"Basically this group is built on the basis that women have the right to choose. What? Not what you expected to see? Well, what i meant to say was MOST women have the right to choose. What do I mean? What I'm saying is that MOST of the women that get abortions have the right to choose whether or not they get pregnant. Only 1% of abortions are for rape/incest. The vast majority of the rest of these abortions are for social reasons (aka, the baby would be an inconvenience). So, the debate is over. If you DON'T want a baby, then DON'T have sex or USE a CONTRACEPTIVE!!!! Don't terminate a life because you made a bad choice. Birth control should be pre-conceptive. END OF STORY. Now, go out and have fun, and just remember, you pro-choice liberalist murderers, you had your choice, and you made the wrong one...now LIVE WITH IT. "
I'm sorry, but there are plenty of reasons for having an abortion that fall into neither category this guy made--it's not black and white. (Not to mention the fact that I take serious issue with being called a "liberalist murderer," seeing as liberalist isn't even a proper political term--perhaps it's an odd combination of liberal and leftist?--and murderers generally act with malintent, not the desire to maintain the quality of life for them and others, but I'll refrain from that digression.) Women have abortions for reasons aside from rape/incest and retroactive birth control, and often even the latter case is more than an instance of irresponsibility.
I can feel the confusion.
How about some fictionalized examples (and I say "fictionalized" very loosely--all three situations have indeed happened before):
- Lauri is Jewish. She's a carrier for Tay-Sachs, but doesn't know it until a test during her second trimester comes up positive. She and her man are in a precarious stage of their lives as it is, and dealing with the complicated birth, the super-expensive health care (often upwards of $100,000--more money than they would've saved up for the kid's college tuition in the next 18 years, let alone in the next 4), then the inevitable death of the child within four or five years would be too much to handle. The family would be led into financial and emotional ruin.
- Eliza discovers she has breast cancer eight weeks into her pregnancy. The baby would never survive the chemotherapy, and she would never make it the remainder of the time before the birth without it because the pregnancy would cause a surge in hormones that would cause the already dangerous malignant tumor to grow at a terrifyingly fast rate. Termination is the only option if either of them is to survive.
- Sarah takes every precaution. She is on birth control, and her boyfriend uses a condom every time. One weekend, however, she is on antibiotics for an ear infection which can greatly decrease the efficacy of birth control and the condom breaks. She doesn't take Plan B (the "morning-after pill") in time, and ends up pregnant. Isn't it more responsible of her to terminate the pregnancy than drop out of college, deal with blue-collar jobs for the rest of her life and have her child lead an unwanted life when she was as responsible as she could have been?
These are only a few instances. Abortion is complicated, people. No one WANTS to get one--those who do often, if not always, do so with great emotional pain. And yet most often they have little to no choice if their life and the life of the potential child are to be lives of quality. Quality over quantity, I say--better to raise a few much-wanted, well-cared-for children than many who may or may not have been in their parents' plans and, if on the unwanted side, will often lead troubled childhoods.
Those who try to take the middle-of-the-road line of "abortion is okay in certain instances" forget or fail to realize that the line between "okay" and "not okay" is not only blurry but often damn near indistinguishable--how can you legislate on every possible situation in which a woman may need an abortion? How could you possibly list every "okay" exception? Rape and incest only begin to cover the necessary exceptions. Lawmakers think they know what's best for us, but do they know the details of our everyday lives, the challenges we face that could bring any one of us to make the heart-wrenching decision to terminate a pregnancy?
Even in the often-cited example that sex workers will get abortions regularly so they can keep their jobs (or "jobs," since some people would demand the quotes), leeway is needed. How many women willingly chose to go into the profession? It's often a last-resort, and as such, they have nowhere else to turn--if a professional dancer came upon a situation in which she could lose the use of her legs for several months, or a car salesman would lose his voice, they would do anything they could to avoid that: it's their livelihoods. And I realize some people will be upset that I give sex workers the status of worthy human beings, but so be it. *shrug* (Legalize sex work and you can not only collect the taxes from it, but you can keep it safe--no more human trafficking, no more abuse, much less violence against these women, and healthier practices all around in the occupation... but that's for another discussion, I suppose. At any rate, it probably won't be an election issue for a while...)
Long story short, the law could never list enough cases to make abortion legislation fair, so middle-of-the-roaders: stop kidding yourselves. You're not superhuman enough to know every instance in which an abortion would be advisable, or even permissable. Leave that to a woman and her doctor--and trust the medical boards enough to train their member doctors with enough ethics and medical know-how to know when it is and is not advisable to have an abortion. You will never be able to predict the millions of shades of grey that come in the middle on this one. And consider that if a woman really, really wants an abortion, she's gonna get one--regardless of legality. 1972: an estimated 1.2-1.5 million (illegal) American abortions. 1973 (when abortion was legalized): 1.4 million American abortions. Even the unemotional among you can understand numbers.
Do whatever you want with your body.. but do me a favor? Keep your laws off mine.
~ RaeAn.
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