Baby Lucy Born?

"If the anti-abortion movement took a tenth of the energy they put into noisy theatrics and devoted it to improving the lives of children who have been born into lives of poverty, violence, and neglect, they could make a world shine." --Michael Jay Tucker.

So "Baby Lucy Week 12" has another poster above it with the quote I posted above. I am sitting in LC Hall procrasturbating over Arabic and this caught my attention .

The defense that a lot of Pro-Life advocates make is that, despite the adversities a zygote may face if born, once it develops into a child and then is born, this child can be a "Mozart" or something like that. Yet, how many Mozarts do I see in the ghetto in Natrona Heights? Not quite sure. There are a lot of hungry kids, kids without healthcare, kids with fetal alcohol syndrome....

I'm not going to go into this, but it did get me thinking.... who is looking out for those kids who are born? If someone reads this and can educate me, what do anti-abortion groups do for these kids they are saving?

So "Reproductive Rights Action League at Yale" (RALY) or "Choose Life at Yale," what are you actively doing to prevent zygotes from becoming miserable children or what are you doing to help these saved children become less underprivileged.

Today in my "Capitalism: Success, Crisis and Reform" class with Douglas Rae gave a great lecture on the utter importance of Freedom as a means of driving cooperation, success, innovation, and reform. Freedom to enter a market. Freedom to do. Freedom to choose what we so pleased.

As I was leaving, I noticed what looked like a black and white photo of a round planet on a sheet of paper tacked to a message board in LC. Upon further investigation, I found that it was actually titled:

"BABY LUCY, 0 weeks."

"Baby Lucy has just been conceived. She is a zygote, a single cell invisible to the unaided eye, but she is already a whole and distinct organism, possessing all the genetic characteristics necessary to direct her own development from within. We invite you to join us as we watch Baby Lucy grow over the next nine months. Sponsored by Choose Life at Yale."

Feeling that I should be incensed, that some inner feminist rage should overtake me, I came up with a bunch of rash arguments and ranting in my head:

WHAT? MAYBE THOSE MEN SHOULD THINK OF ALL THE DATE RAPES ON CAMPUS. THEY CAN'T CHOOSE TO PREVENT. MAYBE THEY SHOULD TALK TO THOSE BOYS FIRST. HUH? HUH? HUHHHH?

Hold up. This is not how I think. After a moment, I realized, "Danielle, you can't be that crass. You can't be like the anarchist Living Theater people you saw last night. You need to be tactful towards yourself." It's very difficult for a woman not to sound like a raging feminist and get a bad rap when she sees things like this.

You see, it is very difficult for a woman to think about abortion, about choice. Its not as simple as choosing life. Its about preventing life. Its about choosing to DEVELOP life when you want to.

Its about freedom. Freedom of expression of both parties. Yes. However, if there is something that I learned in life, its not what you say, its how you say it.

Look boys. Its about FREEDOM. I want the freedom to choose life. I want the freedom to choose life when its ready, and when I'm ready. I want the freedom to prevent it up until that point. I want the freedom to regulate when my eggs will become human beings (they too are potential life, like a zygote). I also want the freedom to stop the development of a zygote into a human being. You care about life obviously, so lets work together to maybe get some of the date rape off campus we see, to ease/end the inequality between the sexes we see at Yale, even today. Lets create a dialogue with less accusation. Please stop incensing most women on this campus with biting and cruel posters that do nothing to promote life, only anger it.

Forty years, women have been at Yale. About 40 years, women have been able to get an abortion or birth control. 40 years. 40 years. 40 years and you want to take my freedom?

Look. I don't want an abortion... ever. But do you understand the circumstances and consequences of what it means to be in that situation? Perhaps, as a male, you really wouldn't. You've been at Yale for hundreds of years. My sex has only been around for forty. We don't have time to loose with an unwanted RAPE.

I don't want to sound emotional, but LIFE is emotional. Choice is serious. Choice is about freedom. Freedom is life.