:: The S.I.C.L.E. Cell ::

:: Monday, March 24, 2003 ::

I admire Jennifer O'Neill for taking a stand for women and children by opposing abortion. Jennifer lost a child of her own in a coerced abortion, and she knows the pain and suffering well. I am grateful to her for her voice and advocacy and want her to keep up the good work, but... she kind of reminds me of Rosie O'Donnell and Melissa Etheridge in that she advocates opposing causes thereby sending a conflicting message. While O'Neill opposes abortion, she also promotes it as a chairperson for various chapters of the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the March of Dimes (MOD).

My grandparents, the parents who raised me for the better part of my life, both died of cancer. And they didn't just wake up dead one day; cancer lingers. It toils away reducing the sufferer to Shakespeare's "second childishness"; mewling and puking once again, the afflicted trudges off helpless towards the grave.

I have seen cancer's python slither in from a dark corner, wrap its black coils around the people I love, tighten it's grasp over a period of months until lungs were useless, air met no purpose, and I was painting dead fingernails casket pink. I know cancer; I take it personally and I loathe it with a greedy passion, but I would never attempt to fight a python epidemic by confining the constrictors to women's houses.

The ACS has a dirty little secret: they're sexist with a capital "S". They discriminate against women in particular when they lie that abortion does not increase a woman's risk of deadly breast cancer. So a group that fights cancer causes cancer. If you are fighting abortion in advocacy of the emotional and physical health of women, it isn't rational to support a group that misleads women unto death. Neither would it be sensible to promote the abortion of the differently-abled which is exactly what the MOD does.

When is good news bad news? When the MOD "prevents" birth defects (by preventing the special-needs child from being born). The "success" of the March of Dimes reminds me of the reports that occasionally come out celebrating lower teen birth rates. Sounds great, but they're only talking about birth rates, not pregnancy (and abortion) rates. When I know that one of the ways the MOD reduces birth defects is by aborting differently-abled children, there is no way I could ever aid their cause. I wonder why O'Neill does.

I wish Jennifer would disassociate herself from the ACS and the MOD, because components of those causes deeply conflict with her pro-woman efforts against abortion. It is my feeling that she will be much more effective at preventing abortion once she stops promoting it.

SICLECell@hotmail.com

:: ashli 11:01 AM # ::
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