First things first. I love my Sirius radio. Gone are the days of having talk radio for only five minutes of my nearly hour long commute. I can now listen to talk radio all the time. I don’t, because I enjoy a few of the music stations as well, but I could and, somehow, that makes a difference.

Anyway, thanks to a conversation with my boss the other day, I decided to give the TalkLeft station a try this morning. It doesn’t hurt to know what the “other side” is thinking, right? That’s how I found myself listening to Bill Press.

Mr. Press was discussing the new book by Rick Santorum, It Takes a Family. Apparently, this book, among other things, says that families fare better when the mother can stay at home with the kids.

I’m not particularly keen on arguing this point at the moment. I’ve never been a big fan of Santorum. I don’t necessarily disagree with his beliefs, but I always get the impression that he’d like to legislate those beliefs a little more than I’m comfortable supporting. So, I’m not defending him here. Maybe I’ll pick up the book sometime, and defend or deride it after I’ve read it, but I’ve got too many books on the waiting list as it is.

As this book was discussed, I heard several points raised with which I personally disagreed, but only one of them made me angry. Apparently, Santorum’s belief that having a mother in the home is beneficial to the family is akin to wanting to remove all self-respect and dignity from women.

My mom was home with us when I was growing up, and for anyone to suggest that she’s somehow unworthy of self-respect or dignity is offensive. I was reminded of alternate beginning for The Incredibles, in which Helen (Elastigirl/Mrs. Incredible) defends the fact that she’s living at home taking care of her kids to her neighbor, Beth:

Beth: What do you do, Helen?

Helen: I’m a homemaker.

…

Beth (has turned away, and begins talking to another group of neighbors): Throw away my prime years trailing after a bunch of snotty cares. No, thank you. Hello, no thanks. Hello, I want to do something with my life.

Helen: Wait a minute. You consider raising a family nothing?

Beth: Well, it’s fine if you’r enot suited for more substantial things.

Helen: Do you have any idea how much suffering would fail to take root if more people were good parents?

Beth: I, uh…

Helen: What’s more important than that? What kind of job? A job saving lives? Is that important?

Beth: Uh, yeah. Yeah…

Helen: What about risking my life? What about contfronting evil on a daily basis for years so that people like you can sleep in safety and security? Would you consider that kind of job substantial?

Beth: Um, yeah, yeah. I would, yes. I would.

Helen: Well, that’s the job I gave up for my new job, raising a family, and nobody’s going to tell me that’s less important.

I think that says it all right there. For anyone to set that equal to the systematic oppression of women in Middle Eastern cultures is utterly repugnant.

“Homemaker” is a job with just as much dignity (for either sex, though I think that women are, as a whole, better suited psychologically for raising small children) as any other job. Do I think that women should be forced to stay in the home? No, of course not, but I’m disgusted that anyone would ever imply that a woman working as a homemaker is somehow undignified.

Dean, who is pro-choice, believes that Roe should go:

The reason abortion is a national issue in America, unlike most democratic nations, is that we’re the only such nation that has had our laws on the matter imposed by court fiat rather than through the will of the majority. Thus the issue continue to warp our politics until the voice of the people is finally heard.

My own view on abortion is that I have no solid opinion. It’s a complicated issue, and I wish I could take the hardline opinions on either side of the argument. I don’t think that a zygote constitutes a separate human being. As a result, I believe that the decision whether to terminate a pregnancy when there’s little more than a fertilized egg is a privacy issue. On the other hand, I do believe that the unborn child is human long before birth, and that the right to life trumps any privacy issues.

The question is, when does that clump of living human tissue actually become a distinct human being? It’s a question I can’t answer, but both sides of this argument use a slippery slope fallacy. The pro-lifers say that because there’s a baby at the end of the pregnancy and we can’t say exactly when life starts, we have to always treat the child with the same respect we would any other human life. The pro-choice advocates say that because there’s no child at the beginning of the pregnancy, we must always treat the embryo as non-human, allowing the woman’s “right” to privacy be the driving force in deciding the fate of the pregnancy.

My stance is simply that I don’t know. I don’t approve of abortion at any point, but there are a good many things I don’t consider ethical that I don’t feel should be outlawed.

It struck me while I was reading Dean’s post, though, that there are many, many people in this country who believe that the “right” to abortion and the “right” to privacy should be absolutely sancrosanct, though there are no such rights written in the Constitution. At the same time, many of these same people want to restrict the right to bear arms, even though that right has an entire Amendment devoted to it.