A Scottish “slam poet’s” sad story of her abortion while a teenager

“I Think She Was a She” is a poem written by “slam poet” Leyla Josephine, in which she talks about the abortion she had as a teenager.

Before getting into the content of this poem, you might like to know just what a “slam poet” is. “A slam itself is simply a poetry competition in which poets perform original work alone or in teams before an audience, which serves as judge,” according to poets.org, the online site of the Academy of American Poets. “The work is judged as much on the manner and enthusiasm of its performance as its content or style, and many slam poems are not intended to be read silently from the page.” 

This slam poem was delivered via an online video. “I think she was a she,” the poem begins. “No, I know she was a she, and I think she would have looked exactly like me,” Ms. Josephine declares. With a heavy Scottish brogue that is sometimes difficult to understand she then goes into much detail, explaining how that as a mother she would have taken pains to protect her baby daughter, would have talked about her grandfather when the daughter was older, and would have taken pains to teach her all the things the poet’s mother had taught her.

The poem is touching and almost melancholy, something that might have been written by the mother of a child unfortunately lost before birth. But, of course, that is not what this poem is about. Here, Ms. Josephine condemns the cultural shame forced on her ever since making that fateful decision.

The tone of the poem then takes a sharp turn: “But I would’ve supported her right to choose; to choose a life for herself, a path for herself. I would’ve died for that right like she died for mine. I’m sorry, but you came at the wrong time."

Ms. Josephine is not sadly recounting a miscarriage; instead she is proudly describing why she had an abortion and how it was truly the right decision for her. “I am not ashamed. I am not ashamed. I’m so sick of keeping these words contained. I am not ashamed," she says of her decision to abort her child. She said that the child she created with the “boy I loved” was just too much responsibility for her as a teenager.

Lines of rationalization follow, as she tries desperately to justify what she did. She stubbornly claims dominion over her own body. And she regurgitates the statistics on how many abortions occur in a year in order to justify hers as just one more. And then this, in conclusion: “But this is my body, and I don’t care about your ignorant views. When I become a mother, it will be when I choose.”

Let’s review some of what she said.

Ms. Josephine states, "I would have died” for her aborted daughter’s right to choose, “just like she died for mine." The right to choose what? Aren’t we told abortion is just the process of eliminating a mass of unwanted cells, like having a tumor excised?

But she said her daughter had “died” for her right to choose, tacit recognition that her baby was living person; that abortion ended the life of her child. In which case abortion is murder, the deliberate killing of the child she and her lover created through a willful act.

"I'm sorry, but you came at the wrong time." You “came” at the wrong time? The child decided to create itself without first checking with mom and dad? Among the three persons in this story, the child, as the creation of mom and dad, had no choice whatsoever in this situation.

However, the artfully designed words that are intended to justify what she did in fact subvert that effort. She and her boyfriend willingly indulged in a sexual act, likely unprotected. For her, abortion is nothing more than a way to be rid of the consequences of her behavior.

Abortion is not a crime only because it has not been legally established that life begins at conception or at some point prior to birth. However, Ms. Josephine admits abortion ended her child’s life.

But her statement that she lacks shame at the same time reveals the contempt she holds for the life she created, and her comfort with being able to wash away that inconvenience at will.

Once accepted as a solution for inconvenient situations, abortion takes on even more bizarre forms.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sees abortion as a means to reduce the number of poor children. 

“Frankly I had thought that at the time [Roe v Wade] was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion.” … “It makes no sense as a national policy to promote birth only among poor people.” 

That is a stunning perspective from an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and helps explain why our country is in such deep trouble today.

Planned Parenthood president thinks when life begins isn’t relevant

Many of us living today remember when pregnancy was regarded as the beginning of a new life, was usually a welcome and celebrated event, and religious people often viewed pregnancy as a gift from God. There were baby showers where the mother was treated to gifts for use after the birth of her child, and a positive air about the “blessed event.”

Abortion was considered taboo by society and was illegal, and because of the social and legal strictures, it was rare. As a result, abortions were usually performed in secret by the woman or by some shady character. It was dangerous to the mother because of the unsanitary “back alley” conditions of the procedure. A physician rarely performed an abortion, unless the life of the mother was at stake, or some other unusual situation required it.

