When I checked my emails this morning, I was already hearing from angry readers accusing me of promoting a liberal pro-abortion bias on the Inquirer sports pages.Because of a story I wrote from the AT&T National golf tournament quoting Tiger Woods on the wonders of fatherhood, some readers mistook what he said for what I believe.
Specifically, I wrote that Tiger and Elin had spent much of the first night staring at Sam, wondering how they could love something so much that "didn't exist the day before."
For the record, I don't know anybody who has any idea of where Tiger stands on abortion or on when life begins; and I know readers have no idea where I stand, despite their best efforts to jump to conclusions.
Here, exerpted from the transcript of Tiger's pre-tournament interview, is the question and answer:
Q. Everybody before they have become a father has expectations or guesses about how they will feel, but usually it doesn't -- things happen that surprise you those first couple of weeks. How have your emotional responses been different than you might have guessed?
TIGER WOODS: Well, you know, something that I think Elin and I talked about on our first night, said, how can you love something so much that didn't exist the day before. We never experienced anything like that. And certainly it's one that was different and one that was special, and something that we want to experience again.
13 comments:
I am hardcore anti-abortion, but this comment seems to be benign. He seems to mean his child just wasn't visible in the flesh the day before, as opposed to literally not existing.
Abortions are good for you. Everyone should have one a year, pro athelete or not.
I agree with JMC, and I don't think there could be anyone quite as anti-abortion as I am. He was just talking about feeling an immense amount of love for someone who only became 'real' to him when he saw her face...but it has nothing to do with whether he believed the child 'existed' before he could actually hold her in his arms.
Seems like the pro-lifers will latch onto any comment to push their agenda. Some people have no life if they have to comb every line to come up with something they can lambaste.
I don't think the statement means any more than a new father dealing with the amazement of seeing the newborn baby. Until that point, the baby was really a figment of the imagination, just the contents of the bump in the mother's belly. Suddenly, all the concerns of the pregnancy are over and all that concentration is directed towards this tiny little baby. So I don't think this statement was intended to reveal Tiger's pro-life/pro-choice orientation.
Don't let the kooks get you down, Joe. Any rational human being wouldn't have leaped to the conclusion that you're somehow pro-abortion. Of course, rationality isn't exactly a calling card for fanatics like anti-abortion freaks, now is it?
"...rationality isn't exactly a calling card for fanatics like anti-abortion freaks, now is it?"
Yeah, people like us who don't want children sucked out of the mothers womb and disposed of like so much garbage must be insane freaks. How in the world can we possibly think such things?
Instead of worrying so much about what women do, why don't you people focus on the children that are starving and dying right in your neighborhoods? Or, offering women who want abortions with an alternative like, raising the children yourselves. You "care" so much about babies yet you do nothing to take care of those alive and support and administration that cuts education and programs to feed kids. Make up your mind.
Right, because those pro-choice people just love to kill babies. It's not about deciding when might be a wrong time to have one - it's all about the babies. Because GOD KNOWS we don't have enough people on this planet. Let's just make sure those cells grow to their full unwanted glory!
jmc: the problem isn't that you don't like abortion, nobody likes it, the problem is that in order to enforce your values, you declare women's wombs to be community property.
It seems that a reading comprehension course is needed for certain issue oriented adults.
To summarize all that is said about abortion and Tiger Woods, suffice it to say that people who are in the media spotlight know better than to stake a position on a divisive topic such as abortion or the Iraq war. You cannot satisfy either group on each side of the fence, no matter how brilliantly conceived your statement was.
It is easy for people to misconstrue what Joe Logan was verbalizing when he was writing about Tiger and Elin Woods new baby. And what Tiger was saying was what every other new parent would say, a baby who did not exist the day before suddenly exists in front of your eyes. Even though scientifically speaking, the baby was alive in the womb with a beating heart in the first trimester. He did not mean that he was not happy to have the baby, only the wondrous feeling that comes upon a new parent who holds their baby for thei first time.
So, what Joe Logan put in his article was needlessly taken out of context. Let;s give it a rest!
Can't even enjoy a sports article without the right-wing wackos coming out of the woodwork, I mean Bush, no Fox News. Go back where you belong.
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