Mark Hemingway links to something that is bizarre, sad, and completely expected if you think about it.
This is the story of a young woman’s decision to have an abortion and to throw a baby shower like party to gather donations with which to pay for it.
It is interesting to see that the author, who is apparently someone who accepts all the premises necessary for such an event, still has trouble navigating the explosive emotional minefield involved.
Even though I thought the presence of a young child at an abortion party was a little bizarre, nobody else seemed to acknowledge (or care about) this contradiction. Instead, the rest of the guests just took turns fawning over him, exchanging high fives and swooshing him through the air. He, along with everyone else, was having a blast.
…..
…….I saw Maggie’s boyfriend, sitting near the kitchen, wearing rainbow suspenders and looking uncomfortably alone. As it turns out, he had been the object of a lot of vitriol from Maggie’s friends — women who thought that he should not have had anything to do with the abortion. Both he and Maggie had been saddened about this reaction because they had made the decision together. When we talked, his sentences spilled out in quick little jumbles, like scattered puzzle pieces. His eyes stayed focused on a point behind me. He looked as if he’d like to be somewhere else.Maggie, too, looked less than excited. A few days beforehand, one of her friends had asked her to have the abortion in Ohio. When Maggie insisted on bringing her boyfriend along, the friend told her not to bother coming. Maggie was being shown a great deal of respect, certainly. But she told me she couldn’t help but feel as though her pregnancy had been “hijacked” by women who felt like her inclusion of a man in the decision was weak or wrong. This was a surprise to me, but I didn’t exactly know how to weigh in.
….
I did, however, think the extent to which Maggie’s friends were eager to vilify her partner was peculiar. These were liberal people, after all — people whose views on sex were worlds away from anything someone might consider “modest.” I couldn’t help but notice how aggressive and, for lack of a better term, ‘male’ their attitudes became when confronted with the issue of a woman’s right to choose. It was almost as if, in the process of upholding an ideal of openness and acceptance, they had fallen victim to the same forces they were trying to critique.But could I blame them for responding with such anger? No way. I knew many of them had experienced the most hurtful forms of structural sexism — the kinds I will never see. The kinds that that disguise themselves as “the norm.” These women, who had only recently begun to unravel the ways their voices had been excluded from relationships, dialogues and society in general, had every right to respond with anger. I imagine it would have been nearly impossible not to.
emphasis added
What can you say about something like this? Do you see how lost and lonely these folks are?
It is interesting that even through his brainwashed politically correct haze, the author sees the contradiction in these liberal people being intolerant of the involvement of a male in this process. Of course, he immediately decides that the women misbehaving have “every right” to act this way.
Just an amazingly good window into a slice of the world around us.
How do you bring the gospel to people like these?