Back then, people accepted responsibility for their behavior and took great care to prevent pregnancy until they were ready for parenthood. In those comparatively rare times when an unwanted pregnancy occurred, the man and the woman most often became parents, or perhaps the mother gave the baby up for adoption. Unwed mothers were a rarity.

Through the decades unintended and unwanted pregnancies have increased from rare episodes of bad luck and careless behavior to epidemic proportions, and instead of being seen as a reason to make changes to accommodate the new life that had been created, unwanted pregnancy is viewed today as an intrusion on the woman’s freedom, an inconvenience that demands relief, not so different from a headache or a cold. And to accommodate many women’s preference not to have the baby they have created, abortion has evolved from a rare thing to a routine procedure performed thousands of times each year. Now, many view a woman deciding to end the life of the child developing inside her as a right she may exercise as freely as the right to speak her mind.

Today, half of pregnancies among American women are unintended, and about 40 percent are terminated by abortion. Twenty-one percent of all pregnancies, excluding miscarriages, end in abortion.

In 1981, world-renowned scientists and physicians testified before a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee that life begins at conception, which was the traditional view through the centuries. However, the question of when life begins is now being questioned by abortion advocates, and knowing the exact instant that life begins after conception and before the birth of a child is an important, if difficult to identify, piece of data to determine the point after which abortion becomes murder.

However, Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards thinks when life begins is not important.

Appearing on Fusion TV's America with Jorge Ramos, she was asked, “For you, when does life start? When does a human being become a human being?”

“This is a question that I think will be debated through the centuries,” she said.

“But for you, what's that point?” Ramos asked.

"It is not something that I feel like is really part of this conversation,” she said. “I think every woman needs to make her own decision,” she finally said.

"But why would it be so controversial for you to say when do you think life starts?" Ramos pressed.

"I don't know that it's controversial. I don't know that it's really relevant to the conversation," she replied.

“I'm the mother of three children,” she finally said. “For me, life began when I delivered them,” adding that her children have “probably” been the most important thing in her life since their birth.

“But that was my own personal, that's my own personal decision,” she said.

The abortion industry certainly does not want to know the absolute point at which life begins, because then it would be clear that aborting a fetus is at some point killing a child. That would not be a good thing for those who perform abortions for money, for organizations like Planned Parenthood that get federal money for advising women on unwanted pregnancies, or for those who think women should have a right to end an inconvenient pregnancy at anytime.

From this less strict attitude about when life begins all sorts of horrors might evolve. And they have.

For example, some Planned Parenthood officials have gone so far as to advocate infanticide, giving women the right to end their child’s life after it has been born.

And only a little further down that slippery slope are the preposterous acts of Kermit Gosnell, the disgraced and imprisoned former physician who was in the habit of ending the lives of babies who were inconsiderate enough to survive his efforts to abort them by clipping their spinal cords after they were born alive. He is in prison for life after being convicted of murdering three babies.

An interesting sidebar to this story is that the baby-killer managed to spare himself a death sentence when he waived his right to appeal in return for a life sentence, an option millions of aborted babies never had.

It must be pointed out that all of those who support the unfettered right for women to abort their babies have already been born.

Continuing our head-long slide down the slippery slope of abortion

When people challenge and attempt to liberalize valued traditions, there is usually great concern that doing so is the first step down the "slippery slope," which ultimately leads to bad results. The “slippery slope” is considered a logical fallacy, but in the case of abortion, evidence supports that it is an apt argument.  

We started down this slope when abortion was legalized 40 years ago. If it was not the original intention, abortion certainly has become a thinly disguised mechanism for after-the-fact birth control. Pregnancy is not a mystery; we know what causes it. There are numerous ways to prevent pregnancy whenever people decide to forego the one certain way to prevent pregnancy: abstinence.

Birth control devices, while not perfect, are very dependable when used properly. However, somewhere along the way it was recognized that there were a lot of people facing the eventual birth of an unwanted child, and some thought that society was obligated to find a way to relieve these folks of having to bear responsibility for their actions. Abortion became the solution for unwanted pregnancy, under the curious label, "a woman's right to choose."

Each now-pregnant woman and her male partner had the right to choose to abstain from sexual intercourse and chose not to. They had the right to choose to use birth control, and either chose not to, or chose not to use it consistently or correctly, or it just didn't work one time. In the great majority of cases, birth control measures do work when used properly, and that means that in the majority of cases the right to use birth control actually was not chosen.

