Anger is often times manifested as a form of rage, an attempt of revenge to a party in which have inflicted harm or insult to a person.  I am having problems recently on how to effectively manage my anger, I have been very irritable lately, and I tend to vent out my frustrations to my younger brother and to some of my loved ones.  Today, somehow I have come to the point of ultimate self guilt and have tried to understand why have I been too irritable lately.

According to the famous French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan, anger or aggression for that matter came as a result of man’s defense against “threats of fragmentation”.  Simply put, Lacan perceives that man is basically just an aggregate of biological processes, and in its very essence gives him no authority whatsoever.  The attempt to create an identity as one grows older and at the same time protect this identity causes one aggression whenever he felt threatened through feelings of vulnerability and weakness.  Anger or aggression according to Lacan is a sort of illusion that man pose to himself that he indeed posses some sort of power.

I have come across to the website of Dr. Raymond Lloyd Richmond, an American psychology expert, in which he discusses with great depth the nature of human anger.  According to Dr. Richmond, anger is basically the natural human response to getting hurt.

The first step, according to him to effectively manage anger is to first acknowledge that a person is hurt.  When a person is offended, the natural response is to present outbursts of range that in its very essence serves as a tool to hide feelings of vulnerability.  As Dr. Richmond puts it:

All the bitterness and hostility is a big puff of smoke, an emotional fraud. It hardens your heart toward others so that you can seal off your own emotional pain.

The concept of unconscious anger has been presented by Dr. Richmond as an occurrence that usually happens in people inside an emotional relationship.  There are certain instances when a person gets offended, and the urge to take revenge emerges; however due to the fear of losing the particular partner’s love, people tend to suppress their disappointment, but unfortunately through time, becomes a full blown anger, hence Dr. Richmond’s so-called unconscious anger.  A person end up remaining hurt while the desire to hurt the partner is being intensified in one’s unconscious.  Eventually, the angry person gets depressed due to the feeling of guilt of having the desire to hurt the person that he or she loves.  Depression, according to Dr. Richmond is “anger turned inwards”.

It is with this respect that the most effective and healthy way to deal with anger is to track back the roots that makes one hurt such as certain experiences, instances or memories that could be in one way or another causes the feeling of rage.  According to Dr. Richmond:

You need to do this because any insult in the present is magnified by similar insults from the past. Failure to recognize old insults only makes the current insult seem far larger than it really is.

Dr. Richmond as a conclusion provided a seemingly commonsensical and yet often neglected solution to the problem of anger.  According to him, the most effective response to feelings of hurt and insult is forgiveness.  However, though the notion is simple, it is not easy to implement.  According to Dr. Richmond, a person cannot fully forgive someone until he or she has come to fully feel the pain that he or she has.  In order for a person to live honestly and take responsibility of his life, Dr. Richmond emphasized the need to “examine one’s emotions consciously onto the table”.  It is only with this manner that details of the factors that hurt a person could be acknowledged and analyzed.

To forgive  means simply that you refuse to keep hating someone. In practical terms, this refusal to hate is a conscious decision, from the depths of your heart, to give up your desire to feel the satisfaction of knowing that the one who caused your hurt will get hurt in the end.

Perhaps the pressure of getting old, of achievements of goals to set, of the time ticking, together with the feelings of frustration to people that I care for has added to the pressure of dealing with life.  The nature of water as a weak and lowly substance was significantly noted by Dr. Richmond to humility.  A substance that is as lowly as the water could not be bitten by any jaws of the ungood.  When a substance becomes more firm, more solid and have developed one’s pride due to supposed strength, the need to avenge one’s self against insult or offense becomes intense.

Its quite amusing that the principle of perpetual self redefinition, of living primarily at the present, of basically doing something in accordance to the natural laws of nature is always known to me, I have even included its principles in my college thesis three years ago.  Yet, people do age, people do harden, people do wanted a place in this world, the name, the label that I have given myself distanced me to the very principle that I considered to be one of my most valued virtues.

In the Philippines, abortion is synonymous to murder.  In a country where the Catholic Church is more powerful than the concept of god, Filipinas who want to undergo abortion have to first pass a very excruciating process of self-guilt, self-condemnation; after which possible rupture of the cervix, infection, drug overdose or even death could occur.  Abortionists in the Philippines are seen as evil, immorals, uneducated, cunning, and very much unfit to perform of shall I say, an induced delivery through the use of various drugs and other tools.

