewhat way too long. But, please, Mr. Prez, if you are not going to put him out to pasture, get him off TV.
| SOME AMUSING RUMSFELD COMMENTS |
The Unknown.
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.
—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing
Glass Box.
You know, it's the old glass box at the—
At the gas station,
Where you're using those little things
Trying to pick up the prize,
And you can't find it.
It's—
And it's all these arms are going down in there,
And so you keep dropping it
And picking it up again and moving it,
But—
Some of you are probably too young to remember those—
Those glass boxes,
But—
But they used to have them
At all the gas stations
When I was a kid.
—Dec. 6, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing
A Confession.
Once in a while,
I'm standing here, doing something.
And I think,
"What in the world am I doing here?"
It's a big surprise.
—May 16, 2001, interview with the New York Times
Happenings.
You're going to be told lots of things.
You get told things every day that don't happen.
It doesn't seem to bother people, they don't—
It's printed in the press.
The world thinks all these things happen.
They never happened.
Everyone's so eager to get the story
Before in fact the story's there
That the world is constantly being fed
Things that haven't happened.
All I can tell you is,
It hasn't happened.
It's going to happen.
—Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing
The Digital Revolution.
Oh my goodness gracious,
What you can buy off the Internet
In terms of overhead photography!
A trained ape can know an awful lot
Of what is going on in this world,
Just by punching on his mouse
For a relatively modest cost!
—June 9, 2001, following European trip
The Situation.
Things will not be necessarily continuous.
The fact that they are something other than perfectly continuous
Ought not to be characterized as a pause.
There will be some things that people will see.
There will be some things that people won't see.
And life goes on.
—Oct. 12, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing
Clarity.
I think what you'll find,
I think what you'll find is,
Whatever it is we do substantively,
There will be near-perfect clarity
As to what it is.
And it will be known,
And it will be known to the Congress,
And it will be known to you,
Probably before we decide it,
But it will be known.
—Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing
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American Casualty Report in Iraq
Thanks to Keyvan Minoukadeh
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