Blog For Choice Day

I found out about Blog for Choice at Angry Black Bitch. And there’s more here. I’ve been thinking about what to write about this….it’s an important issue for so many reasons…so here’s what I came up with.

First of all, abortion is a terrible thing. I don’t care what you believe about when life starts, whether it’s with conception or with the birth of a live baby, or somewhere in between. The cold hard fact of the matter is that, if the pregnancy were allowed to continue, the most likely result would be a living, breathing baby. Stopping that in its tracks is tragic.

That having been said, however, when it comes right down to it, the question is, whose rights are formost…the woman’s rights, or the unborn child’s rights? I happen to believe, very strongly, that the woman has the greater rights, being as how she is already a living, breathing, conscious person. So, I believe, she has the right to decide whether or not to go through a pregnancy and a childbirth or not. And, having gone through both, I cannot IMAGINE going through them unwillingly. It was hard enough when it was my deepest desire.

There are people who say that abortion is wrong, except in the cases of incest, rape, severe deformities in the child, or danger to the health of the woman. I say this is an invalid arguement. These sound like equivications to me, like circumstances under which someone might themselves get an abortion, who otherwise would not consider one. But they do not consider the deeper issues…they mask them. The issue is, is it murder or is it not. And, does one person ever have the right to kill another person? Well, seems to me that a lot of the same people who are anti-choice because all life is sacred turn pretty frothy when thinking about the death penalty, and understand how sometimes it may be necessary to kill someone in war time. I don’t see the difference. Sometimes, the rights of one person, unfortunately, take precidence over the rights of another. If there were ways around it, what a beautiful world we would live in. A woman gets pregnant because of whatever reason, and doesn’t want to have the baby. OK, just transport said fetus into the womb of a woman who WANTS a baby, and bam, problem solved. If only that were possible. It isn’t. But another question that occurs to me with these questions is one of blame. It’s a way of controlling the sexuality of women. If a woman gets pregnant through NO FAULT OF HER OWN (rape, incest, etc.), then suddenly terminating her pregnancy isn’t morally repugnant? That doesn’t wash. Because what we’re saying here is that if a woman is so irresponsible as to have sex without being willing to accept the consequences, then she is somehow a sinner, and her actions are worse than those of the rape/incest victim. And if you are so naive as to believe that if men could get pregnant, ANY of this would be an issue, I have a bridge to sell you. Maybe two. Men are allowed, even encouraged, to enjoy their sexuality, and women are taught to fear it. Because the consequences of sex fall so heavily on the side of the woman, not the man. So, is it killing a baby? Maybe. Is it wrong? Maybe. Should we make it illegal? NO. Should we try to find solutions to this problem? HELL YES.

What it comes down to, for me, is something my very wise (though perhaps not as wise as she thinks) mother once told me…if the people on the pro-choice side, and the people on the pro-life side, could all come together and concentrate their efforts (SO MUCH MONEY, and SO MUCH TIME, on both sides) on PREVENTING UNWANTED PREGNANCY, much of this issue would just go away. If women (and men, thank you) had FREE education, from an early age, if they weren’t taught to be ASHAMED of their bodies and their sexuality, if they could get FREE birth control, and learn about responsible decisions from parents and educators who care, I honestly think the abortion rate would go down, way down. If women didn’t get pregnant because they are too afraid to insist on a condom, or afraid to go to Planned Parenthood for birth control because their parents might find out, or weren’t so uninformed as to believe that it can’t happen to THEM, maybe we wouldn’t NEED days like Blog for Choice. I’ll drink to that.