Abortionists in the country are often referred by herbal vendors along the Quiapo church.  Typical charges for abortion in the country ranges from 5,000 PhP ($113.00) up to 30,000 PhP ($681.00) depending on the age of the fetus.  Transactions are often done behind the walls of almost dilapidated concrete establishments within the city, as the vendors are well aware of the danger of the transaction if caught by the police.  After the agreement is done,  the most typical meeting place is Monumento, after which, it is already up to the guide where will the woman be brought for the process.

Abortion in the country is done not in clinics but in marginalized areas within Metro Manila.  Often times, the neighborhood are well aware of the operations, but their loyalty often resides with the aforementioned.  This is primarily because the neighborhood benefits in the entire process by serving as look-outs, providing transportation before and after the process, do errands for the patient and the abortionist; and in some cases even give empathy and sympathy to the patient through visiting the abortionist’s house.

After the first trimester of pregnancy, the process of dilation and currettage (D&C) or Raspa is no longer performed.  In the United States, or other Western countries where abortion is legal, the process of dilation and evacuation (D&E) is the process being used for the second trimester and Intact dilation and extraction (IDX or intact D&X) for the third trimester.  All of these processes are performed under close medical attention and with general anesthesia.  In the country, abortions that are after the first trimester are done using induced labor.  The process is similar to IDX however, instead of having to gradually open the cervix and detach the body of the fetus from its head, the aforementioned is being forcefully delivered from the cervix through the use of certain drugs, and without the use of general anesthesia.  The woman will have to wait for several hours until a painful feeling in the abdomen is felt, similar to giving birth; from there the fetus is extracted.

There are a number of instances, most specially in third trimester abortions that the child could not be normally delivered, this will cause the woman to bleed to death or experience heart failure.  Since abortion in the country is illegal, women could not be brought to major hospitals due to the fear of being apprehended after being saved.  In some cases, victims of failed abortion are rushed to private hospitals or clinics in exchange for a very expensive fee- 300,000 Php ($6,818.00) or more for private hospitals and 30,000 ($681.00) to 50,000 Php ($1,136.00) for lying-in clinics.

Despite of these incidences, abortion in the country is still very rampant.  Women know where to go, women know what drugs to take.  They know that the entire process is very risky and would mean the exchange of their own lives, yet they still push through with the process.  To correct a mistake, the promise of a relatively better life, to prevent further shame, to minimize further suffering are foremost reasons of Filipinas- yet the state condemns them.  See them as immorals and worthy to be punished like criminals.

Despite the emergence of international laws protecting women against oppression from all kinds, including persecution and penalization from abortion, the Philippine government still remains under the cloak of the church.  The Philippine constitution states clearly the separation of the church and the state - yet these provisions only starts and ends in paper.

This is an excerpt from my Master’s Degree thesis. I just wanted to share a portion with you guys.

The role of computer media mediated communication (CMC) or communication through the use of blogs, social networking sites, video sharing websites, podcasts, groups, chats and forums have enabled Filipino atheists to have a more convenient way of learning more about atheism, and test their stand and beliefs relative to one group or another.
According to Holt (2004), through CMC, primarily with the use of web pages/sites, people can express their ideology and have various people read them. These circumstances reveal the traces of civic life that reflect the ideology of composers of web pages/sites, as well as how designers see visitors who read these pages/sites (p.129).
Since the creation of web pages/sites is becoming easier, owing to the increasing availability of resources through the increasing technological, sophistication, availability and capability of computers, the creation of web pages or blogs has already become like a common commodity (Holt, 2004, p.130). The internet has been useful not only in propagating ideological messages, but also through embedding more than simply texts but also such permit users to attach graphic material and sound files, change size or color of font and the like. The skillful designer of sites is able to lead visitors through numerous presentations of information via a unique conceptual path (Horton, 2000; Siegel, 1997 as cited from Holt, 2004, p.132), which is impossible within the confines of other forms of media.

