Wednesday, November 02, 2005

An ongoing struggle

Almost 20 years ago, a female American tourist asked me what Norwegians thought of the abortion issue. It was rather surprising, because I was working as a guide in a museum at the moment, and we had been discussing the relationship between the Scandinavian countries, the "400-year night", unions with Denmark and later Sweden, and had stopped around 1905. I did not see that question coming.

I answered then, as I would have answered now: Women in Norway have the right to choose if they want to carry a fetus to term or not. I also added then, and this would have had a stronger emphasis now: Norway has good support systems for single mothers, if you want to keep your child you can still do that and have education and a career, and thus be able to support yourself and your children as a single parent.

But it made me aware that not all the world is like that. Even America, which all Norwegians in the 60ies were brought up to think of as the ultimate free democratic society of the self-made wealthy and happy masses, had blind spots.

One blogger who exposes those blind spots relentlessly is a favourite of mine. If you are interested in these issues, go read Bitch PhD's post about current planned parenthood politics in the US.

No comments: