Post-abortion regret

I was stupefied by Isabel Stabile’s statement that 19 out of 20 women do not regret having an abortion. It would be interesting to know the source of this information. For me, it is an outright Quixotic lie.

The professor and her group are trying to colour their movement as being Christian, compassionate and ethical but, obviously,  they don’t represent what decency and morals dictate. Their clever ideological ploy is an attempt to wrap themselves around common personal rectitude.

I can assure her that, out of the quotations vauntingly cited by them, the most overpowering poignant reflection goes something like this: “killing my baby in my womb may have lasted only a few minutes but I will carry my remorse to the grave.”

On this point of no regrets, I am more at odds with them than whether abortion is a transgression or not. Abortion could turn out to be an intensely personal matter that can turn one’s emotions into knots and leave one with spiritual vertigo – frightened, angry and disoriented like a fishhook in the human heart.

John Azzopardi – Żabbar

America, then and now

Vietnam War protesters marching at the Pentagon in Washington, DC on October 21, 1967. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

When I lived in Washington, DC as a student from late 1969 to late 1973, the counterculture in the United States was at its height. 

At Georgetown – an affluent, tree-lined neighbourhood in Washington, DC – fashionable women, long-haired hippies and Hare Krishna devotees paraded down trendy Wisconsin Avenue, a busy street lined with clothing stores, bars, restaurants and brightly-coloured boutiques selling gifts and psychedelic paraphernalia. 

On noticeboards at the Jesuit-run Georgetown University, Hindu swamis from India advertised their upcoming visits to the nation’s capital. On Georgetown University radio, one could listen to avant-garde psychedelic music. 

In springtime, thousands of young people from all over the US gathered in Washington to protest against the Vietnam War. This anti-war protest movement inspired similar protests on behalf of the environment, including the first, historic celebration of Earth Day in the spring of 1970.

The mid-1970s saw a backlash against the counterculture with the emergence of Jerry Falwell’s self-righteous ‘Moral Majority’ – a toxic mixture of fundamentalist Christianity and politics. 

As the 1980s progressed under the presidency of Ronald Reagan, the liberal, progressive US of the 1960s became the conservative, right-wing, guns-and-Bible-toting America of today. 

In the book The Lessons of History (1968), Will and Ariel Durant outlined the histories of ancient Greece and Rome according to Plato’s reduction of political evolution from monarchy, aristocracy, democracy and dictatorship.

The social and economic conditions for such a dictatorship seem to be currently in place in the US, as described in the same book: “If race or class war divides us into hostile camps, changing political argument into blind hate, one side or the other may overturn the hustings with the rule of the sword.

“If our economy of freedom fails to distribute wealth as ably as it has created it, the road to dictatorship will be open to any man who can persuasively promise security to all; and a martial government, under whatever charming phrases, will engulf the democratic world.”

Donald Trump has indeed divided his nation “into hostile camps, changing political argument into blind hate”. He acted like a demagogue during the presidential campaign and acted like a dictator rather than a democratic president.

John Guillaumier – St Julian’s

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