Everyone please take a peek at the current mission statement...

[bliss_eternal]

stickied at the top of our site (above).

It's substantially briefer than the one I developed (thankfully--lol). ;)

It looks to cover the basics of what was expressed regarding the purpose of this group. But I'm wondering if perhaps we need to lengthen it at all? Or state any other specifics...? :shrug:

This is OUR group...yours, mine, ours--so don't be shy...share what you think!

If so, (or not) post here and we can forward it to Skinner as a request.

Best,
bliss :hi:

[iverglas]

1. of course you know

The DU Pro-Choice group supports Roe v. Wade and complete reproductive freedom

-- those two things are mutually exclusive. ;)

But heck, I don't live in the US, so I can't really support or not support Roe v. Wade anyhow.

I'd be truly interested in reading people's deep thoughts about the theory behind the practice of placing limits of any kind on access to abortion. So some week soon when I have the time to give them the attention they deserve, I might just repost that question about what the state's interest in a woman's pregnancy is, and we can have at it without having to deal with barely concealed anti-choice opinion.

Maybe we could have a resource-sharing thread, for our favourite writings on the subject. How 'bout this one?


And of course now, as usual, I can't remember the name of the danged book I like to recommend. It has first-person accounts by a number of women, ordinary and famous, and one man, about their unwanted pregnancy experiences. Published quite some time ago, and I have my copy around here on a bookshelf somewhere ...

Here we are. I knew if I searched for Whoopi Goldberg I'd find it:
http://www.amazon.ca/o/ASIN/1568581882/701-8933960-5852336?SubscriptionId=10YYZWRFWPWEVBCTR502
The Choices We Made: Twenty-Five Women and Men Speak Out about Abortion (Paperback)
by Angela Bonavoglia (Author)

Apparently reissued in 2001:

Book Description
Every day in America, abortion providers and the women who need them are in danger. First published ten years ago, this collection of 25 powerful stories from contributors both famous and ordinary, privileged and poor, provides often harrowing insights into what happens when women are denied the right to choose. Testimonials from teenagers, college students, overloaded young mothers, and even a retired male Marine put a human face on one of this country's most controversial issues and offer passionate arguments for access to legal and safe abortions.

Just in case we need reminding (and we all do, sometimes) that women are all their own persons, with their own lives, and their own pregnancies, and the ability to make their own decisions.

[bliss_eternal]

2. Good suggestions and nice resource idea...!

I'd also like to apologize again for my response and confusion earlier (through pm) and my delayed response to you here.

My comprehension skills were a tad impaired earlier (migraine coming on). I was on the loopy side, and should have realized I wasn't reading and seeing things properly. (Duh, bliss). :banghead:

I should have signed off and taken some time for me, but again wasn't thinking clearly and was so excied about the group, and trying to get the word out, blah, blah.

So again, my humble apologies and welcome to the group Iverglas! :hi::hug:

[iverglas]

3. oh good heavens!

I think even when I said "it was a joke" I sounded more serious than I was. ;) ;) ;)

I still want to petition the management for the icon I seem to need so often:

;^)

That's a tongue in a cheek.


Be glad you are not me this month. Townhouses are being built In My Back Yard. The pile-driving, to carve foundations out of bedrock, starts at 7:03 a.m., about 50 feet from the bedroom and office windows. Oddly, it then finishes an hour or two later and resumes only intermittently throughout the day. And if you think that doesn't make you irritable ...


(The joke, for those wondering, was that I don't support Roe v. Wade -- and it's not at all hard for me to imagine that people who, unlike me, are actually affected by the question would be a little distressed by that without having all the background in mind at that instant. It's here, for those interested - the discussion I'd be interested in resuming here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=217&topic_id=5241&mesg_id=5241
I must add that even the estimable Bertha Wilson J., formerly of the Supreme Court of Canada, spoke words to the same effect about the state's interest in fetuses, in the Morgenthaler decision, but our Court did not issue guidelines that would reflect whatever interest that might be, as the US SC did, because the question was not before it, so we have no legislative restrictions on access to abortion at present.)

The pile-driving has been interrupted, the heat in my office is rising ... getting it together to put the AC back in the window would probably solve a multitude of problems ...

[bliss_eternal]

4. Oh no--not pile driving...

:( :cry: :(

The worst I deal with in terms of that sort of noise is the weekly leaf blowers. Quite the obnoxious sound, almost makes me miss the scraping of the good old rake. But even leaf blowers can't compare to the sound of pile driving.

Oh and at our former residence, our bedroom window faced the street--which was very busy, the link between two busy intersections. Wouldn't you know the last six months we were there, they started a "street improvement campaign." Pile drivers, trucks, cement mixers--the whole works monday through friday at 7:00 am. Wouldn't have been a big deal but dh and I both worked nights and slept during the day. :mad::( Not at all pleasant or conducive to sleeping.

I appreciate your understanding iverglass but I should have known you were joking. You've ALWAYS been a huge supporter of our rights and spoke at length about changing the system to support women making their own decisions--sans ridiculous legislation. I even have some of your threads bookmarked. So that should give you an idea...I was in a LOT of pain yesterday. I shouldn't have been posting (or reading) at all. :hi:

[iverglas]

5. I've got you beat

I live on a narrow, narrow street. From my front window to the neighbour's across the street is less than 40 feet - 5 feet of my frontage and porch, 5 feet of sidewalk, 15 feet of roadway, 5 feet of sidewalk, 5 feet of frontage, with a foot or two thrown in here and there. My block was chosen about 7 years ago to be the block where the brand new sewer/water lines running westward along the main street at one corner of the block would jog down to run (quite inexplicably) westward along the residential street that starts at the other end of my block.

The bedrock here is literally 6 feet below the surface. (That's why my house, and oldie, has a basement just under 6 feet high -- they didn't use pile-drivers to build things where things should not be built, in the old days.) Dynamite. Yes. Dynamite to 20 feet deep, up to a few feet from the foundations. It was supposed to be all done by early June of that summer. Instead, we lived at the epicentre of it for 6 months, with our road torn up and commercial traffic being rerouted onto it (going the wrong way) when the white hats were just too lazy to work out proper detours ... and pile driving, blasting, and really the worst -- the rows of holes that were drilled, five abreast, every three feet, down every block, to plant the dynamite. *That* sound is the worst you have ever heard. And it took 3 days to do our one block. Not to mention that the noise was pretty much just as bad when it was being done a block away, and it could be heard for more blocks. East Beirut. It was genuinely, hugely traumatic (especially for someone with ptsd and the classic heightened startle/fight-or-flight response plus huge free-floating fear of being subject to arbitrary outside control -- and who works in a home office, 24/7 exposure).

The best part was when, after a couple of days of pile-driving right up within a foot of my foundations, our lights started flickering. My electrician rushed over and told me we were lucky the house hadn't burned down already -- the vibration had loosened the screw for the main power line into the house, and the wires were arcing. But was this the city's contractor's fault? Nooo. Would they notify residents to watch for electrical problems? Nooo. It was a great big coincidence.

After two summers of that ... yes, they had to rip up the intersections again the next year for some reason ... and oh yeah, there was the night that a gas main around the corner started pluming and all the people there had to be evacuated ... a city non-profit development went into the back yards of the people on the next block. Pile-driving for 50 units ... overlooked, although a little farther away, by our bedroom and my office window ...

Doesn't this just give you the willies to even hear about?? I was a complete wreck. Shattered. And on top of it, lied to and manipulated by the contractor, who, just for instance, decided to tarmac my front walk when it was all done even after I had expressly told them to stay the hell off my property with their asphalt, and that they were going to replace the walk with a concrete platform whether they liked it or not -- them having lowered the level of the street by a foot, for better drainage ... right in front of my two houses (home and office), of course, and left me with a driveway that was on about a 45 degree angle, perfectly suitable for a place covered in ice 5 months of the year, and a collapsing side garden fence ... and then replaced my expensive topsoil with clay crap ...

I needed the whine. The pile-drivers are driving. Thank you.