The dishonest rights of the unborn child

Conceiving the time of conception

I had to ask the question from a more practical perspective because I do believe we are being dogmatically conned with information that bares not basis in fact and reality.

I am sorry, that we hear something that strikes an emotive cord with conservative and religious connotations and fail to research the facts of those assertions and prove beyond debate if those views are true or just utter bunkum.

At the Saddleback Presidential Civil Forum, Pastor Rick Warren asked [1] John McCain, What point is a baby entitled to human rights? And he answered, "At the moment of conception," everyone applauded and I was quite befuddled by it all.

Do you know when?

So, I asked the lady who runs the African store above the Amsterdam Metro Station, if a woman knows that she is pregnant at 2 months gestation, to which she answered, the woman might be suspicious but cannot be definite [2] that she is pregnant as it is unlikely that she would have a bump as evidence of pregnancy

You mean, you cannot say that you have conceived [3] on the day that you had intercourse until such a time that it is obvious by missing periods first and then some sort of pregnancy test – that was in the affirmative.

So for 2 months, it is possible that we would have conferred on an embryo, foetus, baby or some non-descript feeling of unease and anatomical change human right whilst not being really sure it is there or not. Very interesting.

She even offered that when she was having her first child, at 6 months pregnancy the doctor said to her she had another unexplained ailment rather than the impending arrival of a child.

Naming the foetus

I felt, I could carry on this journey of the absurd, so when the bump is really so obvious you think at any moment you would be sequestered into midwifery have you ever asked the woman whilst the baby is still in the womb what the name of the baby is? She looked at me with incredulity.

Well, I was just trying to be logical here, there is probability that the unborn child might have rights it wants to exact from the womb just in case it needs to be identified in court.

It would appear that a child is not named until when it is out of the womb and that might depend on when during the gestation period it was born.

The rights as birth

For instance, I was born at 26 and half weeks, over 40 years ago, there was the possibility I would not thrive, in fact, doctors do not try to exercise the supposed right to live on a baby born at less than 21 weeks except in the most exceptional cases where faith, persistence and the sheer will to live of the child defies all medical science.

The issue of abortion allows for this absurd notion of unborn child rights to take prominence where reason should inform us of better arguments for sustaining the life of an unborn child.

I am of the opinion that a women should be able to decide within the first trimester of a pregnancy that she might only have confirmed from about the sixth week if she wants to keep the changes that are occurring in her or not.

Between rights and moral duty of humanity

There are all sorts of reasons why a woman with or without the consent of a partner, with the advice of her doctor and possibly matters of conscience why a woman would decide to terminate a pregnancy. I do not believe they take those issues lightly at all because there can be serious consequences as physical leading to barrenness or emotional scars that could be impossible manage despite the passage of time.

There might be some women, who have turned terminations into a routine, but they can hardly be in any majority and they probably have their reasons.

However, I do not think that the issue at stake for an unborn child is that of rights because it would portend to separate the entity of the conception, embryo and foetus from the person of the body that provides it nourishment.

It would be interesting if medical science offered the means to prevent the nourishment of a child through the umbilical cord by the accident of medical contra-indications whether there can be a legal premise for the unborn child to seek compulsory nourishment because of where it resides before birth.

The matter really is one of our humanity rather than one of legality; we have reached a point in our civilization where we believe we owe that developing child a burden of care or careful nourishment and an adjusted lifestyle.

Conducive conditions for birth

Where we believe that bearing the child would be a source of joy and there is love around to cater for the upbringing of that child.

Where the act of conception whenever it might have happened is through the consent of the parties involved such that neither sees the product from a perspective of revulsion created by the violation of the body.

Where all things are equal, laws protecting the rights of the unborn child are redundant because it would be brought into a loving, caring and welcoming situation.

Unfortunately, things are not as perfect as one would expect for everyone and those situations do need to be dealt with on their merits through famous trilogy of stakeholders as enumerated by Senator John Kerry years ago – it should be between the woman, her doctor and her God.

Thriving on the compassion of society

After the first trimester, the unborn child is probably going to thrive and be born, whilst medical science can allow for abortions up to term, society frowns on issues where after the well into the second trimester the pregnancy is terminated.

At the point, one can see the possibility of acts criminal, not so much for sake of the unborn child but the reasons that society and medical science have tacitly agreed that after a particular period, the pregnancy should be brought to term.

