Sunday morning run down of what's on my mind: American exceptionalism, capitalism vs socialism, abstinence vs abortion

I added more to my photo study of my grandson Ethan, and wrote down one of the stories about my past he requested, "My big boo boo in Big Holler" about punching cows with my cowboy dad.
I went over to Circle K and got a Sunday paper to read at Doc's. The big story was one about Sarah Palin and other republicans disagreeing with President Obama on what constitutes American 'exceptionalism'. I had to conclude that President Obama's take on the extra ordinary qualities that make Americans stand out were probably more subtle and maybe beyond the abilities of more simple minded republicans to comprehend or appreciate. Not that they are going to try very hard.
It is for certain that Harvard graduate Obama is going to come across as very bright and articulate in a lot of his thinking, since he was a scholar in higher standing than our previous Yale college graduate republican president, George W. Bush.
It is unfortunate that the democrats have chosen to handicap themselves with a staunch defense and even embrace of the relatively new legalization of abortion (1973) probably the main reason republicans have dubbed them socialists, or at least Sarah Palin has. Male republicans want to protect the capitalist system a lot more passionately.
I don't think it is a bad thing for people to try to figure out how the world could do a better job of spreading the wealth than capitalism does, but when it comes to embracing some of the more violent solutions of socialism like legalized abortion I am against it.
Obama has no choice but to defend the platform of the democratic party which is for 'abortion rights' and the famous or infamous slogan whatever you believe, "a woman's right to choose what to do with her own body.'
I and other pro life activists say of course she does, when she is being led down the primrose path toward dangerous sex, and can insist on adequate birth control or no sex at all in order to prevent the need for an abortion.
When I think of what I did to prevent conception! I abstained. I allowed husbands sex with no penetration only. I went for years without sex. Who says you have to have sex all the time anyway. To heck with the sexual revolution if you have to have abortions as a consequence.
Oh, say the socialists, you can't ask teens to abstain from sex, they just won't do it. Oh yes, if you think you might have to take a slow boat to China if you get pregnant as teenager, you will abstain. My dad was an alcoholic, but when he and my mother found a condom in my sister's BF's wallet he had left in their house they jumped in the car and drove 300 miles in a tizzy to tell us two college daughters who had boyfriends, if we were having sex with them, my father was not going to pay one more cent on our education! I was so indignant and yelled and hollered that we were still virgins for God's sakes and I was 19 years old!
I knew some girls in college having sex who had to worry every month about getting pregnant. I did not need any more to worry about thank you than I already had.
I see many Mormon teen age girls and boys who abstain from sex. The boys expect to abstain until they get back from Mormon missions, and they all expect to abstain until they get married as they cannot get a recommend to marry in the temple if they are not virgins. They will be asked!! I am sure a lot of them are barely virgins, but pregnant brides rarely go to the temple to get married as they would have to lie to everybody.
Abstinence can be maintained if the whole society is willing to do their part in helping their teens to abstain. A society that wants to prevent over a million abortion deaths a year in this country will have to commit to different ways of handling their teens and their own sexual lives. They will have to commit to not having high risk sex that will result in an unwanted pregnancy. If one part of society in our country can do this, so can others.
It's stupid not to recognize the strengths in a 'religious' way of life and adapt some of those ways if it will save a lot of lives. That is how civilization has advanced by adapting all kinds of ways developed everywhere that seemed to work best in dealing with problems. God knows unwanted pregnancy is a big problem in our world today, which is why legalized abortion has flourished.
But if we don't want to lose our humanity we have to take stock of the toll such a policy as legalized abortion is taking in lives of the yet to be born.
I have chosen to focus on unwanted pregnancy since I am a woman who has seen many many women struggling with theirs and their mates' desire for sex and hardship pregnancies. Sarah Palin has had five kids of her own, including a Downs Syndrome baby, and a teenager who got pregnant, has now parted with the father, and is having to work and struggle to take care of a kid when she was not ready. Beautiful Bristol Palin whose story of teen pregnancy was in the headlines for months. Is it any wonder that her mother, Sarah Palin, has chosen to focus on how to handle hardship pregnancy without a violent solution.
As a kid, I began to worry about as much I think as my mother did whether she would get pregnant this month. As the oldest I had to take care of my little sisters. My mother set me and my younger sister to work doing the washing when we were 9 and 10 years old. She had so much else to do she could not get it done. If we wanted clean clothes we were going to have to do it. I had a sister one year old at the time. I must have been washing diapers.
In those days, we had no running water or electricity so we carried the water in big buckets to an out door tub, built a fire under it, heated the water, carried it to the washer on the enclosed porch, and then carried the rinse water.
I prayed really hard my mother would not get pregnant again after her fifth! She did and miscarried, and I thought she was going to die. I feared she had tried to abort the baby as she had already done one baby with a catheter, and was now going to bleed to death. I don't know if she had anything to do with the miscarriage but I am sure she was in the depths of despair over the 8th pregnancy in 10 years! One aborted, twins miscarried, five alive, and this one!
I called on the phone for help and when she came back from the hospital she reported she had talked the doctor into giving her a tubal ligation! So at 29, she would not be having any more unwanted pregnancies.
I could not help but be relieved, but I began to think of marriage as a nightmare world I would have to enter where hardship pregnancies were the rule not the exception. And some women were having a baby every year or two. What was I going to do when I got there?
Well, I thought and thought and all my worries eventually made a ferocious pro life activist out of me who kicked men out of my bedroom on a regular basis. No, I will not have risky sex and you better not suggest such a thing. I don't have abortions, buster. I saw my mother nearly go crazy over hers. Risk dying. We are not having sex that will result in a pregnancy until at least 4 more years! No stair step babies for me. Who said you had to have sex every night? I don't have to and neither do you.
Couldn't you buy some of those birth control pills?
No! I have high blood pressure and I don't want the side effects. I saw my mother get pregnant with diaphragms. The only sure thing is no penetration.
I am going to tell your dad.
He already knows it and says no wonder you beat me up. Oh yeah, he thinks he would have beat my mother up if she refused him. Then she could have left him just like I am going to do you if you try anything. I will never have an abortion, and I can't have a baby right now, or I will have a serious case of chronic fatigue, so what do you suggest? Sacrifices are sometimes necessary to have a sensible life.
We aren't animals you know. We don't have to breed every year like rabbits. I know some people do, but I have a brain and I am going to use it, to have children who are spaced and we can take care of. I cannot have a lot of kids. I am not strong enough!
On and on. You get the idea.
So these were my Sunday thoughts.