Sunday Open Thread

Posted on July 14, 2013 by rikyrah

Good Morning. Enjoy today with family and friends.

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9 Responses to Sunday Open Thread

  2. rikyrah says:
    July 14, 2013 at 10:56 am

    The slavery-abortion analogy

    BY JOY-ANN REID
    joyannreid@gmail.com

    On Tuesday, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee traveled to Texas, where the debate over an extremely restrictive — and more than likely unconstitutional — anti-abortion bill raged on this week. Huckabee came flanked by more than 3,000 anti-abortion protesters, and armed with a by now familiar message: Abortion is like slavery, and anti-abortion activists are the modern-day equivalent of abolitionists.

    The analogy is meant to cast the anti-abortion movement in a positive, even heroic, light, by evoking the stark image of trafficked human beings, bound into the holds of slave ships, borne across the Atlantic, terrified and abused, and if they survived, sold like cattle in the stocks. It is the image of human objects at the mercy of their “masters” that anti-abortion activists hope to cement in the minds of Americans, whom they hope to inspire to demand the outlawing of abortion (and in many cases, contraception, too, which the most devout equate to human pesticide.)

    It is historically anachronistic and offensive to just about every descendant of African slaves, who recognize that there should be a slavery equivalent to the “Reductio ad Hitlerum” principle, whereby trying to equate an opposing opinion with Hitler and the Nazis is a fundamental logical failure. In short, nothing is like the Holocaust, and nothing is akin to the 400 years of human enslavement practiced by Europeans and their American cousins.

    In fact, if one were to draw an analogy between slavery and the abortion issue, it might not be the one Huckabee and friends have in mind.

    Because what groups like the National Right to Life Committee and Americans United for Life, the model legislation factory writing the bills proliferating across the United States want, is to control the reproduction of other people. And therein lies the unintended analogy.

    Throughout the ugly history of American slavery, in which bondage was passed from generation to generation — as if in the genes themselves — slave owners possessed total authority over the reproduction of the women and men bound to them. They decided how, when, and where female slaves gave birth. Slave owners sometimes forced male slaves to impregnate female slaves in order to harvest the babies, thereby multiplying the value of their portfolio of human chattel. Some slave owners impregnated their slaves themselves.

    There was no exception made for a pregnancy resulting from rape, or for the potential death of the mother, since the resulting children had their own, distinct monetary value. Enslaved women had to give birth, come what may.

    Enslaved women had no more control over whether they gave birth to children than they did over what became of those children after they were born. They were utterly robbed of authority over their own bodies and families. The governance of their reproductive lives was given to the plantation owner.

    Empowering state governments (or even the federal government) to essentially force women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, whether by outlawing abortion outright (the activists’ ultimate goal), or because all other options have been closed off, is certainly not slavery. But it unequivocally robs modern-day women of their autonomy and thus, their liberty.

    And it isn’t lost on the women demanding freedom over their own bodies that slave owners also claimed they were acting under God’s direction. I don’t doubt the sincerity of anti-abortion activists. They truly believe that they are saving lives, which they believe begin at the moment an egg is fertilized. They believe those eggs have every right that you and I have, and that the government should enforce those rights, even over the objections of the woman in whom the egg resides. It isn’t clear how far they would be prepared to have the state go. Should women be jailed at 20 weeks and one day if they indicate a lack of willingness to continue a pregnancy? Or confined to house arrest until the pregnancy is complete? And won’t outlawing abortion simply drive more women into the arms of butchers like Kermit Gosnell?

    Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/10/3494372/the-slavery-abortion-analogy.html#storylink=cpy

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  3. rikyrah says:
    July 14, 2013 at 10:50 am

    What George Zimmerman Can Do Now
    By Charles P. Pierce at 7:45AM

    And, of course, this was Not About Race because nothing is ever About Race. The prosecutors even told us that it wasn’t About Race. The defense won its case because this was Not About Race. The sharp guys and pundits will spend all weekend explaining how Race was an element of the events that night, but that the case, ultimately, was not About Race. And because this case was Not About Race, nothing out of our history counts, because our history, here in the land of the free, is Not About Race, either. Because our history is Not About Race, a few weeks ago, when the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, what happened on the Edmund Pettus Bridge was not relevant.

    http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_End_Of_The_Daily_Trayvon

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  4. rikyrah says:
    July 14, 2013 at 8:53 am

    Not a good morning, but hello Everyone

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  5. CarolMaeWY says:
    July 14, 2013 at 2:00 am

    My heart is broken, still crying my eyes out, feeling so alone. That’s just me. I’m not family, they are so brave and the Trayvon Martin family set a beautiful example. Praying and hoping and fighting for Trustice4Trayvon is all I can do. HOPE, FORWARD, VOTE. I expected a verdict of Guilty on Murder 2. I was not prepared. I believed there would be justice. 😢😢😢😢😢

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