In many cases, these are moral and medical dilemmas, it would be perilous for us to legislate on moral dilemmas where clear codes of conduct based on the expectation of a civilized society should suffice.

What we owe the unborn child

I think it is utter dishonest to suggest that an unborn child has rights at conception when the exact time of conception cannot be determined until well after other events have passed, which could be well into gestation.

In all, we owe the unborn child the duty of care and for those who are expecting the best wishes for a safe delivery, beyond that, those who do not want or need a baby should either abstain or use contraception.

I cannot begin to imagine the legal minefield that can be opened into the legality and legal status of the unborn child to sue for its rights to be established from the question of paternity, a conducive environment for birth, the right of the pregnant woman to refuse to continue to carry the child as opposed to the supposed undeniable right of the child to nourished whilst still in the womb.

I would contend reason and counsel should prevail in these matters rather than try to legalise moral issues that would convert our courts into grotesque theatres of the most absurd activities of humankind.

For all intents and purposes, an unborn child cannot have rights at conception, the person carrying that developing miracle simply owes themselves that that bundle of joy the greatest duty of care, if that is what they wished for and have settled on the idea of parenthood.

Sources

[1] CNN LIVE EVENT/SPECIAL - Saddleback Presidential Candidates Forum – Transcript

[2] From Conception to Birth - A Foetal Growth Timeline – Expectant Mothers Guide

[3] Baby planning time - Understanding conception

Childhood: Driving the languages of sacrifice

Unculu drives

Continuing those stories of childhood down memory lane where I left off weeks ago. My father had moved to Jos to take up a new appointment with the Amalgamated Tin Mines of Nigeria.

My uncle who we have for long lovingly referred to as Unculu had joined us in Kaduna and I remember the many evenings when my mother took him out to teach him how to drive - suffice it to say he did not pick up that skill for another 8 or so years.

By which time, he bought a car and my father was so scared that he was going to brag his way with a drive to his office hardly 3 kilometres away - though we could see the office from our house - followed him so closely, it was almost illegal. Well, Unculu had really learnt to drive in some secret place and was doing quite nicely, Thank you.

Gave up much for us

When we were in Kaduna, my parents had both worked at the Kaduna Polytechnic, I believe my mother was also a lecturer there before we moved to Jos, because when we returned to Kaduna a few years later, at least 2 of her old students visited us as my mother proudly announced that her erstwhile students are now doing very well with their careers.

One has to be very appreciative of our parents and the sacrifices they made to keep the family unit together as much as possible.

Having left a lecturer-ship in Kaduna, my mother ended up as a secondary school teacher, not to far from where I went to primary school and she majored in teaching Commerce.

It is commendable in some ways how women in matrimony have given up promising careers and prospects for their husbands and family - what saddens me is when you get to talk to them and you sometimes hear regret about what they would have wanted to do but never got to do.

The lesson we could learn from this is to be able to have some hindsight that is not too far away from where there is still time to go after your dream.

Speaking in tongues

The many years she had spent in the North before meeting my father came in so useful, she was just as indigenous as the natives that she was referred to as Hajiya - a Hausa woman who had been on Hajj - well; my mother is quite a devout Christian and over time has become a true Nigerian polyglot.

She speaks her native Yoruba, which is spoken in the South-West, then having lived in the North for 23 years in total, is tongue-perfect in Hausa and fully conversant with their customs, but I was quite pleasantly surprised that she had mastered an Igbo dialect spoken in Eastern Nigeria without having ever been there.

I am sorry to say, I do not have the mastery of learning languages as my mother, I am quite good with Yoruba and really improving my Hausa in a way, even though I am not in Nigeria - I have no grasp of Igbo at all.

When it comes to languages, I suppose I am more like my father, he took radio and instructor-taught classes of Hausa and never really made much progress with it. His early attempts at Pidgin English were funny to say the least - he always has had an impeccable command of English - when I was younger, I could remember the number of times I needed to check out a word in the dictionary then the whole thing sinks in.

Mother-tongue of something else

I suppose one interesting thing about languages is that my mother-tongue is not my mother's mother-tongue, mine is English, it being the first language I could speak and still is the language my parents use the most in communicating with me - Yoruba rarely creeps into our conversation.

