Most Depressing Day...

Sez here that a researcher has scientifically proven January 24th is the most depressing day of the year. As if to prove it I was brought bumping back down to earth, after a thoroughly cool weekend. Aside from my 45-minute commute taking more like 2 hours, and then a long day at work, two articles in the Times jolted me back into my depressing sense of how scary things are getting for those of us in the minority-by-a-whisker set these days. Anti-abortion marchers braving the cold & being cheered on (if only by phone) by their president, and certain senators announcing that they are still planning to push for a constitutional ban on gay marriage (even though W seems to be happy to let that one drift away now that he's finished using the gay community to achieve his political ends - sort of like all those terror alerts leading up to the election just died out afterwards, anybody else notice that?).

Can't take both at once. This being the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I'll stick to that one. I'm sure I'll provide a gay-marriage posting soon - I'm not gay but I've got a lot of gay friends who feel really used & hated & I hate seeing them being vilified like this by people who have probably never met a real gay person in their life (or at least a gay person who wasn't afraid to be him or herself in the presence of a closed-minded bigot), it's just not fair.

A little net-surfing & you can find all the arguments ever made, so I won't try to take that tack. However - I will share a thought (wait...if a thought is shared on a secret blog that nobody reads - is it shared? hmmm) that has crossed my mind pretty much anytime I've heard about anti-abortion activities ever since I was old enough to have thoughts on the issue.

Quite simply -

How many of these protestors would be protesting if THEY - individually & personally, not just as taxpayers - had to bear the consequences were Roe v. Wade to be overturned?

Just think about it -what if it was simply a fact that overturning of Roe v. Wade would only happen simultaneously with a ruling that anyone who attended or supported that or any other anti-abortion rally (note - including Bush) was AUTOMATICALLY REQUIRED to help a woman - one who for whatever reason is really in a bad situation to have a baby but who doesn't have the option not to anymore - through her pregnancy? I'm talking the WORKS here - making sure she has proper pre-natal care, being there to support her mentally & physically when she's feeling tired and sick and enormous, being there when she gives birth, helping her through recovery, making sure that she still has a job to go back to afterwards, and then ADOPTING THE BABY and being ready to be that child's parent for the rest of his or her life. No loopholes, all protesters on a registry, ready to be chosen by lot do their duty.

How many of those protesters would be out there then?

Nowhere near as many, I would bet. Easy enough to force your beliefs on others when you aren't likely to pay for the consequences of doing so.

And there would be even less if you got purely theoretical (and I do mean PURELY theoretical, we must include the anti-abortion guys here - no evading consequences based on the accident of gender, gents) & added actually going through pregnancy, labor & birth on behalf of the woman whose right to choose not to has been taken away.

add that as a requirement for all anti-abortion protesters - how many would protest then?

Very very few, I'd imagine.

Now - the ones that would be willing to accept those conditions? I might still disagree with them - but I'd have grant them at least some respect for their willingness to shape their lives to their principals, not just mouth words.