>As far as "really crazy" people, what harm is done by granting their
>desire for an abortion?
Doug said the other day that "even a radically pro-abortion guy like me is uncomfortable with the phrase "for the hell of it." This question about crazy people and abortion reminded me of a Bad Subjects article on the Sex Pistols song "Abortion". Even Johnny Rotten could be made uncomfortable by issues surrounding abortion.
>"The fetus thing is what got me." said Lydon. "She'd tell me about
>getting pregnant by the male nurses at the asylum or whatever."
>She was a girl from Birmingham
>She just had an abortion
>She was a case of insanity
>I assumed the next line "Her name was Pauline, she lived in a tree"
>was just a throwaway, and nowadays can't help but think of
>eco-radical pinup Julia "Butterfly" Hill perched high atop the
>Headwaters forest. Yet in his 1994 Autobiography Rotten, John Lydon,
>known as Johnny Rotten when he was the Sex Pistols' singer,
>remembered that Pauline "actually had a treehouse on the estate of
>this nuthouse. The nurses couldn't get her down, she'd be up there for days".
>
>He continued, "She turned up at my door once wearing a see-through
>plastic bag. She did the rounds in London and ended up at
>everybody's door...Like most insane people, she was very
>promiscuous." I suspect the band enjoyed Pauline's sexual favors,
>and later were a bit remorseful when they realized that a troubled
>mental condition lay beyond her Punk outrageousness. Years later
>Pistols drummer Paul Cook remembered glumly "You had to keep your
>distance from Pauline." In my first teaching job, in the
>loosely-managed art program of an inner-city drop-in center with
>many clients in and out of the mental health system, another male
>teacher had the habit of bringing home deeply troubled women. He
>would later bemoan their clinging and emotional dependency. "I want
>to bear Buddha's babies" wrote one on a drawing he showed me. I can
>imagine Pauline.
>She wasn't the only one who killed her baby
>She sent letters from the country
>She was an animal
>She was a bloody disgrace
>Mommy! I'm not an animal!
>Bodies! An abortion!
[....]
>Dragged on a table in a factory
>Illegitimate place to be
>In a packet in a lavatory
>Die little baby screaming
>Screaming fucking bloody mess
>It's not an animal, it's an abortion
http://bad.eserver.org/issues/2001/55/mosher.html