A story April 10, 2007

I don’t know what exactly my point is telling this story, but it seemed like a good fit considering the tone of this blog lately. Its sort of a family secret, but its not…its just talked about in hushed tones. So I’ll lower my voice.

I’m not sure why its so hushed, other than the subject matter.

So…let’s say there’s this family, right? And this family happens to hail from a country that was war-torn in the late 1930s to mid 1940s. The men left to fight the good fight and the women were left at home with the kids, and the mothers-in-law, and the work camps, and the occupying soldiers.

Then…war over…lots of years pass and some of the women (now displaced because of said occupying forces) finally find their husbands and move to another country (where the husbands have been set up by allied forces).

So…there’s lots of Poles in Scotland. This woman was in her thirties by the time she saw her husband again and then another baby came pretty much 9 months after the reunion (heh. Catholics). And again about 7 years after that…and again 1 1/2 years after that. So…when the math comes out correctly, this woman was 42 when the last baby came.

Like I said, there were a lot of Poles in Scotland. This woman had friends, a bunch of ’em, in similar situations. One, I believe, walked from Russia (to Poland…not the UK). Point being…women left by their husbands in a country that was being occupied by separate forces nearly weekly and raising children and helping their elderly relatives…these were tough and resourceful women. Women whose stock I’m proud to be part of.

So…42 and pregnant. Poor. 3 kids already and with very little income. Here’s how the story goes:

Mrs. V, one of the Polish Bridge Club (kidding…they didn’t play bridge), upon finding out that she’s pregnant takes the woman aside and offers her an abortion.

This part is always the hushed part…followed by “Can you believe she would say such a thing?” heh. Catholics.

And…my reply for many years (for I have heard this story many times) has always been, “yes…she wasn’t telling her to get one, she was offering her services because obviously she felt that it was a rough situation and wasn’t sure if the woman wanted to go through with it. 3 kids, small flat, poor, and 42 (which, at that time was, like, a hundred). Obviously she’s done this before and this was her way of being kind. They were friends.”

Usually this is met with, ‘oh…I dunno’ and a change of topic. But I stand behind my remarks.

The story continues almost 50 years later and I’ve got a healthy, bouncing baby uncle. I counted his fingers and toes at Easter, and yup…they’re all there. As cute as the dickens.

A little research…

I checked out some sites that claimed that abortion was linked to a hightened risk of breast cancer. Of these groups, I checked quickly and most of them seemed to have either a religious or pro-life connection. I checked a website for a cancer based organization, the National Cancer Institute and they said the following:

“In February 2003, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) convened a workshop of over 100 of the world’s leading experts who study pregnancy and breast cancer risk. Workshop participants reviewed existing population-based, clinical, and animal studies on the relationship between pregnancy and breast cancer risk, including studies of induced and spontaneous abortions. They concluded that having an abortion or miscarriage does not increase a woman’s subsequent risk of developing breast cancer. A summary of their findings, titled Summary Report: Early Reproductive Events and Breast Cancer Workshop, can be found at http://www.cancer.gov/cancerinfo/ere-workshop-report .”

Of course, this was only 2 minutes of research, but I think if I were to commit to it, I would find fairly decent resources that would argue the same.

As for women dying from legalized abortions (or illegal ones):

I wiki-ed.

“Abortion is no longer a dangerous procedure. This applies not just to therapeutic abortions as performed in hospitals but also to so-called illegal abortions as done by physician. In 1957 there were only 260 deaths in the whole country attributed to abortions of any kind….90 percent of all illegal abortions are presently being done by physicians….Whatever trouble arises usually arises from self-induced abortions, which comprise approximately 8 percent, or with the very small percentage that go to some kind of non-medical abortionist….”

Are you happy now? Hey, Syntax? Are you? Are you happy?

I just translated this:

Rule BV: Bound variable representation
An expression (E’) with syntactically independent NPA and NPB may not be translated into expression (E) in which NPA is A-bound by NPB, if there is an expression (E’’) resulting from replacing NPA with NPC, where NPC is an NP such that NPB heads an A-CHAIN tailed by NPC and can be translated into E.

From this:

T may not translate an expression E’ in Sem’ with syntactically independent Nps A’ and B’ into an expression E in Sem in which A is A-bound by B, if there is an expression E’’ resulting from replacing A’ in E’ with C’, C’ an NP such that B’ heads an A-CHAIN tailed by C’ and T also translates E’’ into E.

And I’m not entirely sure I got it right.

Oh sure, you say, she’s read the paper so she knows what T and E’ and Sem’ and stuff are. Yeah, well, I’ll tell you something, Sailor. It doesn’t make a fuck of a lot of difference if you DO know what these things are.