Considering such qualities, the web page/site seems ideal for civic discourse. It is a mass medium, but unlike other mass media (such as television or film), it does not need expensive equipment (other than the computer) or exhaustive technical training to compose effective utterances, it is with this respect that the internet and the huge role that it plays in terms of computer mediated media communication (CMC) has led Filipino atheists to adopt it as a primary means to express their ideas and make their paradigm known, hence attracting other people to their belief.
The use of blogs has also enabled atheists to express their own ideas and contribute to the creation of a cyber reality unique to Filipino atheists. In addition to this, Filipino atheists’ on-line journals also contribute to the answer for the lack of formal studies and researches about atheism. Video sharing and podcasting have become the alternative forms of media for the atheists wherein they can find the videos or commentaries that they wanted to listen to. Instead of watching television, a Filipino atheist can just go to You Tube and search for a whole lot of videos catering to Western atheism, and Filipino atheism as well. Podcasts also serve as an alternative media where people they can hear commentaries from various atheists who are well-known and respected. The famous scientist, Richard Dawkins, has his own podcasts embedded in his personal site, and the most famous western atheist organization, the Rational Response Squad, also have their own podcasts as well. Finally, the groups and forums enable atheists to talk to one another and allow them to have exchange of ideas, plan together, and organize certain meetings and events. As a major alternative for face-to-face communication, group forums and chat has further made the paradigm of atheism stronger and, in some cases, theist skeptics and freethinkers alike who have a couple of unanswered questions can always go and visit their networking site and “socialize” with them.
According to Lea and Spears (1992) studies of social psychological processes in group CMC have reported social influence effects under certain conditions. For instance, when CMC takes place under conditions where group norms have been previously made salient, individuals tend to behave in accordance with those norms. For example, the attitudes of group members may tend to move in the direction of the norm, and group decisions favor the norm. Moreover, the “de-individuated” conditions under which CMC normally takes place (i.e., between physically isolated and visually anonymous individuals) can serve to reinforce group identity and the prevailing norms ( Hiltz et al., 1989; Lea & Spears, 1991; Matheson & Zanna, 1989 as cited from Lea and Spears, 1992, p.323). Likewise when a particular skeptic comes across an atheist website, group or forum, it is more likely that his or her perception and attitude will be shaped into something that is exactly similar to the norm of that particular group or website.
Another possibility is that significant social information can be communicated in CMC even though it lacks visual and auditory channels. Several observations suggest that, under some conditions, relatively simple cues can contribute in powerful and sophisticated ways to convey social information and expressive meanings, to help regulate the interaction, and to influence attitudes and decision making. Also, different politeness strategies can function to maintain or reduce the psychological distance between communicators and can therefore, be used to control the interaction ( Hiemstra, 1982 as cited from Lean and Spears, 1992, p.323). Changes in the identities of users through the provision of pseudonymity or anonymity can crucially affect the conduct and outcome of group discussions in CMC ( Hiltz et al., 1989; Lea & Spears, 1991; Spears et al., 1990, as cited from Lea and Spears, 1992, p.323). This is the reason why the Filipino atheist community in the web has been significantly growing. The reduction of psychological distances and the role of pseudonymity or anonymity have allowed atheists most specially those who are inside the closet to express their beliefs and collaborate with people having the same paradigm without risking his or her image for the sake of his or her family, peers, work or education; or from being persecuted.
The study of Vanlear et al., (2005) expressed the importance of CMC in terms of providing social support (p.5). According to the Vanlear et al., people who have supportive interpersonal relationships experience better emotional and physical health than those who do not. CMC is another context of interpersonal communication, more specifically it being ‘hyperpersonal’ (Walther, 1996 as cited from Vanlear et.al, 2005, p.5). Walther suggests several reasons why CMC can become hyperpersonal:

“(a) The receiver may ‘idealize’ the sender; (b) Given the intentional nature of CMC and lack of spontaneous cues, strategic self presentation may be optimized; (c) The availability of asynchronous channels may support information management; and finally, (d) The feedback offered by CMC may magnify personal communication in a minimal cue environment. CMC support groups, especially asynchronous groups, may be characterized by highly personal communication, which may make them particularly conducive to the provision of emotional support (Turner, Grube, & Meyers, 2001)”. Vanlear et al. (2005, p.5)

In effect of this, since CMC has the capability to hyperpersonalize the communication process, such has been a very effective tool in terms of penetrating a particular individual, most specially the skeptic in terms of convincing the latter in terms of ideas, philosophies, arguments, experiences and other forms of knowledges that can lead to the adoption of an atheistic thought. Walther and Boyd (2001 as cited from Vanlear et al, 2005), discussing online support groups, observed that:
“A great degree of … intimacy seems to develop through electronic social support, as individuals engage in self-disclosure to discuss these conventionally personal issues. Validation by others often follows the disclosure of personal issues, manifesting highly rewarding outcomes from … a ‘vulnerability pattern, online” (p.165, as cited from Vanlear et al, 2005, p.5)

Finally, Lavooy and Newlin (2003, p.157) said that CMC also allow people to adopt a synchronous communication approach that allows real-time interactions. Typically, this means that individuals meet, simultaneously, at a particular location in cyberspace. They may do this, however, from any location that has Internet access. This form of CMC is very convenient and useful for people who are relatively far from each other. Usually, synchronous CMC occurs in a chat room (i.e., virtual meeting place) where people meet and interact through typed statements or questions. It is with this respect that through real time communication, Filipino atheists in the web can interact as if they were in a face-to-face- communication, hence, allowing for an effective sharing of various forms of knowledges and experiences.

