[Today’s run: Limerock Road, 4 miles]<\/p>\n
I’ve been thinking about this some more in the past few days and it may not be completely formulated yet, so bear with me a bit.<\/p>\n
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Many states now have laws, variously called the ‘castle doctrine’ or ‘make-my-day’ laws.\u00a0 If a homeowner is on her own property and someone breaks in or attacks, that homeowner can use deadly force to stop the intrusion.<\/p>\n
One night you are lying in bed when you hear a noise.\u00a0 Someone is in your house.\u00a0 You slip out of bed and pull a shotgun out from under the dresser.\u00a0 You put the safety off.\u00a0 Quietly you creep down the hall.\u00a0 There’s someone over by the front door.\u00a0 You wonder if\u00a0 you forgot to lock the door last night.\u00a0 It goes through your mind that if you shoot someone it’s going to be a lot of trouble.\u00a0 Just think of the mess to clean up! And you know you are going to have to explain this to a lot of people.\u00a0 You see someone moving, over by the lamp.\u00a0 He’s got a knife, something shiny.\u00a0 You raise the gun and aim.<\/p>\n
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You’re a young woman of child-bearing age.\u00a0 Maybe you forgot to lock the front door, maybe not, it doesn’t matter now.\u00a0 There’s a baby in your body and whatever happens there’s a whole lot of explaining to do.\u00a0 According to the laws of our land you have the choice to kill it.\u00a0 It’s going to be messy and painful and it may ruin your life.\u00a0 Or… you can let it grow and eventually come forth: It will be messy and painful and it may ruin your life.<\/p>\n
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I agree with the pro-life position that the baby is a separate human being and deserves respect.\u00a0 Nobody asked the baby whether he or she wanted you.\u00a0 So you are both in this place together, a place of fear and uncertainty.\u00a0 But you’re the mom and you have the power and the choice.\u00a0 Your first big decision as a mom: whether the baby will live.<\/p>\n
And I’m pro-choice.\u00a0 You are allowed to make wrong choices.\u00a0 I don’t know of anybody that wants to send mothers to jail.\u00a0 So you are not going to go to jail.\u00a0 With either choice you’ll have some explaining to do, and it will be bloody and painful and it may ruin your life.<\/p>\n
I’m pro-baby.\u00a0 I like babies. They are the future.\u00a0 I wish we had more of them, not less. In one state where I lived, they passed a law that any mother who was overwhelmed could take her baby to a fire station and leave it with the firemen.\u00a0 No jail, no “unfit mother”, none of that.\u00a0 I think that is a good idea.\u00a0 But, I also think that you’ll like having a baby.\u00a0 Babies are like puppies except they are more real.\u00a0 In addition to biting and pooping, babies eventually walk and talk and turn into little people. Then big people. Maybe even people you might like.<\/p>\n
There used to be a commercial on TV when I was a kid.\u00a0 An elderly black woman, in an office building or public building,\u00a0 down on the floor on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor.\u00a0 And the story was about how she scrubbed the floor so her children could go to college.\u00a0 It might be nicer to be the kid going to college, maybe.\u00a0 If you have a baby you might be the one scrubbing the floor.\u00a0 But if you don’t have a baby, there’s nobody to scrub the floor for.\u00a0 I’m Pro-Baby.\u00a0 I think it is probably worth scrubbing the floor if you can put your baby through college.<\/p>\n
But what if your baby has Down’s Syndrome or some other problem?\u00a0 What if it’s a girl and you wanted a boy?\u00a0\u00a0 (Some people kill the runt in a litter of dogs.)\u00a0 I’m Pro-Baby, I think every one of them has something I like.<\/p>\n
The best thing you can do for your baby is to have a stable household with a mother and father, lots of time together, good medical care, safety from all the troubles of the world.\u00a0 But most babies don’t get all of that and they seem to do mostly ok, particularly if they stick together.\u00a0 Your situation might be the two of you on your own and have to have a stranger baby-sit while you work 20 hours a day.\u00a0 I’m still Pro-Baby.<\/p>\n
In the final extreme, maybe you’ll need to have someone else care for your baby, give her a good home, more than you can do.\u00a0 I’m Pro-Baby.\u00a0 Bring on the baby.<\/p>\n
So, here you are and now there’s a screaming baby boy on the living room floor with a “Happy New Year!” banner on his chest and you are standing there holding the shotgun.\u00a0 What are you going to do?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[Today’s run: Limerock Road, 4 miles] I’ve been thinking about this some more in the past few days and it may not be completely formulated yet, so bear with me a bit. Many states now have laws, variously called the ‘castle doctrine’ or ‘make-my-day’ laws.\u00a0 If a homeowner is on her own property […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-thoughts","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3110"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3114,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3110\/revisions\/3114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}