| Today, as I opened up to the 'Nation and World' section of the local paper here in good ole' Lafayette, I noticed one of the main stories was the impending approval of Supreme Court Justice-to-be, Samuel A. Alito. This is no news, really. I hate to site sources so pop-culture oriented as "The Daily Show", and "The Colbert Report", but, they are usually spot on, and they have been saying it for weeks. Ha. John Stewart is my oracle. They are also allowed to say the things we are all thinking, which is not a liberty that all the media has in this day and age. There was one thing in this article that caught my eye. The article itself had been written by a reporter in Los Angeles. There was a picture included with the story of two men in their twenties. One was holding a crucifix and praying for the other, who marching for the "pro-choicers". What a Hallmark moment.
Suddenly, I had a thought. Maybe...juuuust maybe, a MAN should not be the first line of consult when broaching this topic. I mean, really. There are few things in this world that are inherently female. As I see it, there are three main things. That is, things that can not be easily replicated by a weekend drag queen. There are boobs, (which now can be bought and sold as commodities), having your period (a sheer joy), and childbirth. Somehow I fail to see how any man anywhere should have any say in any of this...be he a Supreme Court Justice of the United States, or Just Some Guy Off Of The Street.
How can any man, no matter how informed, in tune, or self-serving, actually say that they can sympathize, let alone empathize, with a woman who has found herself in a situation where abortion has become an option? I believe NO woman wants to have an abortion. No woman wakes up in the morning and says, "Hey, you know what? I'm kind of bored with life. Already got the house painted, and worked a 40 hr. week. You know what I really want to do today? I want to get good and knocked up so I can go and get an abortion. Yeah, that sounds really great. Having a living body ripped from my womb. Being violently ill for a few days. Wondering if I've committed some moral sin...Sign me up!" It's just not the reality of the situation. How can any man be a fair and impartial voice to a situation he can no way, under any circumstances, ever understand? The decision, such as the chain of events leading up to it, are never this cut and dried.
Men and women are even wired differently for day to day thinking. It's a scientific fact. Why is it that there are not more women on the Supreme Court trumpeting our cause? For that matter, why aren't all minorities represented equally? Why is it that a group of primarily white, affluent, older men are making decisions day after day that will essentially affect the world, when they have no frame of reference? It's kind of like asking a man with no limbs to swim a 100 meter dash. He's not going to be able to do so, because he has no way of knowing how. Yet, we're let a bunch of limbless swimmers decide the fate of millions of Americans every day.
I read in some timeless tome some years ago (or maybe it was the bathroom at some bar, I'm not sure...), that opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one, and they all stink. I suppose mine is no different. The only visible difference I can see is that you can "walk away" from mine with the click of a mouse. If only life were that simple. You know? Like the internet. Where we could hit the "back" button, and get old Sandra O'Conner back. We could click forward, and find the next best option, or we could just hit the big red power button in the sky and make it all go away. Instead, we're being governed by a bunch of limbless swimmers and the pool has no shallow end. |