I have been thinking recently, the cycle of life- being born, growing up, studying, working, marrying, and then eventually having children, getting old, and then dying.  Existentialists often say, that the meaning of man’s life resides in his/her experience, and how he or she creates his or her own subjective reality.  Existentialists often do not subscribe to the idea of god, and so, the ultimate happiness could only be achieved through the virtue of one’s will.  On the other hand, theists believe that the meaning of one’s life is knowing the purpose that god has created for man, living life in accordance to his will and eventually being rewarded in heaven when a man dies.

Obviously, I do not subscribe to the latter, and the former, I am starting to doubt its utility, really.  The something that is “in-between” the cycle of life, and that is meaning and eudaimonia is nothing but the illusion of the physical self and its complex brain process.  Some would surely contest this perception, as a lot of people view life, nature, knowledge, love, humanity as enough source of meaning and if not happiness, contentment. I would say that perhaps, the point of the continuance of life, is embedded in the biological, cognitive and psychological state of every being, as of course who would want his or herself cease to be?

The subjective realities of every man is something that I can not account to be favorable or unfavorable, but the point of following the highly deterministic human existence is something that I find to be similar to the hand of god and his (hypothetical) desire to take control of everything. Everything in accordance to a pattern, everything in accordance to a plan. Everything in accordance to the prototype of every homo sapiens sapiens.

And so, having established that the search of my meaning and eudaimonia is something that I perceived as quite synonymous to self deception, I also perceived that life is nothing but a state of affairs full of unceasing desires and discontentment, which in one way or another creates human anguish.  And so the need to be married and have children and bring them to a world of complex absurdities, angst, sorrow, unceasing desire and evil is something that I surely would not do.  The part of the causal chain, and that is to fulfill one’s basic natural capabilities, that is to procreate is something that I desire to neglect and totally trash.

The need to be immortal, through one’s offspring, epistemological contribution to human race and the likes would only make me a slave of the causal chain; and the whole cosmos would sigh in contentment as the basic nature for survival is achieved by another speck of life in the place called Earth. But an insignificant life, who have not done its part is useless and worthy to be forgotten through time, yet a life who does not contribute to the elaborate chain, is a life which in its own minute ways defy determinism and reach the tip of the rabbit’s fur.

Without relying on religion, we look to common sense, common experience and the findings of science and understanding.

The 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, Tenzin Gyatso

I think you are very sick and need help if you think murdering innocent babies that CAN AND DO feel what they are put through during abortion…especially 3rd term. You need to educate yourself a little more before you encourage these things. I haven’t seen a sight as sad and devastating as yours ever in my life. You are the most disturbed individual that I have heard of in my life. God will deal with you one day, but I just have one question…AREN’T YOU GLAD YOUR MOTHER DIDN’T ABORT YOU??? According to you, maybe she should have. I’ll bet you make her proud. Your picture is disgusting…that is a life in there. You should google abortion and take a look at some of those innocent babies murdered, tortured, and burned by abortion. Thanks.

love | love@juno.com | IP: 24.178.65.226

For some reasons, this May must have been the “abortion month on the web”; or whichever way cyber- people want to put it. A number of searches on abortion have been directed on this blog, together with people whom for some reasons still spend time arguing about their theistic arguments stating why abortion for them is simply not right. The thing is, people, if you are going to read this blog and whine how much your god together with your moral package have been offended, please do it elsewhere because there is simply no way that I would ever have to argue with you and your comments because they are simply not within my epistemological framework. The thing is, your arguments and my arguments are incommensurable since they are coming from two different sources, and from there, there is simply no sense for me replying to your thoughts.

To put it simple, lets say you have the Bible, and what I have is Utilitarianism as a moral foundation. Get it?

Why I am pro-choice? Why I wanted to terminate a “life”?

The thing is, the value and meaning of a man’s life vary for every people- across every culture, across every belief system, across every community, and every subjective reality there is. For some women, the notion of having a child despite it being unexpected or conceived unnecessarily could bring forth a utility that they might be able to reconcile with their dispositions. But there are also a significant number of women, who defies the rules of cause and effect, women who simply states in black and white that this is what she wanted to do with her life, and the lapses in judgments and mistakes that may have arisen, hence the conception of a child is something that could not be fully tagged as an occurrence that a woman has to deal-with and accept.

The fact is, people have control over their lives- over the paths that they wanted to take. If decisions in the course of one’s existence will be primarily tainted with emotional bullshits and a dozen more of ad misericordiams, then life would be such a wonderful comedic and romantic story isn’t it? But the fact is, life is not as simple as naive people stating the argument that the life of an aggregate of cell in a woman’s womb is more important that a hundred more utilities that this particular woman could attain without having a child conceived.

