On abortion, Sanders stays true

Bernie Sanders at Liberty University(Starting at 7:39 on the video):

“Senator Sanders, you have talked in your campaign about how it is immoral to protect the billionaire class at the expense of our most vulnerable in society, obviously children…. A majority of Christians would agree with you … but would also go further and say that children in the womb need our protection even more…. How do you reconcile the two?”

Bernie Sanders answers:

“…on this very sensitive issue on which this nation is divided… my view is I respect absolutely a family that says, ‘No, we are not going to have an abortion,’ I understand that, I respect that. But I would hope that other people will respect the very painful and difficult choice that many women feel they have to make and don’t want the government telling them what they have to do.”

Listen to women cheering at his answer. When medical science discovers a way to transplant a fetus to a man’s body, we’ll ask the question again.

Sanders also says in his response:

“I want to tell you what was in the Republican budget that passed a number of months ago… When you talk about issues of children, understand the Republican budget threw 27 million people off of health care, including many children, at a time when many families cannot afford to send their kids to college.”

The entire speech is worth watching –  he talks justice! morality!

My own view on abortion:

Let’s support girls and women with education and good jobs so that no woman has to defer to a man over control of her body. Let’s bring up boys to respect women and women’s bodies so that there are no unwanted pregnancies. Let’s give pregnant women the financial support they need to take care of their babies so that abortion is not a consequence of poverty.

Ever gonna happen?

Recent forays beyond the walls: Saint Joan

Saint Joan, the Arts Club production of George Bernard Shaw’s play, featured an amazing portrayal of Joan of Arc by Meg Roe. Shaw wrote the play after the canonization of Joan in 1920. In Shaw’s epilogue, the spectre of Joan asks: “[S]hall I rise from the dead, and come back to you a living woman?” As the men who were just revering the saint on their knees begin to make their excuses and leave, Joan says, “What? Must I burn again?” In this shortened version of the play, only the last lines of the epilogue, which in the original were voiced by Joan, were recited by Meg Roe:

“O God that madest this beautiful earth, when will it be ready to receive Thy saints? How long, O Lord, how long?”