Virginia State Senator Steve Martin (R), in response to a Valentine’s Day card he received from the Virginia Pro-Choice Coalition, posted this on his Facebook page:
I don’t expect to be in the room or will I do anything to prevent you from obtaining a contraceptive. However, once a child does exist in your womb, I’m not going to assume a right to kill it just because the child’s host (some refer to them as mothers) doesn’t want it.
Nice, eh? He thinks pregnant women are merely “hosts” for their unborn children. The Huffington Post includes a screenshot of Martin’s original post, which he changed on Monday to read “bearer of the child” instead of “child’s host.” But you needn’t take HuffPo’s word for it. Facebook conveniently provides the edit history for Martin’s post. Just click the word “Edited” in the dateline at the top of the page and read the Feb. 17 entry.
The change really doesn’t make much difference, however. He’s still dehumanizing and discounting the pregnant woman, reducing her to nothing more than a baby carrier. Wouldn’t want to refer to her as a woman or a person. Certainly not. That would give her standing and status over the zygote or embryo or fetus in her womb — seniority, one might say, or even … personhood.
.
You know…. perhaps it’s just me but that statement almost sounds like something you would hear on the planet Vortex from one of the members of the “Council of Elders” regarding the female species. Obviously information has come to light with regard to a grievous violation of the planet’s “Constitution of Procreation”.
And before someone interprets my attempted stab at parody as being insensitive to the issue, if you pay real close attention to the mindset and messages sent from certain politicians over the past few years then my attempt at parody might not sound all that much of a reach toward reality.
Oh I agree with you. This guy and others like him sound like they are almost certainly from another planet. Or maybe from some tiny little tribe somewhere on earth that has yet to be exposed to the modern world.
As a man, I share Alan G’s fear of seeming insensitive on the subject. On the other hand, having witnessed many times what women have to endure to see a pregnancy through to term, it’s not difficult at all to imagine what playing the unwilling “host” must feel like…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvEmC1Bkyqc
Well, that puts Martin’s word “host” in perspective. If the man is married, I really feel sorry for his wife.
Well that’s odd because I went to his facebook page and this is the quote that I found:
You can count on me to never get in the way of you “preventing” an unintentional pregnancy.” I’m not actually sure what that means, because if it’s “unintentional” you must have been trying to prevent it. And, I don’t expect to be in the room or will I do anything to prevent you from obtaining a contraceptive. However, once a child does exist in your womb, I’m not going to assume a right to kill it just because the bearer of the child (some refer to them as mothers) doesn’t want it to remain alive.
I don’t see the word host anywhere – maybe there was some glitch?
You and I are on opposite ends of this issue and I don’t intend to argue it with you.
But I will say that I find it sad that there are 58 million less human beings alive because of abortion. And I was shocked to read the other day that in NY blacks and hispanics had the lion’s share of abortions of any other demographic. (I believe this was in the last year).
I also think it’s sad that we seem to value the life of eagles, lions and even minnows more than human life. In CA, farmers are losing their farms and the ability to grow food for the rest of the country because water has been diverted to protect a minnow, thanks to the environmental laws that exist. Unfortunately, no such protections exist for children in the womb. Sigh.
Annie
No, if you’ll read my post again, or the article from Huffington Post, you’ll see that we both said he changed “child’s host” to “bearer of the child.” I also said you can see his original version in HuffPo’s screenshot or if you’ll click the word “Edited” at the top of his Facebook page and then “See More” of the first entry, dated Feb. 17.
Personally I’m not shocked to hear that blacks and Hispanics have the lion’s share of abortions. In NY or anywhere else. They probably have the lion’s share of lack of education, lack of proper health care and information, and poverty, major factors in unwanted pregnancies and hence, abortions.
As for the great majority of those 58 million abortions, this illustrates my position:
I sympathize with California farmers since we are a dry state too. But I think their problem is lack of rain, not minnows.
It is astonishing that this jerk was elected to any position, much less a high one. Perhaps the next time around the voters will bear him to where he belongs–out of office.
Not counting on it. Did you read some of the comments on his Facebook page? He’s obviously got support. Scary when you think about it.
“Abortion” has become an emotionally-charged word in our culture, and underlying this is the clear implication by conservatives like Rep. Martin that every zygote is mission-sent from heaven to add to the population. But if this is true, then why does nature abort so many of them? What happens to those millions of lost souls that never even developed a personality? Heaven must be full of them. The below is from the Wikipedia page on abortion:
Fetal development is a natural process with a built-in mechanism for quality control, just as depicted in PT’s powerful poster. There’s nothing supernatural about it.
Numbers like that must keep Martin awake nights, contemplating ways to keep all those spontaneous abortions from happening (oh the humanity!) and ways to criminalize the women who have them.