For what it’s worth.
I’m very grateful that I never had occasion to consider whether or not to have an abortion — all my pregnancies were wanted and planned — but that doesn’t mean I can’t imagine a situation where that was not the case. Bringing a child into the world is a weighty matter. Taking care of that child for the next twenty plus years is an even weightier one. No woman should be forced to do that against her will. Period. There are enough children in this world. What’s more, there enough unwanted children in this world without adding to their number. And why is it that Pro Lifers are so often the very people who support the Death Penalty? Is life sacred or isn’t it? Make up your damned mind.
No woman wants an abortion. OK, maybe if they’ve been raped or the father is creepy old Uncle Harry, but otherwise, few women are exactly overjoyed to be terminating a pregnancy. But what Pro Lifers don’t seem to understand is that life might begin at conception, but it sure doesn’t stop there. If you are going to insist that women bear children they do not want or are ill-prepared to raise, then you need to provide quality daycare for those children so their mothers can pursue a career if they wish, or go to school, and decent healthcare and schooling and other, generous supports throughout the course of that child’s coming of age. That is only fair. To the mother and the child that you insisted must be born. You break it; you bought it. You don’t get to just walk away, feeling all smug and self-righteous, because you think you’re championing the Unborn when what you’re really doing is making someone whose life is already hard that much harder . . . and for a very long time. And this is costing you what? Absolutely nothing.
Women represent half the population – and, with apologies to good men, of whom there are more than a few – the more sensible half. If we don’t want to have a baby, we shouldn’t have to have one. End of story. And you’ve got to know that, if men were the ones having the babies, this would not be an issue. There would be lines around the block for abortion clinics and nobody would be saying a goddamned word. I
What I am saying is neither new nor nuanced, but I’m feeling cranky and I don’t care. When it comes to babies, as with so much in life, you win a few and you lose a few. Get over it.
