Freedom to Control Your Own Body

 

Not wanting my inspirational blog, Truth Is..., to become saturated with personal rants, please allow me to use this outlet to blow off a little steam.

I am grieved at the current political ads that use the phrase "the freedom to control your own body" as the patriotic-sounding code words for "the ability to kill an unborn human."

This is not a matter of religious faith, but of basic biology:

Some may say, "That's right, and I have the right to say whether I want to incubate someone else with my body."

Yes, you do, but the time to make that decision is before you get pregnant. Because the minute you conceive, you are now dealing with another person's rights, not just your own. You have every right in the world to flail your arms around at random, but that right ends at the point where your arms come in contact with someone else's nose.

You do not have the right to harm someone else, and that pre-born human is someone else, with their own DNA, fingerprints, and heartbeat.

Calling abortion "personal reproductive rights" does not change the fact that it ends a human's life.

Some may say, "But it's just a blob of tissue...a product of conception. It's not really human, is it?"

Again, I'm not espousing a religious belief, but basic biology. When two humans have sex and the female becomes pregnant, the product of that conception is human; no different from you or me except for their size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

So, my dear political candidate, when you smile into the camera and tell me I should vote for you because of your plans to uphold a woman's freedom to control her own body...it makes my stomach churn, my eyes water, and my heart grieve.

Oh, Rob!: Books I Read in 2024, Vol. XXI

 

THE OFFICIAL DICK VAN DYKE SHOW BOOK: The Definitive History of Television's Most Enduring Comedy
Vince Waldron

What an unexpected pleasure to read a book on a subject about which I thought I knew everything, only to find out that I didn't. A very serious contribution to understanding what really were the best years of my theatrical life. I'd say it was a wonderfully scholarly work  -  but I won't, because I don't want to scare people away from a book that's as much fun to read as this is.     - Carl Reiner (Produce/Creator of The Dick Van Dyke Show)

I bought this book for our recent trip to Wyoming. I figured it would be a good choice for something I could pick up and put down with no need to keep a plot line straight or follow a logical exploration of a subject. I was half right. It was easy to pick up...but kind of hard to put down. Because of my level of admiration for the show, I was easily caught up in all the behind-the-scenes tales and "making of" legends. 

First Line: By six o'clock on the evening of January 20, 1961, the line of people waiting outside Hollywood's Desilu Cahuenga studios was already more than two hundred strong.

Page 56 / Line 5: Without a pause, Deacon uttered, "Yeecchh!"

A Good Line from Somewhere in the Middle: It smelled like some silent movie star had died in there.

Last Line: "It was," he answered, "like going to a lovely party that you never wanted to end."

Real Life Is Real Messy: Books I Read in 2024, Vol. XX

 

JESUS LAND: A Memoir
Julia Scheeres

Julia and her adopted brother, David, are 16 years old. Julia is white. David is black. It is the mid-1980's and their family has just moved to rural Indiana, a landscape of cottonwood trees, trailer parks, and an all-encompassing racism. At home are a distant mother  -  more involved with her church's missionaries than her own children  -  and a violent father. In this riveting and heartrending memoir, Scheeres takes us from the Midwest to a place beyond imagining: surrounded by natural beauty, the Escuela Caribe  -  a religious reform school in the Dominican Republic  -  is characterized by a disciplinary regime that extracts repentance from its students by any means necessary. Julia and David strive to make it through these ordeals and their tale is relayed here with startling immediacy, extreme candor, and wry humor.

I read that description on the back cover and purchased this book on the opening day of a friend's local bookstore, Niche Books, in beautiful downtown Lakeville, Minnesota. Having grown up in rural Indiana, I felt a connection. Having a deep faith in Jesus and a respect for church things, I was interested to hear about the author's experiences. What I didn't bargain for was how engrossing her story is, which reads like a novel. Did I say engrossing? Maybe I should have said heartbreaking. It's hard to believe this is a true story about her actual experience at an infuriatingly abusive-in-the-name-of-religion "school" in the DR in the 80s. So sad that what feels like a work of fiction that, stereotypically, presents all the "religious" people as cruel, egocentric monsters, is an accurate account of the author's childhood and adolescence.

First Line: It's just after three o'clock when we hit County Road 50.

Page 56 / Line 5: She looks like that whorish new singer, Madonna.

A Good Line from Somewhere in the Middle: Life may not be fair, but when you have someone to believe in, life can be managed, and sometimes, even miraculous.

Last Line: David, I love you.