I believe that a woman who wanted to take control of her life, despite her lapses, is a woman who will terminate a pregnancy on the first early trimester- a signal of decisiveness and assurance of taking a path that she really wanted to go. Now, if you will have to look on a fetus on the first early trimester, it is but a size of a pea- roughly an inch. Now of course, these pro-life people would exclaim and demand, that “hey excuse me witch but what you are talking about here is a life”, and a thousand more hulahbaloohs. Let me ask you this, when can you say that a piece of cell has a “life”? Does it mean that a life is tagged if a cell already takes a human form, or the cell is just really alive since its inside a human’s body? But how about the dozen of cells that die everyday in one’s body when one decides to cut one’s hair, cut one’s nails etc etc?

The point is, no matter how many times people debate about abortion, there will never be an absolute answer to all of these. The thing that I am promoting, is the respect for every form of subjective reality there is. If abortion does not work with you, I’m cool with that. If it does, then fine. Just don’t go blabbing here arguing as if you have your doctorate degree ten times over which makes your voice god-like; because for the nth time, dogmatic and painstaking conservative moralists like you disgusts me. One can never tell on the basis of the Bible alone that the foundation of all human morals must be with regard to the teachings of the little black book. People who are against abortion never thought of weighing the pros and cons to the woman concerned and her life in general. They only focus on a single matter that when chosen will bring forth a landslide of other more issues to deal with.

Moral standards are not absolute. Morality exists for the sake of order and for the perpetuation of the homo sapiens sapiens. As evident on the dictates of our time, the need to renew one’s perspective, the society’s paradigm and the entire epistemological framework of mankind is imperative; otherwise we will all stagnate and be eaten alive by the constant forces being introduced by the now elaborate human state of affairs. Reality could not be solely limited to a person’s belief or emotion about a particular issue. The whole aggregate of economic and social factors, plus the ever changing notion of happiness and the pursuit for a quality life has been the goal of every people. Our eudaimonia or our ultimate happiness might be different to one another; but no one has the right to impose their subjective truths to someone else since no two person are the same.

Abortion is very taboo not only in the Philippines, but even in countries and states where it has been legalized. The termination of pregnancy is not good only if its decision is not founded for the sake of a greater value. The right of every woman to take control of herself as stipulated and accepted in various international legal conventions is a signal that this is an emerging reality and an imperative that is needed by our times. The morals of the past could not be compared to what we have now, for everything is in a state of flux, and survival must be seen not only in terms of its literal sense.

‘I can take a woman, in the biggest trouble she has ever experienced in her life, and by performing a five-minute operation, in comfort and dignity, I can give her back her life’

The following is the remarks delivered by Canadian Doctor, Garson Romalis on Jan. 25, at the University of Toronto Law School’s Symposium to Mark the 20th Anniversary of R. vs. Morgentaler published on The National Post, February 04, 2008.

This article inspired me. I hope the same goes to other Filipinas.

—-

I am honoured to be speaking today, and honored to call Henry Morgentaler my friend.

I have been an abortion provider since 1972. Why do I do abortions, and why do I continue to do abortions, despite two murder attempts?

The first time I started to think about abortion was in 1960, when I was in secondyear medical school. I was assigned the case of a young woman who had died of a septic abortion. She had aborted herself using slippery elm bark.

I had never heard of slippery elm. A buddy and I went down to skid row, and without too much difficulty, purchased some slippery elm bark to use as a visual aid in our presentation. Slippery elm is not sterile, and frequently contains spores of the bacteria that cause gas gangrene. It is called slippery elm because, when it gets wet, it feels slippery. This makes it easier to slide slender pieces through the cervix where they absorb water, expand, dilate the cervix, produce infection and induce abortion. The young woman in our case developed an overwhelming infection. At autopsy she had multiple abscesses throughout her body, in her brain, lungs, liver and abdomen.

I have never forgotten that case.

After I graduated from University of British Columbia medical school in 1962, I went to Chicago, where I served my internship and Ob/Gyn residency at Cook County Hospital. At that time, Cook County had about 3,000 beds, and served a mainly indigent population. If you were really sick, or really poor, or both, Cook County was where you went.

The first month of my internship was spent on Ward 41, the septic obstetrics ward. Yes, it’s hard to believe now, but in those days, they had one ward dedicated exclusively to septic complications of pregnancy.

About 90% of the patients were there with complications of septic abortion. The ward had about 40 beds, in addition to extra beds which lined the halls. Each day we admitted between 10-30 septic abortion patients. We had about one death a month, usually from septic shock associated with hemorrhage.

