Articles on “Botched” Abortion

     Here are some links to articles about the case of the baby that was born and disposed of in a Tampa, Florida, abortion clinic. 

Doctor Loses License, CNN

Fla.  Doctor Loses License, AP

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     What happened to the safe in “legal, safe, and rare”?

     What about the excuse of protecting the health of the mother?

     What about the excuse of its being only an unformed blob?

     Why is it bad when the baby is outside the womb but good just moments before when the baby is inside the womb?

     If this case came to light, aren’t there others like it that never have?

Advice to Young Husbands: What NOT to Say

     I have written about things that husbands should say to their wives, and now it’s time to write about the things that we should not say. I will admit right now that I have said them, but I learned after a few times that it is not a very good idea to do so. These phrases are among the worst relationship killers. They are very useful for either starting or perpetuating a conflict. Avoid them like tainted peanut butter.  I do.

1. You always do that.

     It took me awhile to figure out that this phrase is not helpful. I had to first pay attention to how it made me feel when other people said it to me. It’s horrible because (1) it is usually an exaggeration, (2) it is accusatory rather than restorative, and (3) it is one-sided.

     Before you start to tell your wife that she “always” does something, stop and think.  What would she say if you asked her to list the things that you “always” do that hurt or bother her?  What would your friends say if you posed that question to them?  Let’s face it:   we all have bad habits and character flaws that can bug or offend other people.  You are no exception.

     An alternative to saying, “You always do that,” is “It bothers (or hurts) me when you do that.”  First, you are taking at least part of the responsibility on yourself when you say it that way.  Second, you are referring to specific instances rather than to “always.”  If delivered well and at the right time, your wife is likely to work on the behavior in question.  Make sure that you reciprocate, though.  She’s not likely to change any of her behavior if you are unwilling to change yours.

2.  What’s the matter with you?

     Unless you are expressing sincere concern, this is a very bad thing to ask. 

     I have made the error of saying it when my wife has (1) made a silly mistake, (2) expressed a contrary opinion, or (3) been out of sorts for some reason, including during her monthly cycle.  In all three instances, it is very unhelpful.  Everyone makes mistakes, including you.  Learn to live with them.  Your wife is entitled to a different opinion, and she might just be right sometimes.  If you cannot put up with a little irritability, you weren’t ready to get married, but you did, so grow up.  And if you don’t know about estrogen and progesterone, learn.

     I still forget about hormones.  My wife and I sometimes have little quarrels about silly things, and I’m too oblivious to remember that it has been one month since the last such quarrel.  I sometimes think, “What’s the matter with her,” but I have learned not to say it.  I have learned to take those things in stride and love her through them. 

3.  If you loved me, you would do it.

     If you love her, you will not say this.  Early on I used it to try to get my wife to agree to several different things.  One that I remember is that I wanted her to stop asking me questions when she wanted me to do something, as in, “Do you think that somebody should replace the lightbulb on the porch?”  I like directness and would prefer that she just say, “Please replace the lightbulb on the porch.”  She was too timid to be that direct.  I told her that if she loved me, she would approach me in the way that I was most comfortable.  She wasn’t amused.

     Love does not entitle you to coerce your wife into doing things that she doesn’t want to do, and emotional blackmail is about the worst kind of coercion that there is.  You’re a man:  use your masculine negotiation skills.   First, express what you want and why it is important to you.  Second, offer something in return, and make it bigger and better than what you are asking for.  Third, be willing to settle for something less.  If all that fails, be patient.  Maybe your wife will give in at some future time, especially if you are really nice to her in the meantime.

4.  You’re just like. . . .

     Fill in the blank.  Perhaps you want to compare her to her mother or to your mother or maybe to someone else.  It’s a huge mistake.  It’s not accurate, because nobody is just like anybody else, and it certainly isn’t nice.

     If you haven’t noticed how complex a woman’s relationship with her mother is, learn.  If you haven’t noticed how complex a woman’s relationship is with her mother-in-law is, learn.

     Whoever your wife is like, she’s a unique person.  Treat her as such.  You married her, so you got what you asked for.  Now love her for who she is and for whom she will become as you both mature.

5.  All you have to do is. . .

     It took me several years to really understand that my wife does not want me to instruct her.  I am a very helpful person by nature, and as a man I approach life as a series of complications to be solved.  When my wife discusses a problem with me, I logically assess the situation and propose solutions.  Guess what?  That’s probably not what she wants.

     Several female friends and some good marriage counselors told me, “She just wants you to listen.”  I know it doesn’t make sense.  It doesn’t make sense to me still.  That’s one of the beautiful things about women in general:  not everything makes “sense” to them in the way that things make “sense” to us.  Please learn that fact and relish it.  If your wife tended to attack  problems as coldly and logically as you tend to do as a man, she would not be just what you need.  She would not be your perfect complement.