As I reached 10 my parents tried to engage me more in learning Yoruba, my best score in secondary school where the language was compulsory for the first 3 years was 38%, this was after years of being forced to read the Psalms into water in Yoruba rather than the easier English.

Much as I try, my command of Dutch is still rudimentary, it is still quite Double-Dutch and each time I string together a sentence to the hearing of the Dutch, I might as well be a clown because it brings laughs of incredulity rather than understanding - what could I be getting wrong?

The hard facts about preventing teenage pregnancies

They do get pregnant

It is now a news story that you have a probably read about and I would not dwell too much on the exact event itself but the context in relation to society as a whole.

A young beautiful woman with a fascinating life in the executive leadership of her home state gets plucked from obscurity to join in a national ticket for a job that leaves her a heartbeat away from world leadership.

She has five children, one would be loved dearly through the personal situation of having Down’s Syndrome, one would tug at the heart strings as he get sent to a war zone to fight for his country and one is a parental dilemma, she is 5-months pregnant out of wedlock at 17.

Conservative or liberal, in America or anywhere else, I am sure we all have a story to tell about daughter, sister or niece who happens to have fallen pregnant by circumstance.

Did it jump on you?

I have been witness to at least one interrogation of a housemaid in our home where my mother had having noticed the spitting, the whites of the eyes and early morning discomforts asked questions that included if I was responsible for the housemaid's anatomical changes.

Oh! Mother! You surprise me, whilst, I might have been interfered with, I have never interfered with our staff, she should have known that even if opportunity and privilege presented itself, the maid would never be laid; I would hope I was brought up both well and discerning enough to behave appropriately.

The funniest question if it was not that serious came when the girl could not account for how she fell pregnant, so she sneered in Yoruba (O fo mo e ni), which translates to in context, if you do not know how you got pregnant, did the baby just jump on you and result in an unexplained conception?

Dealing with a rampaging dilemma

In one instance, I could well tell when it happened, my mother had gone to have her hair done on a day we were to travel to our home town, as the driver arrived to take us away, my cousin and I had gone to get mother, leaving the driver and the maid at home – when we returned, the maid’s hair was all messed up she looked dishevelled, I just suspected something had happened.

Two months after, I found out exactly what had happened, the driver had taken advantage of her, most definitely raped her and the result was this rampaging dilemma that resulted in the sacking of the driver, a termination and the return of the maid to her people.

The truth from the delusions

But this does not half represent the fact that no matter how devout, strict and disciplined our families are, there is little we can do to prevent or arrest teenage pregnancies if we are not open about the possibilities – boys and girls are experimenting with sex and suddenly finding out the potency of their sexual organs after the fact – the sperm of the boys can fertilise the eggs of the girls and result in a PREGNANCY! Shock Horror!!!

I have never in my early life been warned of the possibility that this could happen, rather I have heard threats of foreboding, the girls terrified into nothingness with the father bellowing from afar – If a girl brings a pregnancy to my house, I will ... unprintable and unspeakable.

Insurance brings some assurance

Now, having no kids puts me at a disadvantage, but I have seen other parents do the very pragmatic, they have put condoms in the bags of their kids realising that adolescents would be adolescents with the probability that what they have been warned against might well be what they would indulge in.

So, as an insurance despite their stern entreaties, the condom is not so much a license to be promiscuous but a warning that if the child does find themselves in a tight situation of frenzied excitement, there would be the possible or slight presence of mind to wrap it up before dipping it in.

Unfortunately, there are many parents who cannot countenance the reasonableness of this approach and have lived to rue the day they have not been more forth-coming about the realities of life that good sex education prevents in the long term.

The more religious have joined in cults of the ring [Source: Silver Ring Thing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia] saving themselves until marriage in sexual abstinence vows; a movement and discipline in numbers that I commend, but what if the ring is not a good enough contraceptive at a moment of unanticipated weakness?

The facts of life are

As the child falls pregnant, many parents despair at the longer term and wonder if the life of their child is about to be truncated with a responsibility the child is hardly ready for or complicated by a decision the child had no power to make – there have been extremes from having the baby to term, telling the child that it was a still-birth whilst put the baby up for adoption to the trauma of an abortion.

Can we not agree that kids do experiment and the best thing to do is provide material and knowledge to prevent unwanted pregnancies and through that we most definitely would not have to deal with the matter of abortion or other complicated life decisions?