The "right to choose" is little more than a mechanism for prospective parents to avoid creating a child at an inconvenient time: In 2004 fully 74 percent of women getting an abortion said a child would "dramatically change their life."

Since Roe v Wade imposed legalized abortion on the nation in 1973, 55 million abortions have been performed, and approximately 1.2 million future Americans were aborted in each of the last several years. Nearly half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended, and nearly half of those are aborted.

Planned Parenthood is the nation's most prolific provider of abortions, performing about 1-in-4 total U.S. abortions each year, chalking up 334,000 in 2011. It received $542 million from taxpayers that year, about 40 percent of its total revenues.

And since 1973 we have witnessed the slide down that slippery slope. It has been considered acceptable by a significant number of Americans to end a pregnancy anywhere from the morning after to the day when the baby should be born healthy and ready for life.

We have been treated to horrors such as partial birth abortion where the baby is allowed to be born, but not completely, with part of the child still in the birth canal so that a butcher with MD or DO after their name can kill the child before it is "born." This nefarious procedure takes hair-splitting to a new level.

A year ago a giant slide down the slippery slope occurred when two Australian ethicists – Alberto Giubilini with Monash University in Melbourne, and Francesca Minerva at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne – provided an answer to the question, "When does a fetus become a person?" Their answer: it doesn’t matter. They argued in the online edition of the Journal of Medical Ethics that if abortion of a fetus is allowable, so, too, should be the “termination” of a newborn.

This cold-blooded idea has now infected the United States. That same concept appeared in testimony at a Florida legislative committee that was considering a bill to require abortionists to provide medical care to an infant who survives an abortion and is moving on the table and struggling for life. A Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates lobbyist endorsed the right to "post-birth abortion." The lobbyist, Alisa LaPolt Snow, stunned legislators when she said that her organization believes the decision to kill an infant who survives a failed abortion "should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician."

This is nothing more than pre-meditated murder, and is not so different from first responders executing a seriously injured accident victim. And just how far does this "right" to post-birth abortion extend? The first birthday? The difficult years of adolescence? Or perhaps it will extend many years after the botched abortion when under as-yet-unknown elements of the Affordable Care Act bureaucrats may be in the position to determine that it will cost too much to keep an elderly patient alive.

Fortunately, the tide appears to be turning against the grizzly practice of abortion. Last June a Gallop poll showed that 50 percent identified themselves as "pro-life" compared to 41 percent who said they were "pro-choice." And, 51 percent said abortion is morally wrong, compared to 38 percent who said it is morally acceptable. And some state legislatures have passed tighter restrictions on the procedure.

This attitude favoring preserving life and restoring personal responsibility is one small ray of light in America's otherwise darkening culture.

Conception to birth -- visualized

Using new imaging and computer technology, supported with graphic images, Alexander Tsiaras has created a video illustrating what occurs in the human development process from conception to birth.

This video is fascinating and instructive.

Comments are invited - Click here to comment

An update from somewhere near the bottom of the slippery slope

We not infrequently hear an admonition against taking a particular action because doing so is the first step down a slippery slope that leads to disaster, or at least to some negative situation.

Over the last several decades we have seen a steady decline in what once was called “morality,” a concept increasingly regarded as something from the Stone Age; senseless restrictions hampering the good times of no rules and no responsibilities.

Perhaps it is a natural human reaction to want total freedom to do as one pleases, but wisdom and past experience show us that a society cannot succeed without some rules. However, social rules do not carry fines or jail time; breaking the rules brought only shame and having people whisper as you walked by. And as more and more people chose to ignore certain rules, the whispering faded out and the rules and the stigma attached to them gradually disappeared.

Without significant social penalties, the predictable results of casual and often careless sex increased, the most serious being unwanted pregnancy. Back in the day, when a female got pregnant, usually she had the baby and became a mother, and the male involved became a father. But that was inconvenient for one or both parents, so along with the loosening of sexual customs came a relaxed sense of responsibility for one’s actions, and unwed mothers and absentee fathers grew in number, along with children put up for adoption.

But having a baby you didn’t want was inconvenient for the mother, so abortion that was once used only when medical conditions warranted, such as when the health of the mother was at risk, became after-the-fact birth control.