     If your wife is typical, she processes things more on an emotional level than you do.  She processes things by talking about them.  The mere act of telling you about something and seeing that you care may be the “solution” for her.  As she talks, she might arrive at the same solution that you were goin to propose, but she wants to get there herself and in her own way.  She just wants a sounding board.  She just wants to know that somebody cares.

Advice to Young Husbands: What to Say

     I’m not the smartest man in the world, but I’ve learned a few things about having a happy marriage in my 45 years.  My wife and I are closer and happier now than we have ever been, and it’s partly because I learned to say these things.  I learned them from other happily married men, and I learned them by trial and error over the last 16 1/2 years. 

     It is important to be sincere when you say these things.  Our wives are certainly not stupid and can easily detect insincerity.  However, I have found that I might not start completely sincere but I end up sincere if I say these things intentionally.  They are as much a reminder to myself as a boost to my wife.  The ultimate rule is this:  if you keep your wife happy, and I mean truly happy, you will be happy.  I know what I am talking about.

     1.  I love you.

     For some men these are the hardest words to say, yet wives appreciate them so much.  It’s not enough just to say them, but women do like to hear them.  It’s funny that many men can say them when they are dating but not after they are married.  It’s also funny that men feel that they are not “tough” if they say such words, but how tough can a man be if he’s too bashful to make such an important declaration to his partner in life?

     2.  Yes, Dear.

     The Dear part is optional, but the Yes part isn’t.  This phrase is great to use when your wife asks you to do something.  It should be followed with action–that is, you should agree to do what she asks and then actually do it.  It is also great to use whenever your wife asserts something, even if you do not completely agree with her.  Unless it’s important, there’s no need to disagree with her.  It is also great to use whenever your wife asks you a question that requires an affirmative response.  It’s much better than a grunt or silence or any sarcastic answer that might flit through your masculine brain.

     3.  You’re right, Sweetheart.

     This phrase is similar to the preceding one but is specfically good to say whenever your wife expresses an opinion, including opinions about you.  Unless it’s really, really important, there is no need to tell your wife that she is wrong, even if you think she might be.  Believe me, she is very likely to be right, as I know from experience.  An added bonus awaits you if you precede or follow this phrase with. . .

     4.  I was wrong.

     It’s just a plain fact that you are often wrong.  It’s part of being human.  You’ve got to be able to say so.  Although none of us likes to admit it we often realize when we are wrong, and I can assure you that our wives realize it, too.  You cannot get away with excuses or rationalizing or sweeping it under the rug.  The only remedy is to just admit it.   And then of course you should say. . .

     5.  I’m sorry.

     This simple phrase is harder for some men to say than even #1.  Yet, it holds more power than any of the others to keep your relationship strong.  If you know that you said or did something wrong, the sooner you apologize the sooner it can be forgiven and the sooner your relationship with your wife will be restored.  A true apology though should be sincere and should be accompanied by a change in attitude or behavior or both.

     6.  You are beautiful to me.

     My wife doesn’t have a lot of confidence in her beauty, but she really is beautiful to me.  I sometimes say that she is beautiful and she scoffs at it.  So then I say, “You are beautiful to me.  I love your hair and your eyes and. . . .”  It’s true that my wife’s beauty goes deeper than the physical, but because I love and admire her, I also feel attracted to her physically.  Sometimes when we are intimate I just gaze at her and sigh, as though I’m looking at a work of art.

     7.  Thank you.

     I still thank my wife for being willing to marry me and for sticking with me.  I thank her for being a good mother.  I thank her for the hundreds of little things that she does for me.  I thank her for listening and understanding and supporting and accepting me.  I thank her for you-know-what every single time.  (She always thanks me back.  Isn’t that fantastic?)  Everyone likes to be thanked.  It makes us feel noticed and appreciated.

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     There are quite a few other things that you will probably think of.  After all, we know the right things to say, don’t we?  It’s just that we forget.  We take our wives for granted or we become self-centered.  It’s important to guard against those lapses, though. 

     Your wife will give you so much, in the emotional and the physical arenas, if you give to her first.  Be warned:  you cannot say these and other thoughtful things in order to get something back.  You must say them without expectation of reward, and then you will almost certainly get more than you would have expected anyway.

Something We Can Agree On?

     We often hear about “dialogue” and “compromise” from liberals.  Okay.  Let’s have a dialogue about the responsibility of Planned Parenthood to protect their clients from harm and to obey the laws of the land.

     Apparently a nurse who worked for Planned Parenthood has been caught on video telling a young lady posing as a 13-year-old to lie about the age of the made-up father of her baby.  She says that he is 31, but the nurse tells her to say that it was a 14-year-old boy instead. 

