October 29, 2012 - So yup, this last panel is what this week's worth of comics has been building to. Hennifer will probably be revisited in the future, and regular comics resume Monday.
In general, I really want to write a sympathetic pro-life protestor. In fact, I think I can write a sympathetic pro-life supporter, it's the protesting I can't wrap my head around. Being pro-life means holding a belief that every pregnancy should be brought to term regardless of circumstances that led to the pregnancy or the health risks to both mother and fetus that pregnancy and birth entail. I think a lot of good could be done by such supporters in attempting to reduce pregnancies caused by unfortunate circumstances ranging from improving the effectiveness of birth control, better sex education, and getting involved in preventing sexual assault (a great third option for anyone with conservative views on contraception and sexual education) or the same supporters could get involved researching methods to make pregnancy safer and reducing the financial burden of medical expenses from pregnancy.
Standing outside a clinic protesting only serves to incriminate and intimidate patients whose circumstances one unlikely fully understands. If a protestor intends to appeal to a patient on moral grounds, they'd be better served reaching the patient before they became pregnant rather than after, and if they wish to intimidate a patient how is such an action any different than verbal or, like in the comic above, physical harassment?
Women seeking abortions are very often in extremely fragile emotional states, and intimidating tactics only aggravate such emotions. Whether a woman chooses to abort or to continue the pregnancy, the goal is to help her make her decision not force one upon her. She needs support for such a decision either way, and protesting an issue with little examination of the specific circumstance supports such a decision neither way.
I'm certainly taking this notion to an extreme suggesting protest is murder. But there are a lot of hypocritical elements contained within protesting abortion and I think it frequently causes undue harm towards women which makes it at least unhealthy.
-D
In general, I really want to write a sympathetic pro-life protestor. In fact, I think I can write a sympathetic pro-life supporter, it's the protesting I can't wrap my head around. Being pro-life means holding a belief that every pregnancy should be brought to term regardless of circumstances that led to the pregnancy or the health risks to both mother and fetus that pregnancy and birth entail. I think a lot of good could be done by such supporters in attempting to reduce pregnancies caused by unfortunate circumstances ranging from improving the effectiveness of birth control, better sex education, and getting involved in preventing sexual assault (a great third option for anyone with conservative views on contraception and sexual education) or the same supporters could get involved researching methods to make pregnancy safer and reducing the financial burden of medical expenses from pregnancy.
Standing outside a clinic protesting only serves to incriminate and intimidate patients whose circumstances one unlikely fully understands. If a protestor intends to appeal to a patient on moral grounds, they'd be better served reaching the patient before they became pregnant rather than after, and if they wish to intimidate a patient how is such an action any different than verbal or, like in the comic above, physical harassment?
Women seeking abortions are very often in extremely fragile emotional states, and intimidating tactics only aggravate such emotions. Whether a woman chooses to abort or to continue the pregnancy, the goal is to help her make her decision not force one upon her. She needs support for such a decision either way, and protesting an issue with little examination of the specific circumstance supports such a decision neither way.
I'm certainly taking this notion to an extreme suggesting protest is murder. But there are a lot of hypocritical elements contained within protesting abortion and I think it frequently causes undue harm towards women which makes it at least unhealthy.
-D
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