Past wasn’t so great
Re: “Right to life needs to life needs to be respected,” Cape Breton Post, March 18.
I respect that the writer is passionate about the right to life. However, I take exception to some of her statements.
I’m Catholic and I’ve struggled with conflicting emotions about abortion since I was a teenager. As a Christian I understand that taking a life is wrong. As a feminist everything in me recoils at the injustice of a rape victims being forced to endure a pregnancy that results from rape. It would mean her violation was made public for the whole world to see.
Sexual violence at its core is about opposing women and putting them in their place. Humiliation is a powerful weapon.
The women who protested against U.S. President Donald Trump were also protesting against rape culture. This is a man where who has allegations of sexual assault against him. I do think there is a level of hypocrisy on the left because there were similar allegations against former president Bill Clinton and no one questioned the fitness of a candidate who ignored the allegations against her husband. The “boys will be boys” mentality needs to be protested.
In regard to the assertion that “there was no suicide, no mental health crisis, no sexual transmitted diseases crisis” such things always existed.
STDs were rampant during the Victorian era and always have been. In the past it was “out of sight out of mind.” Suicides were covered up and no one talked about it. Those were mentally ill suffered in silence. If they acted out they were sent to squalid asylums and locked up for life. They were physically and sexually abused. They had no voice.
There were lots of people who weren’t wanted for various reasons. Children who were illegitimate were treated very badly. For example, my grandmother told my mother and my aunts of the communal cruelty heaped upon a girl she grew up with for the crime of being a “bastard.”
There is a lot wrong about life today but there was a lot wrong with life in the past as well. That’s something we shouldn’t forget. M. Monica MacDonald North Sydney