     You might be pro-choice, but do you think that a 31-year-old man (when there really is such a man) should be allowed to get away with abusing a young girl?  Should abortion providers protect such a man, or should they obey the law and turn him in?

     It seems to me that in many cases “pro-choice” means “pro letting men mistreat girls and get away with it.”  I expect lots of adult men send teenage girls to Planned Parenthood centers and other places to “get rid of it.”  What a choice!  Please, dear readers, tell me you don’t really support that choice.  Tell me you think laws that require such men to be turned in should be strengthened and enforced.

     I’d rather be pro-responsibility than pro-choice when it comes to men who impregnate girls.  How about you?

Politics in Contemporary America

     Sarah Palin’s wardrobe isn’t very important, is it?  Frankly I cannot believe that in 2008 people make such a big deal out of a candidate’s hairstyle or wardrobe or glasses.  Hasn’t the feminist movement already occurred?

     Do we get a daily report on McCain’s or Biden’s suits?  The one’s I’ve seen them wear probably cost more than any suit I’ve ever owned.  That’s what I would expect of a presidential candidate–to dress sharply.  I wouldn’t like my president to go around in Wal-Mart specials, and I wouldn’t vote for a candidate who dressed that way.  However, I don’t fixate on their clothes either.  (Oh, no!  He wore a Gucci instead of a Versace!)

     People did it to Hilary Clinton, and now they are doing it to Sarah Palin.  Even when Bill Clinton was President, it got pretty annoying to hear about his wife’s latest hairdo.  (Please tell the bigwigs at the major news networks that we can SEE women’s hairdos.  We don’t need anyone telling us about them!)

     Reading the mainstream press, I cannot figure out who Sarah Palin is.  Is she a frumpy housewife with no style or a glamour queen who cannot relate to the ordinary woman?  If she spent too little on her clothes, she would be laughed at as a crude provincial.  If she spent too much on her clothes, she would be condemned as one of those evil wealthy people who don’t understand the poor and working class folks.

     How about we just get off the clothing issue?  There are a lot of more important issues.

Nina May, Gloria Steinem, Geraldine Ferraro, and Sarah Palin

     I’ve talked before about whether feminists are obligated to vote for Sarah Palin, since they have usually held that there should be more women in positions of power.  They have insisted that men must hire more women, pay them equally, and admit them to their military academies and sports clubs.  It only stands to reason that now that there is a chance for a woman to become Vice President, those same women should give her their votes.  They have complained that Republicans never nominate women for high posts (ignoring Condoleeza Rize, among others).  Well, now that the Republicans have done it, I think that feminists should put their vote where their mouth has been.

     I’ve been challenged by some who say that no feminist has ever advocated voting for a woman just because she is a woman.

     Nina May says that Gloria Steinem did that very thing on an episode of the Phil Donahue show.  Steinem reportedly said that any woman who would not vote for Geraldine Ferraro was being disloyal to her gender.

     Now Steinem says, “Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman.  It’s about making life more fair for women everywhere.”  Hmm. . .  Nice comeback.  Too bad it’s not consistent with her earlier stance on Ferraro.

The Deal Breaker

     Let’s say that Barack Obama were more to my liking all-around.  Suppose he wanted to eliminate government programs, cut spending, reduce taxes across the board, and reduce government regulation of private industry.  Those issues are very important to me, and any candidate who would do those things would have my vote, except. . .

     I could never, ever, ever vote for a candidate who would not vote to protect the life of a baby. 

     I know that I have written about it before, and I know that the starry-eyed Obama supporters have disagreed with me, but I feel compelled to write about it again.

     We are not talking about a clump of cells or an unidentifiable mass of tissue.  We are talking about a baby who has taken his or her first breath of air outside the womb.  We are talking about a baby whose chord has been cut, and who is a separate, living human being.  The pro-choice folks always want to say that it is a fetus when it is in the womb and only becomes a baby when it is outside the mother’s womb.  Well, then we’re talking about babies, not fetuses.

     The Born Alive Infant Protection Act is just what its name says.  It’s not about Roe v Wade or about a woman’s “right to choose.”  It is not about pre-viable fetuses or a doctor’s relationship with his patient.  It’s about giving legal protection to babies that survive an abortion attempt–just as we give to all other babies who are born alive.

     Obama opposed it, saying, “an additional doctor who then has to be called in an emergency situation and make these assessments is really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman.”  Please understand whom and what you are supporting, if you vote for Obama.  He was not talking about opposing a second doctor to approve an abortion.  He opposed the calling in of another doctor to decide whether or not to provide medical treatment, food, and hydration to a living, breathing baby outisde its mother’s womb.  