It is time to throw away those pseudo-religious goggles and the hubris of supposed insulation of our children from societal ills because we have been such good parents, guardians or mentors and face the possibilities that could hit us in the face so hard we cannot fathom when and where it all went wrong.

Very few of those out-of-wedlock pregnancies results in the seeming fairy tale ending of the event I alluded to at the beginning of this blog – young secret lovers having stolen a moment of sexual excitement now planning on becoming man and wife; in all, I wish that couple the very best of good fortune.

Im-Palin-g McCain's picket

Cultivating relationships

I have made many acquaintances but have very few friends, in fact, the people I call my friends, I have known for at least 15 years, putting that in the time frame of my last long-term partner, beyond that, it goes back 24 years.

Some 22 years ago, when I was made the class representative and a good representative I was, we were a noisy class and when someone challenged me about being the ring-leader of the noise-makers, I had to say if I did not represent my class in noise-making I would not be representing them effectively.

The real context of this is I left that school with 3 good friends, one of whom I have lost contact with in Russia, one with whom I have little contact in Nigeria and the other with whom I talk to quite frequently in London.

These along with the other friends are people I can trust with a lot, talk to about much and expect to act in my behalf just as if I were there without any fear for their judgement and whilst being assured of the quality of their person and integrity.

I am proud to say that where I have recommended these people on my own recognisance they have been accepted in my person and proved to be just as recommended and better.

I have also entered into business dealings with people through having first known them, known their judgement, their values and realised how we can work together for a common good, I do not take these issues lightly at all.

My congratulations to Sarah Palin

It is on this note that I first congratulate Sarah Palin [1] on being selected by John McCain as his vice-Presidential running mate. Until she was selected, I did not know anything about this governor of a backwater state called Alaska [2] apart from the bridge to nowhere [3] which has since been abandoned [4] by her and the indictments [5] of Ted Stevens [6], the longest serving GOP Senator.

What we read about Sarah Palin is interesting, a mother of 5 children, the last being born only in April 2008 with Down’s Syndrome, she is a devout Christian, pro-life and pro-gun politician who seems to be working at cleaning up Alaskan politics.

She has been governor for less than 2 years and might be implicated [7] in trying to obtain the sacking of her ex-brother-in-law who was undergoing a messy divorce and child custody batter with her sister as a serious abuse of power.

Gay abortions of gun marriage

On the issues that excite the conservatives about her candidacy, I find myself more pragmatic than fundamentalist and agree more with Senator Obama’s views on abortion, gun-control and gay marriage as he articulated in his acceptance speech [8].

The need to work on preventing unwanted pregnancies than jostling with the issue of abortion could mean condoms and contraceptives have a place in society, if we are less emotive about presumed societal decay. People would always have sex, it is probably better we ensure they have it safely and avoid regrettable situations.

Being painted as an Annie, Get Your Gun figure does nothing for me, it fact that gun use in the country differs from what guns get used for in the inner cities; there is a need for balance in enacting laws with due respect to the 2^nd Amendment to protect rights as well as protect lives.

If people have a right to love regardless of gender pairing, that love-relationship constitutes their family unit for those concerned such that sharing, caring and privileges should by rights and fairness accrue to that relationship.

I still contend that it is only those whose heterosexual marriages and relationships are weak that think gay marriage would impact on marriage as an institution. If same-sex couples had basic rights conferred on their partnerships, there would be no need for the marriage debate, but the absence of such partnership rights makes many want to go the whole hog and I see nothing really wrong with that.

Time for the United States of Americans

America within itself needs conciliation through pragmatic analysis of social issues not the promotion of political figures that accentuate the wedge issues that divide the people, polarise the nation and try to make traitors of people who disagree about these things.

We need the vision of a new president who brings together the whole country in the unity of purpose looking to change and grasping unto the edifying message of hope than one who dwells on the divisions that has turned America into one of the most divided countries on social issues.

Conservatives and liberals alike have to recognise that they are all American first and the politics of being disagreeable because of the difference of opinion has to stop – I must contend the Obama offers the healing balm of reason that John McCain cannot deign to offer to his most beloved country.

