Safe, Legal and Rare no more

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/25/us/politics/abortion-laws-2020-democrats.html
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The most striking change, beyond individual policies, is how unapologetic candidates’ tone on abortion rights has become.
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Advocates have traditionally said they support the right to choose abortion, not abortion itself, and Democrats have said it should be “safe, legal and rare.” Public debate has commonly centered on procedures after 20 weeks’ gestation, which account for less than 1.5 percent of abortions. The discussion has often been on opponents’ terms.
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Now, almost every candidate says the next president should actively reframe the debate. Their language focuses on health care, bodily autonomy and, at times, even the idea of abortion as a positive force enabling women to control their lives and increase their economic security.
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“Abortion is health care, and health care is a human right,” Elizabeth Warren wrote in her survey response. In the last debate, she argued that abortion rights were “also economic rights.”
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Only Tulsi Gabbard, Joe Sestak and Marianne Williamson now say abortion should be “safe, legal and rare” — a phrase, popularized by President Bill Clinton and repeated by Hillary Clinton, that reflected a search for common ground with people not fully supportive of abortion rights.
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The rest of the 2020 candidates sidestepped or rejected the “rare” part. Bernie Sanders, for instance, wrote, “Abortion should be safe, legal and accessible to every person who chooses it.”
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Why did we fail in Afghanistan?

 We didn't do this in Japan:

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/did-gender-studies-lose-afghanistan/

So, alongside the billions for bombs went hundreds of millions for gender studies in Afghanistan. According to US government reports, $787 million was spent on gender programs in Afghanistan, but that substantially understates the actual total, since gender goals were folded into practically every undertaking America made in the country.

A recent report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) broke down the difficulties of the project. For starters, in both Dari and Pastho there are no words for ‘gender’. That makes sense, since the distinction between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ was only invented by a sexually-abusive child psychiatrist in the 1960s, but evidently Americans were caught off-guard. 

Things didn’t improve from there. Under the US’s guidance, Afghanistan’s 2004 constitution set a 27 percent quota for women in the lower house — higher than the actual figure in America! A strategy that sometimes required having women represent provinces they had never actually been to. Remarkably, this experiment in ‘democracy’ created a government few were willing to fight for, let alone die for.

The initiatives piled up one after another. Do-gooders established a ‘National Masculinity Alliance’, so a few hundred Afghan men could talk about their ‘gender roles’ and ‘examine male attitudes that are harmful to women’.

...

Police facilities included childcare facilities for working mothers, as though Afghanistan’s medieval culture had the same needs as 1980s Minneapolis. The army set a goal of 10 percent female participation, which might make sense in a Marvel movie, but didn’t to devout Muslims. Even as America built an Afghan army that ended up collapsing in days, and a police force whose members frequently became highwaymen, it always made sure to execute its gender goals.

But all this wasn’t just a stupid waste of money. It routinely actively undermined the ‘nation-building’ that America was supposed to be doing. According to an USAID observer, the gender ideology included in American aid routinely caused rebellions out in the provinces, directly causing the instability America was supposedly fighting. To get Afghanistan’s parliament to endorse the women’s rights measures it wanted, America resorted to bribing them. Soon, bribery became the norm for getting anything done in the parliament.

vax the teens?

 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/03/uk-rules-out-covid-vaccinations-for-children

The UK government’s vaccines watchdog has decided there is not enough evidence to recommend the rollout of Covid vaccines to all 12- to 15-year-olds, but has held open the possibility of ministers seeking other advice to go ahead nonetheless.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said that while the health gains from vaccinating the entire age group was seen as greater than the risks, “the margin of benefit is considered too small to support universal vaccination of healthy 12 to 15-year-olds at this time”.

One issue with expanding jabs more widely is the very small risk of myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation, in children who receive the vaccine. While this is extremely rare, and children tend to recover quickly, there was uncertainty about any longer term effects, with further research needed.

PRO-LIFE FEMINIST

https://bothlivesmatter.org/stories/bexs-story-i-am-a-pro-life-feminist

Abortion is a tool of male oppression. These words are not my own but I do subscribe to them when abortion is used not to save women’s lives but to control them. These words were penned by our feminist foremothers, Susan B. Antony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton who put it quite eloquently when they said, when women have been treated for so long as property, it is degrading that they should treat their own children as chattels. 

First wave feminists were adamantly opposed to abortion, it was perceived as the ultimate exploitation of women. The very roots of the feminist movement are indeed pro-life. Abortion enables men who disrespect women to continue their objectification, to see them as play things that they can use and discard at their leisure without any accountability on the man’s part. There are women worldwide owed billions in unpaid child support as fatherhood is becoming more and more disconnected. Women pay the price when men are not taught, or do not face up to, their responsibilities.

To accept the pro-choice stance and feminism as a truism is a dangerous myth. Traditionally feminism has lent its voice to the oppressed and marginalised in society, obviously including but not confined to women, and rejects the use of force to control or destroy another human being. Feminism appeals for peace and speaks out against violence, yet abortion is a violent act. In order to terminate a pregnancy a heartbeat must be stopped, bones must be broken and organs must be ruptured. These uncomfortable and hard truths are contradictory to the feminist philosophy. 

Given that for so long women were dehumanised, seen as inferior and oppressed it seems bizarre that women should dehumanise the unborn. The oppressed should never become the oppressor. Our stance on abortion continues to be used as a litmus test for one’s leftist-feminist credentials. The pro-choice movement, which focuses on ‘my body, my life, my choice’ seems to have more in common with the Libertarian ultra-right-wing ideology of individualism, autonomy and free choice than it does with feminism which grew from a ideology which emphasises the protection of the weak, solidarity and community.