Letters to the Editor
melthough
Published Letters: 1212 Editor's Choice: 98
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@reality
[Read the article: And babies make 16]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]re: premature babies - "critical health issues (not to mention economic issues) that are going to face the mother and children in multiple birth situations"
I suppose we don't have these issues when we adopt? Even if you get an newborn, he or she is not likely to have been the benficiary of high-end prenatal care. And there are many developmental and mental health issues that plague adoptive families, regardless of the child's age when s/he comes home. Maybe they don't compare with severe neurological disorders, but as I said, severe neurological disorders are not the everyday norm every time someone takes Clomid or gets implanted with IVF embryos.
And I am not really arguing about overpopulation. Though it is a concern of mine, I think shrinking your family's footprint is the key. Not necessarily having fewer children, but using fewer resources as a family. I am arguing against people who look at women trying to experience pregnancy and birth and say, "Why don't you just adopt? Look at all those poor children who could be your baby!" It doesn't take them long to get to the next idea, which is that it's unethical for infertile women to be trying to give birth instead of adopting these poor, helpless children.
For those of us who can do it easily (and I am one of them), the chance to experience pregnancy and birth seems like a natural right. Why do we get so pissed at other women for wanting it? If adoption is so fabulous and our basic urge to give birth is so easy to override, why don't we fertile ones do the adopting ourselves? It just doesn't make sense to me that that burden is always left to infertile couples, as though they are the only people doing something wrong here.
I agree with you about these particular sets of multiples - six in one is insane, honestly - but you will notice that the conversation took a decided turn against ALL women seeking ALL fertility treatments, with the usual high-horse talk about why they don't just adopt already. I want fertility treatments to be available and safe, and I trust individual women to be able to decide when they have gone too far. There are a lot of people making stupid decisions, but we can't blame infertility treatments generally for that stupidity. I am interested in the regulations this industry may need in order to make induced fertility safer, but these do not appear to be appropriate case studies for talking about that. It's too much fun to lay into the mothers for wanting to give birth.
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That sounds great, reality
[Read the article: And babies make 16]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I hope you get an answer from them.
I recall going for the morning-after pills (back when that meant a super-dose of birth control instead of a special drug), and I had to sign a paper saying I would have an abortion if I became pregnant despite using the pills. I don't see why this situation should be any different. If you're not willing to have any kind of abortion, you should only be permitted to try one or two embryos at a time.
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I say we overthrow their country
[Read the article: X-rated executions in Iran]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Isn't that what I'm supposed to think when I hear stuff like this? Iran's repressive ways sure have been in the news a lot lately.... Does anyone think this is an accident? Hey, I've got an idea. How about if, instead of letting the government kill the porn star, we just go kill ALL of them? In order to save them from themselves, of course....
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I am not impressed
[Read the article: Beyond the Multiplex]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"[M]ost of us don't want to know much about abortions, about how they are actually conducted and what the results really look like."
Yeah, most of also don't know what natural birth looks like. Or heart surgery. Or war. If we want to know, we can find out without random strangers shoving it in our fucking faces.
And I think those pix you're advocating we look at were not actually pix of aborted fetuses. Please do your research before offering them credence again.
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108 Calories
[Read the article: Lose weight! Feel great! Well, maybe not]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You burn more calories than that (128) if you walk for an hour at a snail's pace. It costs you nothing, and chances are you don't shit your pants while you're doing it.
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My own reaction surprised me
[Read the article: The hullabaloo over Digby]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We donated a small amount to the blog a year or so ago, and when we got a thank you note, I thought to myself, "Wow! What an exceptionally nice man!" When I read people's praise of her elsewhere (including Glenn Greenwald's), I thought, "AWWWW." Not exactly the reaction I would expect to have if Digby had "come out" as male; that would have been more of a mental power fist, I expect. It matters to me very much that Digby is a woman - both at an unconscious level, apparently, and at a conscious level. Most of us, despite our high-minded desires and ideals, still have different basic attitudes toward and expectations of men and women, and this was a little lesson for me in that fact. Also, I agree that having a strong voice - a voice many assumed was a man's because it is so aggressively analytical and so smart - that turns out to be a woman's voice is totally cool. I don't care about the intellectual arguments and politics on that score. It just makes me happy. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that.