Abortion advocates argue that a fetus, at least in the early stages, is not a human being, only a mass of cells. Therefore, relieving the woman of this tumor-like inhabitant is not killing a child, because it is a “nonviable tissue mass,” not a child.  The determination that a fetus is not a child is based upon the unresolved question of just when the fetus becomes a person: at conception, at viability (however that is defined) or at birth.

Now, two Australian ethicists – Alberto Giubilini with Monash University in Melbourne, and Francesca Minerva at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne – have provided an answer to the question: it doesn’t matter. They argue in the latest online edition of the Journal of Medical Ethics  that if abortion of a fetus is allowable, so, too, should be the “termination” of a newborn. This is what can happen when you climb onto that “slippery slope.”

And what is the philosophical, ethical justification for what once was considered cold-blooded murder? “[If] circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible.”

In the abstract to the article Giubilini and Minerva explain that “abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus' health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.” The authors say that adoption is not a viable alternative “because the mother might suffer psychological distress from giving her child up for adoption,” but not from killing it, apparently.

In the enlightened 21^st century, merely being human does not mean that humans have an actual right to life.

Our two ethicists conclude their article: “If criteria such as the costs (social, psychological, economic) for the potential parents are good enough reasons for having an abortion even when the fetus is healthy, if the moral status of the newborn is the same as that of the infant and if neither has any moral value by virtue of being a potential person, then the same reasons which justify abortion should also justify the killing of the potential person when it is at the stage of a newborn.” Being a newborn, you see, is just another stage along the way to becoming an “actual” person.

In their intellectual wanderings through the amoral desert, the authors discovered that there are “actual people” and persons who are not “actual people,” but merely “potential persons.”

Only a few decades ago this discussion would never have gotten out of the padded room in which it was hatched; today it is considered reasonable, perhaps even enlightened.

However, when a newborn is expendable on the whim of its mother, for any reason or no reason, and is considered less important than some endangered critter like the Clanwilliam Redfin, the Zerene Fritillary, or the Coffin Cave Mold Beetle, how long will it be before “no longer viable persons” with some disease, a mental or physical disability, or who are merely too old to take care of themselves, will also be disposable?

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The Blogging Life

I finally found a little time today to do a little blogging, something I used to do pretty regularly, but of late have had precious little time for. Used to be that I would post at least every two or three days, and even every day for short periods. I would visit the blogs of those on my list, leave comments, and respond to comments on Observations.

What changed? Well, one thing was the election came and went, and as I got more and more involved in writing and communicating about the campaign, when it was all over, I just didn’t have the energy or the wherewithal to continue at that pace.

Another thing was that somehow my time for such “personal” things has shrunk, partly due to the time I spend researching and writing my newspaper column and posting that on several sites. Sometimes, the weekly column is the only thing I put on Observations in a week.

I always wanted Observations to be a site with heavy traffic, but for various reasons it never got there. The biggest reason is that it takes a lot of time and energy and attention to keep fresh material on the site, and I just didn’t have enough of what it takes. Then there’s that matter of putting things up that a lot of people want to read.

Today, I managed to visit my list of blogs to see what everyone was up to, and found that two of my blogger buddies have decided within the last few days to suspend, or perhaps to completely quit posting, and another one has cut way back, due to having decided to continue her education. This is actually the third time my list has has gone through such a transformation. I guess it’s just the way things go. Each time it has happened, I rebuild the list, adding new blogs to replace the inactive ones.

And, come to think of it, this period of relative inactivity of mine might have been interpreted as me doing what my three buddies have done.

It is my hope to return to my former posting habits, both the frequency and the variety of posts.

Time will tell.

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And Now for Something Completely Different

As many of you know, Diane is a great cook, and both of us enjoy cooking and eating good food.

Yesterday, she called just before leaving work to talk about dinner, and offered a suggestion: Quick Chicken Panzanella. She stopped by the store, and brought the ingredients, or the closest thing to it, and we proceeded to make the dish.

It was fantastic, and I highly recommend it, with some notes I’ll put at the end.

Quick Chicken Panzanella

Start to Finish: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

1 14-1/2-oz. can diced tomatoes with green pepper, celery, and onions

3 Tbsp. olive oil

1 2- to 2-1/4-lb. whole roasted chicken

4 cups cubed Italian bread

2 medium cucumbers, halved lengthwise and sliced

1 cup torn fresh basil or spinach

Directions:

1. Spoon off 2 tablespoons of tomato liquid. Combine with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil, dash salt, and pepper; set aside. Remove meat from roasted chicken. Cut into pieces.

