President Bush’s decision to sign a bill a few weeks ago banning a late stage abortion procedure was infuriating. I didn’t comment on it here, because I really didn’t want to get in a long drawn out argument about whether or not government should be trying to repeal parts of rights granted to women under Roe v Wade. But thought I would take the time to share an excerpt from Anna Quindlen’s November 7th column in Newsweek titled: Not A Womb In The House. Her words perfectly sum up what I’m feeling about this issue.

I am so tired of abortion. Discussions of it are the most meretricious in modern public policy. Even as the president was vowing to sign a bill that would outlaw a procedure that accounts for a handful of the terminations in America, he was opining that the country was not yet ready to make abortion illegal. He was using one hand to corral the right wing and another to wave off the concerns of moderates. How dare the father of two daughters play politics with the womb?
I am so tired of abortion. Its opponents too often have a hidden agenda. Some of the men at that bill-signing support not only a ban on all abortions, but the rolling back of other rights for the women of America. They are people who have indicated by word and deed that modern women have forgotten their proper place. They are clergy who have twisted the word of God to turn it into an instrument of gender bigotry. And they have clearly taken note of the fact that women who can control their fertility are more able to control their future.
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I am so tired of abortion, tired of the dishonesty of the arguments, of the intractability of the conflict, mainly of the insensibility of those who pass judgment. No matter what is legislated, adjudicated or pontificated, women will continue to find a way to end pregnancies that they cannot bear to turn, by the hospitality of their own bodies, into children. They always have; they always will. Knitting needles, caustic chemicals, medical residents, unlicensed doctors, sympathetic nurses, bootleg curettes.
Let those old men try to comfort the parents and the children of those women after they are dead. Let them offer them their version of the words of God and see how much good they do. Let them say, “I understand.” They will never understand.

Nuff said!