The gentleman holding up the sign in the photograph at right has a problem knowing his place. Well, not his place as in where he is. He is, by my understanding standing inside the capitol building in Austin Texas, and at the time the photograph was taken, thousands of angry protesters all dressed up in orange were milling about inside and outside the capitol building.
Some were giving testimony, some were sitting in observation of the on goings at the public hearing, and a few, dressed in shirts very much like the one this gentleman is wearing, were out pitching a fit against those assembled expressing their opinions, as guaranteed by their 1st Amendment rights.
Now the gentleman with the poster also has first amendment rights, that is true. But what is not true is whether the man has any standing in the argument.
See, when Proposition 8 was loudly argued before SCOTUS last week, Justice Kennedy, in writing the opinion, observed that those making the arguments against overturning Proposition 8 had no standing in the argument.
They didn't have a fish to fry.
They had no dog in that hunt.
They were bystanders with an opinion. And that is exactly what this gentleman holding up this poster in the state capitol is, a bystander with an opinion.
See, I could be wrong, but I think this guy is a male. The poster he is holding up says that "(he) regret(s) his abortion." Now, see, I could be wrong, but just as it is physically impossible for a man to become impregnated with a man's sperm, it is equally physically impossible for a man to receive an abortion procedure to terminate his "pregnancy."
I could be wrong about this, but I don't think I am.
So while the gentleman has every right to stand in the hall of the state capitol, he has no right to express this opinion, because he has no standing.
And neither do any of the gentlemen assembled in the state capitol ready and willing to make reception of abortion services in the state of Texas an impossibility.
1 comment:
I only have thumbs to type with and this system sucks..
I read you from JJ's beauty shop--since this is the 3rd time I have tried ill cut it short. I think that this man may regret the abortion he was party too, and has a right to that opinion ..my boyfriend and I both had an abortion before we married our spouses, and felt it was the right decision in both cases. It made us sad. To deny that men have feelings about it feels wrong to me. In my life ( being born to a dirt poor 16 yr old makes me militant against teenage birth) it's the women who get shat upon, my crummy ex said if I left him, I and my children would starve--but in the world I am working toward it is a joint responsibility--the good men supporting the woman no matter what choice gets made--by hauling out a wide brush that says they don't have a right to feel anything--it's as wrong as them saying it's not our ultimate choice!
I am a failed abortion...I wish to heaven it had been legal--all the suffering that was caused by my birth is too much to catalogue, and since we are eternal beings I could have hitched a ride somewhere else and saved so much grief...no one chooses abortion easily and it makes most of us sad , even though it was the absolute right thing...for both my boyfriend and his not yet wife, and me and my not yet husband.
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