I don’t know how many people remember Molly Yard. I remember her from TV appearances. She’s a revealing study in apostasy and hypocrisy. Like so many apostates, she simply became an anti-missionary missionary.
Molly Yard, a political activist for more than 50 years who became the eighth president of the National Organization for Women, died Tuesday night in her sleep. She was 93 and had been a resident of Fair Oaks of Pittsburgh, a retirement/nursing home in Dormont, for the past seven years.
Born in China to missionary parents, Ms. Yard played major roles in the movements for labor, civil rights and women's equality.
An ardent proponent of legalized abortion, affirmative action and the Equal Rights Amendment, Ms. Yard was known as a powerful leader who stood ramrod straight, blue eyes flashing from amusement to indignation.
As NOW's political director from 1985 to 1987, she was instrumental in the successful 1986 campaign to defeat anti-abortion referendums in Arkansas, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Oregon.
Also in 1991, Ms. Yard was honored in Paris by the French Alliance of Women for Democratization for her work on reproductive rights; she had been a leader in the effort to get Paris-based manufacturer Roussel Uclaf to make the so-called "French abortion pill" available in the United States.
Born in Shanghai, China, the third of four daughters of Methodist missionaries, Ms. Yard started life with an international perspective on feminism.
She once told the story of a Chinese friend who gave her father a brass bowl as a gift, his way of saying he was sorry she was not a boy. In those days in China, she said, the birth of a girl was a tragedy, and many were destined to live as prostitutes or servants. Sometimes, she said, "the girl babies were just thrown away."
She grew up in Chengdu, the capital of Szechuan province in West China, and came to the United States with her parents when she was 13.
"The rest of us aged slowly over time," Isaacs said. "Molly stayed exactly the same until her stroke, and then she aged overnight."
1. The impetus for her radical feminism was the fact that Chinese girls were treated like garbage.
Yet that didn’t prevent her from becoming a fanatical proponent of abortion, even though abortion in China disproportionately targets female babies, and literally treats their lives as disposable commodities.
2. After her stroke, she was totally dependent on caregivers to provide for her physical needs. But given her view of the unborn, would it not have been more consistent to euthanize stroke victims like Molly Yard? Why should she be a burden on society?
"But given her view of the unborn, would it not have been more consistent to euthanize stroke victims like Molly Yard? Why should she be a burden on society? "
ReplyDeleteI admire your tenacity in keeping on with the asking of the uncomfortable questions.
I believe David Bentley Hart stated correctly that there are few if any atheists who can live consistently in line with the logical outworking of a truly rational atheist worldview.
And one should not be surprised. The logical implications of atheism are not life affirming at all.
Note that trying to live like you affirm life as an atheist is different altogether from living consistently with what atheism demands.
Grev, atheism demands nothing of its adherents. Non-belief in god(s). That's it. After that, you can love your enemies or kill them. If the latter, society will lock you up and it will be difficult to spread your genes.
ReplyDelete"Self-hating feminism"
ReplyDeleteLovely title.
THE ATHEIST MISSIONARY SAID:
ReplyDelete"Grev, atheism demands nothing of its adherents. Non-belief in god(s). That's it. After that, you can love your enemies or kill them."
In other words, atheism is the philosophy of the serial-killer.
Steve, you got it ... it's also the philosophy of Peter Singer's The Life You Can Save.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, Peter Singer has a serial-killer's philosophy. He simply delegates the fun stuff to the abortionist, euthanasist, infanticidist, &c.
ReplyDeleteHave you ever met him? Nicest guy you could ever hope to meet. He's saved more lives in the third world than you and your brethren could hope to in a dozen lifetimes. He has undoubtedly alleviated more animal suffering than any other person in history ... and not a theistic bone in his body. Thor bless him.
ReplyDeleteTHE ATHEIST MISSIONARY SAID:
ReplyDelete"Have you ever met him?"
They said Ted Bundy was charming, too.
"Nicest guy you could ever hope to meet."
Unless I'm a baby in the womb, or a newborn, or a passenger in a lifeboat, or a senior citizen in failing health.
"He's saved more lives in the third world than you and your brethren could hope to in a dozen lifetimes."
How? By writing feel-good books about global poverty?
"He has undoubtedly alleviated more animal suffering than any other person in history ... and not a theistic bone in his body. Thor bless him."
