"Anyway"

Just read an article in the Star about how wonderful Obama's repeal of the "global gag rule" regarding NGO and abortion. Now the US may counsel woman abroad to have abortions.

This is wonderful, the writer says, because it means that women will no longer automatically be saddled with children. She trots out the very worst of the horror stories of women in third world countries being raped, married too young, along with some unprovable estimates of the sorrow all this causes, and then paints a bright and rosy picture of the brave new world to come in which fewer children will mean fewer wars for our dwindling resources; where "half the world's brains and talents will not be sacrificed on the altar of anti-choice dogma." The women will be able to go out and start businesses and have careers. How starting new businesses with our dwindling resources will positively affect our planet, she does not explain.

Most troubling of all is her repeated use of the word "anyway". This word is used twice as a lynch pin in her arguments. "What's more, it has resulted in the births of maybe (emphasis added) millions of babies into disease, starvation and war. They never had much of a chance at life anyway." And again: "According to World Vision, as many as one in four infants doesn't make it anyway." So we might as well write off the whole lot.

This is the new cultural imperialism: our values forced on their societies. They are not like us, but they should be. Their lives are not worth living by our standards. We should tell them so, and help them become career oriented women, like us. There is a word for this attitude, one based on a root word feminists despise: Patronizing. With is comes a second word: Hypocrisy.

This author is taking far too great a power upon herself: The power decide whose life is worth living, and whose isn't. The people who claim such power claim it for themselves, and not others. It is their power to make that decision for others. They would fight vehemently were someone to claim that power over them. I refuse such power, I deny the existence of such power, for my own safety's sake. I shall never permit anyone to ever claim they have a right to deem my life not worth living. Likewise, I shall never claim such a right over others. This author claims that right. It is the basis for her whole argument. Her values trump others, for no greater reason than because she says so. By fiat she would remake the world to suit herself, and she calls this liberation.

As the Who once said: Meet the new Boss. Same as the old boss.