I will never forget the 17-year-old girl lying on a stretcher with 6 feet of small bowel protruding from her vagina. She survived.

I will never forget the jaundiced woman in liver and kidney failure, in septic shock, with very severe anemia, whose life we were unable to save.

Today, in Canada and the U.S., septic shock from illegal abortion is virtually never seen. Like smallpox, it is a “disappeared disease.”

I had originally been drawn to obstetrics and gynecology because I loved delivering babies. Abortion was illegal when I trained, so I did not learn how to do abortions in my residency, although I had more than my share of experience looking after illegal abortion complications.

In 1972, a couple of years after the law on abortion was liberalized, I began the practise of obstetrics and gynecology, and joined a three-man group in Vancouver. My practice partners and I believed strongly that a woman should be able to decide for herself if and when to have a baby. We were frequently asked to look after women who needed termination of pregnancy. Although I had done virtually no terminations in my training, I soon learned how. I also learned just how much demand there was for abortion services.

Providing abortion services can be quite stressful. Usually, an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy is the worst trouble the patient has ever been in in her entire life.

I remember one 18-year-old patient who desperately wanted an abortion, but felt she could not confide in her mother, who was a nurse in another Vancouver area hospital. She impressed on me how important it was that her termination remain a secret from her family. In those years, parental consent was required if the patient was less than 19 years old. I obtained the required second opinion from a colleague, and performed an abortion on her.

About two weeks, later I received a phone call from her mother. She asked me directly “Did you do an abortion on my daughter?” Visions of legal suit passed through my mind as I tried to think of how to answer her question. I decided to answer directly and truthfully. I answered with trepidation, “Yes, I did” and started to make mental preparations to call my lawyer. The mother replied: “Thank you, Doctor. Thank God there are people like you around.”

Like many of my colleagues, I had been the subject of antiabortion picketing, particularly in the 1980s. I did not like having my office and home picketed, or nails thrown into my driveway, but viewed these picketers as a nuisance, exercising their right of free speech. Being in Canada, I felt I did not have to worry about my physical security.

I had been a medical doctor for 32 years when I was shot at 7:10 a.m., Nov. 8, 1994. For over half my life, I had been providing obstetrical and gynecological care, including abortions. It is still hard for me to understand how someone could think I should be killed for helping women get safe abortions.

I had a very severe gun shot wound to my left thigh. My thigh bone was fractured, large blood vessels severed, and a large amount of my thigh muscles destroyed. I almost died several times from blood loss and multiple other complications. After about two years of physical and emotional rehabilitation, with a great deal of support from my family and the medical community, I was able to resume work on a part-time basis. I was no longer able to deliver babies or perform major gynecological surgery. I had to take security measures, but I continued to work as a gynecologist, including providing abortion services. My life had changed, but my views on choice remained unchanged, and I was continuing to enjoy practicing medicine. I told people that I was shot in the thigh, not in my sense of humour.

Six years after the shooting, on July 11, 2000, shortly after entering the clinic where I had my private office, a young man approached me. There was nothing unusual about his appearance until he suddenly got a vicious look on his face, stabbed me in the left flank area and then ran away.

This could have been a lethal injury, but fortunately no vital organs were seriously involved, and after six days of hospital observation I was able to return home. The physical implications were minor, but the security implications were major. After two murder attempts, all my security advisors concurred that I was at increased risk for another attack.

My family and I had to have some serious discussions about my future. The National Abortion Federation provided me with a very experienced personal security consultant. He moved into our home and lived with us for three days, talked with us, assessed my personality, visited the places that I worked in and gave me security advice. In those three days, he got to know me well. After he finished his evaluation, when I was dropping him off at the airport, his departing words to me were “Gary, you have to go back to work.”

About two months after the stabbing, I returned to the practise of medicine, but with added security measures. Since the year 2000, I have restricted my practise exclusively to abortion provision.

These acts of terrorist violence have affected virtually every aspect of my and my family’s life. Our lives have changed forever. I must live with security measures that I never dreamed about when I was learning how to deliver babies.

Let me tell you about an abortion patient I looked after recently. She was 18 years old, and 18-19 weeks pregnant. She came from a very strict, religious family. She was an only daughter, and had several brothers. She was East Indian Hindu and her boyfriend was East Indian Muslim, which did not please her parents. She told me if her parents found out she was pregnant she would be disowned and kicked out of the family home. She also told me that her brothers would murder her boyfriend, and I believed her. About an hour after her operation I and my nurse saw her and her boyfriend walking out of the clinic hand in hand, and I said to my nurse, “Look at that. We saved two lives today.”