     If you agree that a baby born alive should be left to die, then by all means, vote for Barack Obama.  But if you find that completely barbaric, as I do, then listen to your conscience.

FOR FURTHER READING

Mona Charen, “Abortions Do Sometimes Produce Live Births“

FactCheck.org, “Obama and ‘Infanticide’“

Two Views of Women

     Which of these views sounds more respectful toward women?

Women can and should succeed by their own efforts.

Women need government assistance in order to suceed in life.

     Sarah Palin obviously holds the first view.  In fact, she has proved it.  She has suceeded in a man’s world through her own abilities and efforts.  She has not ridden the coattails of any men; in fact, she opposed corrupt men in her state and endeared herself to the public by doing so.  She ought to be the poster child for feminism.  In fact, she is one of the greatest examples of the feminist aspiration–that women can be devoted wives and mothers and career women.  She is being treated–by conservatives–as equal to any man.

     I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.  For diehard feminists it is not about womanhood or femininity or equality.  It’s about a liberal political agenda, and sisters had better tow the line, or else they are not only kicked out of the sisterhood, but they are insulted with the vilest comments that their opponents can spew.  Not all feminists are doing it, but the ones who are can make this man blush with some of their rude attacks.

     Cathy Young, who disagrees with Palin on several issues, wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “. . .like millions of American women — and men — I find her can-do feminism infinitely more liberated than the what-can-the-government-do-for-me brand espoused by the sisterhood.”  I agree.  How are women supposed to be considered equal to men if they claim that they cannot make it in life without government support?

     Palin has been hit with some of the most viscious comments from feminists who are supposedly ”pro-woman.”    You can read about some of them in Young’s editorial.  A man making such misogynist statements would be tarred and feathered.  And yet they are coming from a group that is sometimes referred to as the Sisterhood.  Wow!  With sisters like those, Palin’s probably better off hunting moose with the brothers.  Many of them actually respect women.

SEE ALSO

Jonah Goldberg, “Feminist Army Aims Cannons At Alaska Governor“

Stop Those Bad Guys

     You’ve got to love Texas women.  I have to love one of them, anyway, since my wife is a Texan through and through.  Recently a woman in Texas decided she wasn’t going to let some intruders kill her children, and so Kellie Hoehn grabbed the muzzle of one bad guy’s shotgun.  She and her husband managed to defend themselves but ended up killing one of the two intruders and injuring the other.

     I don’t advise anyone to do what she did.  The incident could have ended very differently.  Still. . .she and her family are safe, one bad guy is dead, and another one is going to prison.  All because her maternal instincts emboldened her to take action.

     The article ends with this statement:  “Investigators say the couple were just defending their family and probably won’t be charged.”

     Probably?

How to Keep a Baby

     First, you have to get pregnant.  Then, barring any physical problem, you will give birth to a baby in due time.  My wife has done it twice.  Sadly, she had an early miscarriage (spontaneous abortion) one time and an ectopic pregnancy another time. 

     I bring up this simplisitic and somewhat silly topic, because I have been hearing a lot about the “choice” of Jamie Lynn Spears, Sarah Palin, and Bristol Palin to “keep” their babies.  I find such talk quite bizarre.

     Can you imagine our great-grandmothers talking about whether to “keep” their babies or not?  I can’t.  I realize that abortions did take place back then–often at extreme risk to the mother.  I also realize that some women felt forced for various reasons to give their babies up for adoption.  But it was such a rare event for a woman not to “keep” her baby that I doubt it was talked about quite like it is today.

     People act as though the ordinary process is as follows:  get pregnant (however that’s done; the pro-choice crowd at like it just sort of happens in an inscrutable way), then decide whether or not to keep “it,” then call it a fetus if you decide not to keep it but a baby if you decide to keep it, then either get an abortion or eventually give birth.  I can imagine God handing a baby to a woman and asking, “Here, do you want to keep it?”  Bizarre!

     I know almost nothing about Bristol Palin or her personal life, and that’s as it should be.  However, I would guess that there was no discussion of whether or not to “keep” the baby and no actual decision on her part.  Knowing what I know about her parents and how I would guess they brought her up, it never entered her mind to kill her unborn child.  She has a baby, and even if she were to kill it, it would not change the fact that she has a baby.  Destroying its tiny body is not the same as wiping it out of existence.  The mind remembers, and the body remembers.  And even if a woman forces herself to forget, the baby did exist, and I believe it’s soul still exists.

     I guess the main idea I’m driving at is that you can decide NOT to keep a baby, but there is really no need to decide to keep it.  In most cases, it’s not going anywhere.  If you don’t do anything drastic, and if the baby and the mom are healthy, it will just be born.  Women have been keeping babies for thousands upon thousands of years.  It’s just part of their nature.  It’s just how God made them.