Horton Hears a Who!
Matilda loves Horton Hears a Who. We bought the audio book to listen to in the car and she nearly has it memorized.
If you don’t know the story, its about Horton the elephant who has great hearing and is able to detect a world of people living on a dust speck. He protects them at great personal expense from an authoritative mother Kangaroo with the refrain — “A person’s a person, no matter how small”.
In a sequel, he is tricked by a lazy momma to be bird to sit on hear egg for a whole year until it hatches. The bird shows up at the end to claim the egg just as it is about to hatch, but instead of a bird in the egg, its a baby elephant!
The stories are wonderful, like all of Dr. Seuss’s books. But after reading the books over and over again I wondered, are they anti-choice? Well according to Wikipedia, they are not. Theodore Geisel threatened to sue an anti-choice group to make them stop using his phrase on their stationary, and his widow stated that she “doesn’t like people to hijack Dr. Seuss characters or material to front their own points of view”.
Though evidence points to Dr. Seuss being a left-leaning person, and his wife reportedly supports Planned Parenthood, anti-choicers have co-opted this story for their cause. Anti-abortion groups actually PROTESTED the LA opening of the Horton Hears a Who movie, where children were present.
My opinion is that the story is meant to honor children not fetuses. It makes Matilda feel great to hear the phrase “a person is a person no matter how small” because she is small and often feels powerless. And while Mazie the bird was lazy and didn’t want to care for her egg, it shows how HARD it is to care for an egg. It makes me feel appreciated as a mom to know that Dr. Seuss doesn’t take gestating lightly.
So back off anti-choicers. Horton is too great to be brought into the abortion debate! Leave him alone!