I love my work. I get enormous personal and professional satisfaction out of helping people, and that includes providing safe, comfortable, abortions. The people that I work with are extraordinary, and we all feel that we are doing important work, making a real difference in peoples’ lives.

I can take an anxious woman, who is in the biggest trouble she has ever experiences in her life, and by performing a five-minute operation, in comfort and dignity, I can give her back her life.

After an abortion operation, patients frequently say “Thank You Doctor.” But abortion is the only operation I know of where they also sometimes say “Thank you for what you do.”

I want to tell you one last story that I think epitomizes the satisfaction I get from my privileged work. Some years ago I spoke to a class of University of British Columbia medical students. As I left the classroom, a student followed me out. She said: “Dr. Romalis, you won’t remember me, but you did an abortion on me in 1992. I am a secondyear medical student now, and if it weren’t for you I wouldn’t be here now.”

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Reader Discussion

What does it mean to be a Filipina and an Atheist all at the same time? I guess there are very few women who would want to ask this question. The problem of the argument of some theists in terms of the justification of women’s role in the Bible as something that is “very vital” to serve a greater purpose for me appears to be a pure language game. Looking on how women are treated and viewed during the old times is simply obvious- serve your god, follow your husband, be an accessory for the sake of attaining a the perfect plan of the supreme creator.

Honestly, I don’t really fancy justifying (my) feminism and providing a universal definition that would fit the subjective realities of men, women, and other institutions there is. For me, my “dominance” in this “world” is relative on how I view it, and such provides utility in terms of how I can create my own meaning independent of the conventions of the Filipino faith, independent of our social norms, independent of the usual linguistic connotations that the society wish to define a Filipina. Fact is, every form of “justified belief” anchoring on virtue of epistemology is a form of knowledge, and being the case every form of knowledge has the right to be respected. The problem though on our usual definitions of a Filipina creates a form of reality which as a whole does not really maximizes the utility that we can give to our selves and the society as a whole. Perhaps this argument could be very utilitarian as some might want to point out, but truth is this is what is happening. Filipinas no matter how they think how liberated, educated and empowered they are still unconsciously succumb to the frameworks that she have been accustomed to since birth.

Self determination, awareness of one’s weaknesses, capitalizing on strengths, further self redefinition, self-accountability, further search for knowledge and truth, critical thinking, creating one’s own notion of eaudaimonia… these are the virtues that I hold to as a Filipina and an Atheist. My meaning of my self and my reality could be highly different from how a typical Filipina should be, but does it mean that these “virtues” make me immoral, unethical, psychologically imbalanced, dumb-ass, abnormal, and a huge turn-off? Honestly, I really don’t care what people would think. I don’t really care if men would frown due to the fact that I am not simply a “meet the parents material”; I don’t really care if some of them do get intimidated by the fact that I am relatively using my brain more than they did; I really don’t care if people whom I meet at the first time dare not approach me, thinking I would bite their heads off; I don’t really care if after I finished my thesis, I have been the talk of the town; I really don’t care about people’s compliments or criticisms and imperatives on how should I live my life. My reality, my meaning and how I wanted to live it is all clear in my head. Really, thanks but no thanks.

Every woman have their own set of weaknesses and we should live with that fact and try as much as we can to either accept it, diminish it, or totally overcome it. However I guess the huge culprit in terms of the usual connotation of the need for women to be taken cared of emerged from the biological and neural perspective that women’s brain are more in tune with emotions. Albeit this does not mean that women are more inferior in terms of their logical and analytic capacity. The study of the University of California in 2005 states that although men excel more in tasks requiring more logical processing like mathematics, women on the other hand are more dominant in terms of integrating and assimilating informations. These two different neurological pathways in the brain could be very different but study of Rex Jung, a UNM neuropsychologist in the University of California states that such differences still result in an equivalent overall performance on measures of cognitive ability as evident from the results of intelligence tests conducted on both sexes. The regional difference on men and women’s intelligence could be seen on how the so-called gray matter indicating intellectual performance is distributed. According to the study of the University of California, 84-86% of both gray and white matter regions associated with intellectual performance of women are found more in their frontal lobes. On the other hand, in this area, only 45% of gray and white matter is found on men, and the rest being distributed on other parts of the brain.

My point is, the capacity of a person to use his or her critical and analytic thinking comes through constant exercise of the aforementioned. If Filipinas would view their empowerment solely on things that billions of women are believing right now, can we justifiably say that such is really empowerment, or more like an idea that was once empowering when Audrey Hepburn was still in the movie mainstream. Heraclitus, an Ancient Greek philosopher first uttered the famous cliche that the only constant thing is change. If our view of our empowerment is the same as how our grandmother activists view it, then ahem don’t you think, you ought to do more “knowledge searching”?

