University of Virginia Library

Michael Russell

Questioning 'The Right To Life'

As a member of the
Charlottesville Right to Life
Committee (I assume membership
is open to anyone concerned with
the issue of life), I have just a few
comments on the recent
proliferation of discussion and
chastisement around the issue of
abortion.

I must confess that I am
uncertain where I stand in the
question of legalizing and licencing
abortion, there are many germane
inquiries which have to be made,
and issues exposed, if one is to
judge.

Sex The Problem

Abortion is not the problem, it
is only an issue. Sex is the
problem. Overpopulation has
undercut the purpose of procreative
sex. We no longer have a need for
people, unless one accepts the view
that nature overpopulates a species
in order that positive and
progressive mutations might occur.
We are left with sexuality as an
activity in a world with no purpose
(necessarily) other than personal
gratification.

Gratification, however, has led
repeatedly to a standard of
behavior that castigates a woman if
she doesn't co-operate and despises
her if she does, leaving the burden
of children upon her. It's not bad
enough that women are exposed to
the psychosis of insecure men, but
that are forced to carry an
unwanted fetus with them and then
care for the development of an
unwanted human being is a real and
serious problem. The solution lies
with woman asserting their control
and men controlling their lusts.

My first suggestion is to the men
of the Charlottesville Right to Life
Committee. They should logically
abstain from intercourse until they
have taken precautions to insure
non-fertilization (I would
recommend, in the case where
abstention would seriously impair
their self image, a vasectomy).

My second hassle with members
of this committee is their rather
narrow and bigoted perspective of
the problem of abortion. From
what I can gather from their
tirades, they oppose abortion
because it is murder, it terminates a
life, even before that life is fully
viable. Nevertheless, if not as a
body, than as individuals, they
believe in selective and arbitrary
murder. Aside from the political
questions involved in Vietnam.
including political terrorism, the use
of napalm and defoliants by the
United States is aborting thousands
of Children every year, and
maiming and retarding thousands of
others.

Sterile Rationalization

I just cannot understand the
pompous, pretentious dribble these
Right to Lifers drool when they
tacitly and sometimes actively
condone the continuation of this
wanton and premeditated murder.
They have, whether they admit it
or not, (and they'll hide behind
rationalizations of political
necessity and creeping communism
and the rest of the "Hogwash"
using sterile rationalization akin to
those employed by people taken
upon themselves the prerogative of
God in deeming that it is expedient
for some people to die, and
necessary for others to live.

Establish Themselves Judges

Their sermonizing is bankrupt
and empty so long as they maintain
that we might murder people some
of the time, and then establish
themselves as judges. As long-as a
standard of selective murder is
accepted, then they have no right
to interfere, the issue is a personal
one, and none of their business.

No matter how we glory the
state and the law, it is no more than
a matter of those who possess the
power to murder me telling me
what I may or may not do,
justifying with an idolatry of law
and arbitrary an empty standard.

There is no easy panacea for
solving this issue, unless we reach to
the problem. There are women who
know how to treat the abortion
issues; they quite wisely have
nothing to do with men. Others
who find a place for men, and sex,
in their lives, demand that men
share the responsibility of
preventing pregnancy. There are
millions of women, who have not
yet been reached, who still allow
the sexual games to be played with
them, still serve as organic
masturbation for men who fear
they are latently homosexual. Until
they can resolve for themselves the
issue of sexual interrelation we will
still have the issue of abortion.

What makes this an even
stronger phenomena is that these
Right to Lifers appear only when
the issue becomes common. One
never heard their pious
recriminations when the only
people getting abortions were the
daughters of the aristocracy, in fact
they'd probably still condone it
because the law reads that
abortions are legal when the
physical or mental health of the
person is jeopardized.

Of course a doctor has to decide
this, and since health and medical
expertise is not a free commodity,
but a function of income and social
status it seems likely that the trend
of coat hanger abortions will
continue (I've been told that
despite the liberalization of the
New York laws the number of
deaths due to shoddy abortion
techniques has not diminished.)

Supports Logical Program

Therefore the Charlottesville
Right to Life Committee supports
logically a program of free medical
aid and family planning, and
condemns the high cost of medical
care, and the constant refusal of
hospitals to provide humane
programs of health care for the
poor. Further they logically call for
an end to the War in Vietnam, and
the indictment of all government
officials responsible for the
abortion of those Vietnamese
children, who never had a chance.

They logically, support the
expulsion of all military recruiters
who advertise abortion services
(defining the function of the
military as broadly as possible), and
finally they logically support the
goals of women's' liberation as they
struggle to destroy the perversions
of a male dominated society, and
they promise to abstain from all
intercourse until the population of
the world teaches some reasonable.

Relinquish Power

If you see the Right to Life
people around the Grounds this
week ask them whether they agreed
with this column or whether, in
light of the obvious logic of its
development, have come to agree
with it. I'm willing to bet they
never agreed and still don't, it
would require that they get off
their holier than thou asses and
relinquish the power of a perverse
God Law.