This is no great thing

Nevertheless, I am not excited by any stretch of the imagination about McCain’s choice of vice-President. It is amazing that after so many years in Washington, his numbered years and the need to buttress areas where he is weak, he has chosen to lay such a responsibility on someone he has only met once before, with whom he has no particular affinity.

Nobody can convince me that this selection is borne of some deliberate and considered thinking that binds people who have developed a relationship of mutual aims, goals and vision.

The fellowship of minds

I have just started a new job today, the company has in the past employed the best consultants money could buy to solve intractable problems with solutions that sound amazing but yield none of the expected results.

The team has now regrouped into one that seeks shared experiences with others who they have worked with before to address the problems with the fellowship of minds that are geared to succeed rather than push a particular solution provider’s agenda which just accumulates hours of expensive waffle.

I find myself amongst people who I have worked with in different companies over the last 5 years, who I know, who I respect, who have a shared vision and acknowledging each others expertise and who have gathered together to be a winning team – we know we would crack those problems because we have developed a relationship of peers and expertise.

After an exemplary life

The choice that John McCain has made is the most cynical ploy to emotively use gender sympathies and religious adherence to befuddle voters into a false sense of thinking sameness brings comfort, it offers the opportunity for a complacency that imagines things would be done the way we believe we would do things. How further from the truth can we be about judgement and the assessment of character?

It is a presidency not a bishopric that is at stake, it is about human government not church government. I would be fearful of an ultra-religious person who dreams dreams, sees visions and reckons that God commands them to take some action without considering all the consequences for the basis of secular government.

America has been too divided along wedge issues to tolerate more of the same again for 4 more years.

I am surprised that no one sees that after 72 years of a rather distinguished and exemplary life John McCain could find no friend, colleague, confidant, mentor or protégé in his long political, social, business or military life and career to join him in the most important quest of his life but a stranger.

No judgment no story

This man has no judgment; he fails woefully at what should have been the culmination of relationships with other men and women he has met in all walks of life; this should have had a history and story that fills us with awe, but he picks someone he met only six months ago.

He is both a maverick and breathtakingly reckless; the levers of world government must never be within his grasp.

There is no greater poverty of spirit and goodwill than to share your greatest stage with strangers rather than with friends, with people you hardly know, in order to prove you are different.

This is exactly what makes John McCain unworthy of the calling to which he aspires, he has made vain a lifetime of experiences to hug the limelight alone and he has dangled a juicy bait that has everyone whooping too distractedly to realise that they are being patronised by a consummate denier of his legacy and his original platforms for the want of power.

A picket not a ticket

It has left the Economist asking Bring back the real McCain [9] in their leader this week, just as John Kerry compared and contrasted Senator McCain with Candidate McCain in his speech [10] at the Democratic National Convention last week.

The selection of Sarah Palin does not present us with a McCain-Palin ticket, rather it is an appalling McCain picket; it is not revolutionary but reactionary, it not inspired but desperate, it is not conciliatory but anarchist, it not cultured but vulgar, it is not considered but rash, it is maverick in its context and reckless to the extreme.

For a man of John McCain’s stature to impose on a nursing mother he hardly knows regardless of her abilities and suitability a responsibility so large as to create the most exacting pressures on her needs to satisfy motherhood and the call of office is in the least irresponsible and at the most heartless.

If the 3:00AM advertisement [11] would ever question the ability of anyone to meet the demands of a great crisis, just imagine accommodating that under the stress of nursing a child that most definitely needs that extra bit of care and having another child away in harm’s way in a war that should never have been started.

I am sorry, this selection is not gentlemanly at all and it proves once and for all that Senator John McCain is probably better a senator and definitely not material for a president by any stretch of the imagination.

The man is just not the man we used to know.

Sources

[1] Sarah Palin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] Alaska - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[3] The Bridge to Nowhere: A National Embarrassment

[4] 'Bridge to nowhere' abandoned - CNN.com

[5] Nation & World | Ted Stevens indicted, longest-serving GOP senator | Seattle Times Newspaper

[6] Ted Stevens - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[7] Alaska Public Safety Commissioner dismissal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[8] Obama: We are better than these last eight years - CNN.com

[9] The presidential race | Bring back the real McCain | Economist.com

[10] Transcript: Sen. John Kerry On Foreign Policy : NPR

[11] Hillary Clinton, 3am commercial White House Ad - Truveo Video Search