Letters to the Editor
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you can make fun of clumsy activists . . .
But they're absolutely right about the Horton story being read as pro-life allegory. I've thought of it as such for a long time now.
"A person's a person, no matter how small."
If you take that seriously, you are a pro-lifer. A pro-choicer could not even let the words escape her/his lips. Unless you want to twist yourself into a philosophical pretzel.
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In the meantime,
Those morons at the Westboro Baptists Church (who by the way should be shot and dumped in a garbage dump) want to protest the funeral of the UNC-CH student body president who was murdered recently. Apparently God loves dead women. So a word to the psychochristians out there: burn in liquid plutonium hell as you watch your children get raped to death by mutant badgers. If you cross my path I will kill all of you so you can meet Jesus.
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Right On The Mark
"A person's a person no matter how small", huh? How apropos; many of those nutball right-to-lifers are some of the smallest people I've ever seen...especially their minds.
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Slogan begs the question
I am a lifelong lover of Dr. Seuss, including "Horton Hears a Who." I am strongly pro-choice and I agree that a person's a person, no matter how small! But I also happen to think that women are people and that zygotes are not.
The slogan would be cute and effective for pro-lifers (but for the opposition of Seuss and his family), except that it rather begs the question doesn't it?
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Allegorical Who
Really? I always saw "Horton" as an allegory for respecting "little people."
Or it could be about respecting our fellow creatures on the planet. Or the U.S. relationship with Japan post World War II. Seeing as Horton Hears a Who was published in 1954, either of these is more likely.
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That's not how they saw it when it was written
In 1954, when the book was written, abortion was illegal and there was no organized movement to change the law. At the time, people thought that the book was a commentary about racial equality, in the wake of the Brown v Board of Education case that was also decided that year. During the 1980's, Dr Seuss threatened a lawsuit against an anti-abortion group that was using the line from "Horton" on their office stationery. The meaning that the protesters are giving the story is not the one that the author intended, though I'm not sure if the other interpretation is correct either.
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It didn't even occur to me...
After taking my kids (ages 3, 6 and 8) to see this movie yesterday, we had a nice little discussion about that line afterwards. My kids--and I--interpret it as an affirmation of respect for all living people, no matter how "small" (or how rich they are, or how much money they have, or what their abilities are, or how "important" they seem to be)--and that all people are to be treated with respect and as if they have value. It didn't even occur to me to "go there" with the zygotes. Abortion rights, although I support them, isn't something I need to introduce into my children's universe just yet. I think it's more important that they internalize what I take is the author's original intent for the message. I hope that the anti-choicers don't poison the movie's positive message with their agenda.
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People
I agree that a person is a person, no matter how small; but an embryo and most fetuses aren't persons. They just don't have enough brain to be a person.
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To a child, the unborn baby is a person.
A very small person, unseen, who cannot be heard.
It's not too early to explain abortion to a child, unless you want to wait until he/she is old enough to understand the mental contortions you've constructed to justify your pro-choice stance.
"It's not a person. It's a fetus."
How complacent. How convenient.
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short people got
no reason to live.
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Mental contortions
I think seeing a message in a story that the author has specifically stated is not there is also a form of mental contortion.
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Any author, no matter how careful . . .
. . . may give off a message in his story that is unintended. When Seuss wrote "Horton" in 1954, the history of feminism was that it was a pro-life movement. It was only in the 1960's and 1970's that feminism turned to pro-choice.
Seuss might well have changed his mind 30 years later, or he might have not intended a pro-life message at all. Most likely the latter -- abortion was not a hot issue in 1954. But the application of the phrase, "A person's a person, no matter how small", to the pro-life viewpoint is direct.
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How Complacent? How Convenient?
No. How correct.
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well, *I* think it's an allegory for pro-gay-marriage!
How does Horton carrying around the clover undermine the lives of that sanctimonious Kangaroo and those brutish apes with their boiling oil? And yet they are hell-bent on stamping out the dust speck, the clover, and Horton himself, simply to preserve their narrow-minded perception of reality....
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Dr. Suess
Theodore "Dr. Suess" Giesel was an inveterate satirist and a genius at creating charming nonsensical stories to delight the kiddies, but, if the adult reading the stories to the children were astute enough, they could discern the underlying ridicule of stilted, ridiculous and outrageous mores held by the anal majority of the times. Apparently, his widow is of a like mind, and should tell the anti-abortionists to stifle. The good doctor, were he alive, would probably immediately pen a new story titled "I'm Just Anti-Minding-Other-People's-Business", featuring bizarre characters having enormous noses.