Which nicely illustrates his morally inverted scale of values.
"morally inverted scale of values": everything is relative.
ReplyDeleteAs another Singer (Isaac Bashevis) famously observed: "for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka". Your lord doesn't seem too concerned about them.
Do you even think about the stuff you quote? Do you, an atheist, believe in the afterlife for animals? If not, then there are no eternal consequences for them (apart from oblivion).
ReplyDeleteSorry, I posted a comment with gibberish in it and hit publish when I meant to hit preview. Disregard that one. :)
ReplyDeleteYou know, I've seen bumper stickers that say, "Smile - Your Mom chose life." It's a duh message that your very ability to read and understand is thanks to your mother having refused to take the route that so many others have chosen for the sake of convenience in taking your life away. I guess Molly Yard never figured that out.
It is simply amazing that this article from the Gazette plays this emotional appeal about how Molly Yard was born in an environment where it was more preferable to just dispose of her rather than keep her alive- And she was a lucky survivor! So what does she do? She turns right around and fights for the rights of people to do to their babies what she was spared when she was a baby. It's simply reprehensible. She, as a baby, would have cried desperately for the love and compassion that was so increasingly rare to children like herself if her parents left her to die at birth, but she worked so hard for everyone else's rights to be just so heartless and immoral.
Talk about taking God's blessings and throwing them back in his face.
Steve, yes, I think about what I write and, no, I no more believe in an afterlife for non-human animals than I do for human animals. Here and now is what counts and I am all for the alleviation of suffering, both human and non-human. [For an interesting discussion about the moral worth of future unborn generations, check out the most recent Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot podcast discussion between Luke Muehlhauser and Nick Beckstead] Like Peter Singer, I see no intrinsic distinction between humans and sentient animals. However, when faced with a choice between my species and another, I would expect to prefer my own.
ReplyDeleteMatt, my favorite bumper sticker of all time is "born o.k. the first time".
THE ATHEIST MISSIONARY SAID:
ReplyDelete"Steve, yes, I think about what I write and, no, I no more believe in an afterlife for non-human animals than I do for human animals. Here and now is what counts and I am all for the alleviation of suffering, both human and non-human."
In which case the "eternal Treblinka" line is bunk.
TAM said:
ReplyDelete---
Here and now is what counts and I am all for the alleviation of suffering, both human and non-human.
---
In which case, I'm keeping you away from the nuclear trigger, because the *ONLY* way in an atheist world to guarantee there is no suffering is to kill everything that lives.
If you're apt to snicker at the moronic and the like, it can be quite amusing to read what The Atheist Missionary writes. After all, as the saying goes, The Atheist Missionary only opens his mouth to change feet! The only real surprise is what brainless comment he'll make next. How will he contradict himself this time? Which rule of logic will he abuse? Will he recycle a Richard Dawkins put-down, a Jerry Coyne insult, a PZ Myers one-liner? Maybe sprinkle in a little Bobby Henderson quip or two? The possibilities for The Atheist Missionary's chronic foot-in-mouth disease are endless! So if you're into entertainment of the dumb and dumber variety, well, lemme tell ya, you're in store for a treat when it comes to The Atheist Missionary! Just sit back and enjoy the show, folks. :-)
ReplyDeleteOf course, it goes without saying that, at this rate, The Atheist Missionary is on track to win a Darwin Award upon his demise (which many will doubtless find regrettable).
The Atheist Missionary wrote -- Grev, atheism demands nothing of its adherents. Non-belief in god(s). That's it. After that, you can love your enemies or kill them. If the latter, society will lock you up and it will be difficult to spread your genes.
ReplyDeleteI was waiting for someone to respond in such a manner.
We all have a philosophy. We all have a worldview that informs our actions. And atheism is just as religious as any other world view there is out there. In this age of anti-intellectualism, most people are unaware or proud of their not knowing. I note that as sadly in the church as outside of it.
To any atheist and theist also, my challenge remains. Deal with the arguments discussed in Clouser, The Myth of Religious Neutrality and then let us discuss how problematic the expressed view above is.
That aside, someone who despised God and religion because of the treatment of infants in China and then goes on to despise humanity in general with her support of abortion. This is someone in no way to be celebrated.
ReplyDeleteI appreciated a recent commentary at Church Colson's site detailing the efforts of a black pastor fighting the genocide of his race with the high rates of abortion in the black community.