From: eisimps@cie.uoregon.edu (Eileen Simpson)
Subject: Re: Extremists and Strikers (Was Re: Feminists for Life (was Controlling Women, etc.)
Organization: University of Oregon Campus Information Exchange
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 92 08:33:16 GMT

In article <1992Sep26.205328.1279@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> c164-ad@po.berkeley.edu (Martin Guerrero) writes:
>Eileen:
>1) Are Operation Rescue Poeple Extremists?  Are people who stay near
>clinics suggesting other alternatives, or urging people to please not
>go extremists?
>
>Just wondering what you meant by Extremists.

Thought about what to do with this one, and came to this conclusion (please
excuse the longest run-on sentence I have ever posted):

Since this line began with a family experience that was and is very
distressing to me, and since this question comes out of my last post on
that topic, and since I think it is likely to lead to additional comment 
if I respond, and since I would read those comments in the context of 
my family's experience, I have decided that I should not answer the question.  
I do not want to continue any threads related to what happened to my sister 
during the final illness of her child.  It is not good for me.

I won't be able to separate my answer from that experience, and, regardless
of the rightness or wrongness of that, it is reality for me.  For everyone
else, regardless of intention, this is a theoretical discussion.  Not for
me--and that makes all the difference.  It won't come out well.

It is very lonely when a baby dies and everyone wants that child wants to
live.  In a hopeless situation, the only thing that "works" is people being
willing to be vulnerable to the family's helplessness to save the child.  I
think that almost everyone has a hard time with that. Some people, for
reasons I cannot fathom (having seen the cost), behaved in ways I can only
describe as 'in our face' cruel and abusive.  

I suppose that in one sense that does have implications for
Operation Rescue and the other things you mentioned, but there is *no way*
I want to discuss that in the context of what led to this discussion;
especially since what happened to us did not involve an abortion but a
fight over the appropriate way to respect the life the child had. It puts a
weird warp on things to go from that to a discussion of abortion because
the baby wasn't aborted and no one in the family would agree that his 
life was not valued.  If I answer your question, that will probably get lost
in later posts to everyone but me. 
 
I think I'll let this one go by for now.  Maybe at some later date I will
answer--in a situation that isn't so emotionally loaded for me, and that is
clearly related to abortion (assuming I can ever separate things that way.
Who knows?)

One last thing:  I have really appreciated that no one, at all, from either
side, said, "Well, if the kid had all those problems, then I guess it's
best that he died."  We heard that from some people, too.  While it was not
as really rotten as the other stuff I've written about, it was really
offensive.  I think people here *have* recognized that the child had
inherent value to his family, and have respected his life regardless of
their position on abortion.  You might take a moment to notice that about 
each other!

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