The New Underground Railroad

[Sojourner]

This is an incredibly disturbing article from [url="http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/features/15249/index.html"]New York Magazine[/url] about people who provide housing for women coming to the city for late-term abortions.

Heavy-hearted doesn't even begin to describe how I feel after reading it.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

I didn't want to read past a few paragraphs.

What an insidious, disgusting insult to the underground railroad! As if genocide can at all be compared to liberation of slaves!

[Sojourner]

[quote name='Raphael' date='Dec 8 2005, 02:15 PM']I didn't want to read past a few paragraphs.

What an insidious, disgusting insult to the underground railroad!  As if genocide can at all be compared to liberation of slaves!
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I didn't want to either, but I felt compelled to continue in the hopes that there would be something redeeming about it. There wasn't.

[MilesChristi]

[quote name='Raphael' date='Dec 8 2005, 04:15 PM']I didn't want to read past a few paragraphs.

What an insidious, disgusting insult to the underground railroad!  As if genocide can at all be compared to liberation of slaves!
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Especially since the foundress of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, hoped that abortion would eliminate black people, along others she considered "human weeds."

[Sojourner]

[quote name='MilesChristi' date='Dec 8 2005, 02:22 PM']Especially since the foundress of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, hoped that abortion would eliminate black people, along others she considered "human weeds."
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I did find the demographics involved here very interesting.

[quote]Most Haven hosts are white, Jewish, well schooled, and political. Some are empty-nesters with beds to spare and memories of the sixties and seventies women’s movement; many are young idealists with matchbox apartments and roommates who don’t mind an extra body crashing in the living room. Meanwhile, most of the women helped by Haven are black and Latina, with GEDs or less, low literacy skills, and not much civic moxie. [/quote]

I also find it ironic that they call the organization "Haven."

[MilesChristi]

[i] "We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. [b]We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.[/b] and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."[/i]

Margaret Sanger's December 19, 1939 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, 255 Adams Street, Milton, Massachusetts. Original source: Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, North Hampton, Massachusetts. Also described in Linda Gordon's Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976.

[Carrie]

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='Carrie' date='Dec 8 2005, 03:46 PM']
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Carrie, you live in NYC...go pound on some doors and bug some people.

[Ash Wednesday]

Interesting how these hosts teeter on the edges of their consciences.

They are disturbed by the size of a woman's stomach, ask these women why they waited so long -- and one of them says:

[quote]Every once in a while, after hosting a guest, I have bad dreams about sick babies. I have to remind myself that my dreams are just dreams, and that they’re less important than my guests’ realities.[/quote]

The guests "realities" are that they insist on letting their hosts know they want pasta, or chicken, or the reality that they want to go out clubbing? Insist on taking a CAB (much more expensive than the subway), because "that's what New Yorkers do"????) Women that do such things seem to have little concept of responsibility -- perhaps because they never had any examples set for them growing up.

[Sojourner]

[quote name='Ash Wednesday' date='Dec 8 2005, 03:07 PM']Interesting how these hosts teeter on the edges of their consciences.

They are disturbed by the size of a woman's stomach, ask these women why they waited so long -- and one of them says:
[quote]Every once in a while, after hosting a guest, I have bad dreams about sick babies. I have to remind myself that my dreams are just dreams, and that they’re less important than my guests’ realities.[/quote]
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I noticed that too. The rationalization you have to go through to see this as a good thing is amazing to me. Like this woman:

[quote]“The last woman I hosted showed me her sonogram,” says Jennifer, a 26-year-old host who lives in Carroll Gardens. “Then she pointed out that the fetus was a boy. God! I didn’t know what to say.” [/quote]

[Jaime]

Where's a vomit smiley when you need one?

[Ash Wednesday]

Oh yeah, I thought about that part that mentioned the sonogram, too. "Didn't know what to say." Sad.

[zunshynn]

That is so tragic... that poor woman...

I'm surprised that most of these "hosts" are Jewish...

My mother always taught me that a good hostess encourages her guests to participate in dangerous surgeries that cause the death of another human being. Not.

[Matty_boy]

There's no way God sent the hurricane to smite New Orleans when New York does stuff like that.

[Sojourner]

[quote name='Matty_boy' date='Dec 9 2005, 02:08 PM']There's no way God sent the hurricane to smite New Orleans when New York does stuff like that.
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Yeah, makes a little debauchery look positively charming.

[scardella]

Actually, I think God's Hand was all over the hurricane...
Despite any mismanagement that may have occurred.
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[Piccoli Fiori JMJ]

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v359/LausTibiChriste/BannerDivineMercy.jpg[/img]

[benedictaj]

Thats horrible...........I can't really believe it. The things are world is doing....its why we need prayer, and penance....

Like Angela, I pray "For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and the whole world."

[Carrie]

[quote name='Raphael' date='Dec 8 2005, 05:00 PM']Carrie, you live in NYC...go pound on some doors and bug some people.
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I pray in front of abortion clinics. Does that count?

[Carrie]

[quote name='Matty_boy' date='Dec 9 2005, 02:08 PM']There's no way God sent the hurricane to smite New Orleans when New York does stuff like that.
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Well, we had 9/11. No walk in the park either.