2. In skillet stir bread cubes in 2 tablespoons hot oil over medium heat 5 minutes or until golden. Remove. Add diced tomatoes; toss. Divide on plates. Add cucumbers, chicken, and basil. Pass tomato-oil mixture. Makes 4 servings.

3. Pantry Ingredients: oil, salt, pepper.

Notes:

1. We were able to find diced tomatoes with green peppers and onions, but not with celery. It didn’t matter.

2. We also only made a half recipe, and still had more than we needed.

3. We used a store-bought roasted chicken.

4. We used fresh basil, and can’t imagine using spinach instead.

It was very, very good, and I encourage everyone to try it. And, let me know what you think.

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CHOICES: A Program to Aid Young People in Finding Their Way

An organization of which I am a member is participating in the CHOICES program to talk with 9^th grade students for about an hour on two successive days about their future. So, on the night of the North Carolina and Indiana Democrat primary elections, I am studying how to present this material to these young people the next two days.

I attended the training session on Monday, expecting to have at least a week before I was thrust before these young people. But, as fate would have it, I ended up with only two days to get ready, and really only one day, as I found out today that tomorrow is the day. Since I am trained as a teacher, I suppose I have a couple of steps on someone who hasn’t had that experience, so I guess I ought to quit complaining and get busy reviewing the materials.

I am looking forward to this experience, and I think it will be a positive thing, both for the students and for me, but I really wish I had more prep time.

All Hands On Deck!

Well, tonight was the first Deck Night of the season. We did some yardwork this afternoon, getting rid of shrubs that had outlived their usefulness and were causing problems, still fighting the leaves of fall, and then got ready to fix dinner. We grilled some nice, thick pork chops treated with a Calphalon Steak and Chop rub, had some asparagus, corn on the cob and ciabatta toast, and, of course, some wine.

We have spent a little time on the front porch, just sitting there talking and taking in the out of doors, but tonight was the first Deck Night of the season. We pulled out the cushions, cleaned off a small table, dusted off the chair frames, and had dinner on a plate in our lap on the deck. It wasn’t the full scale deal, with the big table and taking the stereo out there, but it was still very relaxing and comfortable.

The back deck is mostly private, blocked off from the street to the south and no neighbors within sight to the north. The house is to the east and the only possible “spy” is the lady that lives on the hill above the tiered back area to the west; you know the one, the one that collects all the leaves in the fall. The lady that lives up there—the house is about 30 feet away and 20 higher than the deck—is elderly and we never see her in the yard, so she isn’t a factor. So, we can sit out there and enjoy the birds and the trees and whatever else is going on without human interference. The photo is from two years ago; we haven't gotten this far yet this year.

The deck is one of my favorite places to spend time. I sometimes take the laptop out there and work on the Web pages I manage, or write the newsletter that I edit, and do other tasks. It ain’t fancy, but it sure is comfortable, and I’m glad that it’s that time of year again.

The Week That Was

A couple of days ago I posted a whiny rant about how horrible this past week was going to be. It was all of that, and more. But now it is over, and I survived.

Brad let me down by failing to be sympathetic, and added insult to injury when he called me a “wealthy southern gentleman,” I mean, how low can you go?

Buff expressed the idea that I would be able to handle it; I appreciated his confidence and his encouragement.

Steve, bless his heart, let me know that he has it worse than I, and I think he was right about that.

Nuri, the sweet lady that she is, understood why I like to visit the Caribbean.

Today the main problem was stress, with two performances. If you aren’t a performer/musician, it may be a little difficult to identify, but you always want to do well. Being the leader of this jazz band is a mixed blessing. I don’t get to play much, which is what I like, and why I was in the band to start with, so it’s frustrating from that point, alone. Right after our dress rehearsal Thursday, one of our trumpet players, the guy who is the best soloist, told me that he wasn’t going to play on the concert. He’s 85 years old and has some health problems, so I fully understood where he was coming from, but nevertheless, it was another screwdriver in the gears.

So, in addition to running the band today, I had to sight read his parts. I did get to play, though, and I count that as a blessing. The concert went pretty well, and everyone seemed happy. Hallelujah!!!

Thanks, good friends! And now on to other things.