Pro-life vid of day: Chelsea Clinton wishes ancestors had PP?
by LauraLoo
Along with other Democrats recently voicing their approval on abortion-related topics, Chelsea Clinton recently lamented that her great-grandparents, who conceived her grandmother in an unplanned, unwed pregnancy, did not have access to “crucial” Planned Parenthood services.
So what is Chelsea saying? Is she in one sense wishing away her beloved grandmother, thereby wishing away her mother and herself? Is she, like some PP supporters including President Obama, using family members in an extremely awkward fashion to pander to pro-choicers and Planned Parenthood?
Hot Air notes:
It’s one thing to support family planning while being glad on some level that a distant ancestor couldn’t plan you into oblivion and another to pander to Planned Parenthood in the same breath that you’re talking about what an inspiration your grandmother, who otherwise wouldn’t have existed, was to you. It’s like getting your mom a Mother’s Day card that ends with “Sorry your parents didn’t have a choice whether to have you.” Um, happy Mother’s Day.
The whole video is worth watching, but relevant remarks begin around 18:50. Your thoughts?
Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.
[HT: Drudge Report]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
The Culture of Death is a deathwish for cultural suicide.
We should not be surprised when those who advocate for contraception and abortion sometimes wish that they themselves had never existed.
Self Parody.
How is this different than saying that you wish a loved one had never had to go through something difficult, even if it ended up being okay/benefiting you?
I wish my grandmother hadn’t felt obligated to have an abortion–even though her abortion of her second pregnancy was what made her pregnancy with my own parent possible. (If pregnancy #2 had continued, pregnancy #3 would have been mathematically impossible.) By wishing that she hadn’t had to have an abortion, am I wishing myself out of existence? Of course not. Neither is Chelsea Clinton by wishing that her ancestors had had access to birth control to prevent an unplanned pregnancy.
Grandma Dickerson’s Unintended Gift
by
Denise Noe
Grandma Dickerson always seemed like the very essence of grandmotherliness to me: sweet, frail, and warm, she wore her steel-gray gathered up into the traditional elderly woman’s bun and her face was a mass of gentle wrinkles. On visits to her home, she would lead my little brother, David, and I in hymns.
“Jesus loves me this I know, because the Bible tells me so,” she would sing in a quavering voice full of the purest love. Always reading the Bible, she took a special delight when David or I would recite a verse, and would gather us up in her arms and shower us with kisses. When introducing either of us, she would say with a special emphasis, “This is my GRANDchild.”
She was the mother of Aunt Vada as well as Dad but I didn’t know that they were only half-brother and sister. I don’t know what the events were which led up to it but I was going into adolescence when Mom explained, “Aunt Vada’s illegitimate.”
“What?” I asked. I must have looked quite confused. “Illegitimate? You mean Grandma Dickerson–”
My Mom nudged me and whispered darkly, “Grandma Dickerson was a young girl and a man lied to her. She was disgraced afterward and had to leave the state she grew up in.”
I was thunderstruck, not because my pious Grandmother had sinned, but because of the sudden realization that Grandma Dickerson had been YOUNG.
In my mind’s eye I saw her as a young girl: dark-haired and fresh-faced and innocent . . . and . . . foolish . . . and foolishly in love. Then: confused and lied to and “in trouble” and ashamed and disgraced.
Often after I learned of my Grandma’s history, I would look at people and try to imagine what they could have been like far into the past or future. I would visualize a teacher as a kid and wonder if she (or he) had been a good kid or a brat or imagine a kid as a grown-up and try to see what s/he would look like and be like.
This triggering of the imagination helped make me a writer, I believe, and was Grandma Dickerson’s unintended but infinitely valuable gift to me.
Characteristic of leftists is the tendency to disassociate actions from consequences, and this does not bode well for long term survival.
From these kinds of people, with such disorders of judgment and reasoning, we have been picking our nation’s leaders.
Things are not looking good.
Ella, she’s specifically wishing that her great-grandmother had been able to prevent a specific event – namely the conception or birth of her own grandmother (which would have prevented her mother’s birth and her birth as well). She’s not saying, “I wish circumstances hadn’t been so difficult for my great-grandparents,” she’s saying, “I wish my grandmother had never existed, because she only exists due to the fact that my great-grandparents didn’t use contraception or procure an abortion.” It’s very strange.
So am I doing the same thing by specifically wishing that my grandmother had NOT had an abortion? After all, if she hadn’t had that abortion, I wouldn’t be here. Doesn’t mean I’m glad she had one. I can express sadness over her specific circumstances and wish they had been different without wishing myself out of existence. Chelsea Clinton can do the same thing.
“So am I doing the same thing by specifically wishing that my grandmother had NOT had an abortion? After all, if she hadn’t had that abortion, I wouldn’t be here. Doesn’t mean I’m glad she had one. I can express sadness over her specific circumstances and wish they had been different without wishing myself out of existence. Chelsea Clinton can do the same thing.”
I agree with you Ella Rae, I wish my parents hadn’t ever gotten married, but I don’t wish that I didn’t exist. It’s okay to be saddened by bad circumstances even if they are responsible for you being here.
Am I the only one who suppressed a bad joke today pertaining to Chelsea’s opinion of her maternal ancestors?
Yes? Ok, then, I’m too snarky for words. I’ll just chuckle to myself.
Hey Jack and Ella I agree with you. Difficult circumstances of my grandparents life made them better people, stronger people who overcame great odds and I am so glad I am their grandchild but for those from difficult childhoods like yours Jack I am so glad you are here and that you don’t wish your parents and grandparents would have been aborted. You I believe are a testament to the fact that tough people can overcome great odds like my husband (whose father was an abusive alcoholic) but he’s a great dad. His mom left when he was very young so she could sheild and protect him and his siblings from seeing the abuse she suffered. So they would not think that is the way to treat your wife.
The most amazing part to me was the moderator’s response to Chelsea Clinton’s statement about going on the campaign trail with her parents when she was still in the womb. The moderator says, “That’s interesting. That must have influenced you, though, while you were still in the womb. I wonder, I wonder how it does-because it must. I mean, there’s so much life that goes on that it must some how have an impact on us. But who knows?” What?!!! Was she implying that a mere fetus could be influenced by the world around her? Say it ain’t so!
This seems to be a mirror image of when we are accused of “shaming” for saying that having out-of-wedlock children is a bad idea. We are talking about the FUTURE. What’s done is done, and you make the best of it.
Jack, I don’t wish your parents never met. I wish they were better parents.
Hans Johnson says:
June 25, 2013 at 3:39 pm
This seems to be a mirror image of when we are accused of “shaming” for saying that having out-of-wedlock children is a bad idea.
(Denise) Some people believe you must not say anything negative about having babies out-of-wedlock lest girls and women who are single and pregnant be motivated to abort. The goal of decreasing abortion means silence on problems based on circumstances of births.