Wednesday, Aug 20, 2008
Keep the morning-after pill away from our daughters! Plus: Buffy" fans strike back; McCain is the perfect "anti-Clinton."
Dec 13, 1999 | Let them eat pills
BY DEBRA S. OLLIVIER
(12/06/99)
As a parent of a little girl, I am astonished that any government would administer the morning-after pill to a child without the consent of that child's parents or guardians. It amazes me that the French government sees this as a "quick fix" to the problem of teen pregnancy, when the problem lies with the child's sexuality. Perhaps if young girls were taught that becoming pregnant before marriage was no one else's fault but their own (except in the case of rape), and that they must live with the consequences of sex, then we might solve this problem. It is about time we taught our children that abstinence is the only safe and effective method to avoid becoming pregnant.
-- Andre Konstant
The morning-after pill does not function by preventing implantation of the embryo. It functions in exactly the same way ordinary oral contraceptives work: prevention of the release of the mature egg from the ovary.
There is a risk that by taking the morning-after pill an embryo will not implant -- but that risk is the same as the risk associated with the ordinary, lower-dose birth control pill. Salon would do well to actually read up on the current medical literature before freaking people out about "killing the children." If the morning-after pill fails to prevent ovum release, you get pregnant.
-- Timothy Kordas
Life begins at conception, not implantation in the uterus. If the morning-after pill prevents implantation and therby destroys the fertilized egg, it is most certainly an abortofacient. I know it is nicer, or less upsetting, or more pleasant, to think otherwise, but it is not true. One may be able to fool 15-year-old school girls, but not us pro-lifers.
-- Jessica O'Connor
Bayonne, N.J.
The adaptation racket
BY MICHAEL SRAGOW
(12/02/99)
I have not seen the movie, but when I saw the trailer recently, I half-winced, half-bristled at its ludicrous distortions. Why dress the actresses in high-waisted dresses and the actors in silk waistcoats if you're essentially presenting a modernization that takes the peel of Austen's plot but cores the meaning at the center? It sounds as though the makers of this "Mansfield Park" tried to make Fanny exactly like Gwyneth Paltrow's Emma, with a dash of sensible sweetness added to the portrait of feminine spiritedness. But when writing "Mansfield Park," Austen wrote her sister Cassandra that she intended to compose a sort of antidote to the flippancy of "Pride and Prejudice." That intention, it seems to me, explains why "Pride and Prejudice" is the superior novel.
In academic circles, there is much controversy over whether Fanny is a feminist heroine or a conservative embodiment of feminine virtue. I read her as the latter. Fanny's defiance of family opinion concerning her marriage to Henry Crawford is, to my mind, more a reflection of Austen's commitment to Tory freedom of conscience and religious virtue than it is to "female autonomy." (There's also, I think, Austen's spinsterish and sentimental attachment to marrying only for "true love.")
-- Katie Saral
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