Psychological freaks, Satanists, Anti-Christs, Impoverished, Nincompoops- just a few of the words that my thesis panel tagged to my thesis. I just had my defense on March 31 and all I can say that its one heck of an experience. I felt that I was transported back to the Medieval times, when witches were hunted and burned to death. Where naturalists and inventors were seen as pagans- I was there standing as if I am one with them, ready to be stoned to death and be cursed as Wiiiiitttcccchhhhhhh!

The old ladies- or rather shall I call the doctors in my field of expertise stared aghast as if I am a demon speaking from the depths of hell.

“I don’t see the relevance of your thesis actually, I just cant”

One of the human like forms having the vital statistics of a blue whale wearing a purple cloth nonchalantly told me. I was about to chant my spells to repair her brain neurons so that she can comprehend what I am saying, but out of the blue, another human life form this time imitating the vital statistics of Big Bear wearing Little Red Riding Hood’s dress blurted…

“Tell me, are you an atheist?” So I was like zipped right straight in- never mind the blue whale in the purple cloth, Big Bear is mocking me, I will tell her straight to the face that I am an atheist, so ? What’s the big fuss? Nanoseconds… transpiring like the speed of light- my lips opened as fast as it could- but dumdumdumdum…

“She’s not an atheist” Okay now, seriously, is this my defense or what? My ever loving adviser whom I dare not insult in this blog for the fear of being shot straight in the head shall I say saved my ass from the possible commotion that may arise.

Yeah, its pretty obvious right- to tell this in uhmmm more politically correct manner- my panelists and I, don’t share the same language game.

So I have a whole lot of realizations when I defended my thesis. First, old people despite the fact that they already have their doctoral degrees and such still can’t do away with their closed mindedness and theistic dogmas even for a moment for the sake of scholarly discussion.

Second, indeed there is a whole lot of population which viewed atheism like a shit wrapped in the tabloid Bulgar personally delivered by Satan himself.

Third, most people who have first learned about atheism always think that there must be something wrong with the atheists’ brain, or maybe genes, or maybe atheists are having a terminal illness. that no one can ever cure (for those points, I am wishing that Plato was indeed right that Rationality is an innate human character.  And this, this thing that just happened is simply a recalcitrant experience).   So I just retorted “(For heaven’s sake) (M)a’am (I am not a fucking Psychologist nor a Doctor- and) your demands are simply beyond the Limitations of my research… please refer to page 30″.

Fourth, when presented by empirical evidences based on the case study conducted by none other than me, saying that most atheists are wide readers, critical thinkers, humanitarians, ethical, philanthropists, middle class citizens, upper class citizens, highly educated and a whole lot more- they demand for an actual evidence of the primary data gathering- speculating as if the researcher just made the data out from magic.

Gladly, I was able to squish out of the situation and finally I am so much done with my masters. Though that incident made me realize, if academicians such as my panel have criticized my research as if its one of the most horrifying thing that they have ever seen, what more the ordinary Filipinos- Kuya at the sari-sari store a couple of blocks away from our house whom I always get my supply of Marlboro; Ate who has a computer shop next to our place whom I always run for help every time I run out of ink; Nanay Nora my girl friend’s coolest mom whom I almost owed half of my life for she constantly took care of me when I was still stupid enough to train everyday for the sake of being a CAT officer; my uncle who’s dying out of kidney stones who’s primary means of survival is his Christian fate; my Mom who always tell me that God is a freethinking god who fully appreciates my thesis (>.&lt and a whole lot more that we can add to the list.

Atheism, is a form knowledge. People who don’t understand it are often disgusted, horrified, flinch, and simply dismiss it as folly. When Christians were once persecuted for the things that they stand for, thousands of years later, the wheel of fate had turned, and its already the Christians’ turn to mock, ridicule and oppress the Atheists- a group of people who just simply aimed to quest for Truth.

I wanted to thank Filipina Images, WikiPilipinas, Filipina.Net, Vibal Publishing, National Comission for the Role of Women and UP Center for Women’s Study for awarding me the third prize for my entry “The Cyber Feminization of Poverty : Mail Order Brides and the Image of the Filipina“

I was not able to attend the event though because I was in my Master’s thesis defense. The event was held at SMX Convention Center, Mall of Asia which was entitled Women Can’t Wait. The event was done in relation with the celebration of World’s Women’s Month.

Congratulations to all those who won and those who participated in the event.  This is truly an endeavor that can significantly contribute in terms of celebrating and empowering the Filipina.