Problem: Abortion Rights for All

A very liberal friend and I have been having a discussion by email lately, and one of the topics on which we wholeheartedly disagree is, SURPRISE!, abortion. (Before you ask, YES, I DO have some very liberal friends. And some moderately liberal friends, and some mildly liberal friends. Come on, you're not ALL conservatives!)

The soon-to-be Obama Administration supports abortions for all as a "right" women have to "determine what is best for their own bodies." In other words, "It's my body and I can do what I want with it." Which begs the question, "How old are you?" since I've heard the same argument from my 2 year-old regarding potty training, and from teens indulging in sex or tweens smoking pot. But childish refusal to consider the impact ones actions have on other people (like unborn babies developing in the womb) aside, let us consider the true atrocities of abortion.

My friend has a great many arguments in their favor - perhaps some of the same had by you or those you know - that I'll be discussing herein. First, though, she suggests that women everywhere should have unconstrained access to birth control, and I believe the same. Let's face it, I'd rather prevent pregnancies than create murderers, whatever the age. But I believe there are myriad ways to dispense free birth control to women, including having them pick up a free monthly pill pack from their local pharmacist or free condoms in the counselor's office at their high school, and Planned Parenthood should be shut down. She notes that shutting down Planned Parenthood is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I argue that it is just plain throwing out the BABY, which is the main reason women appear in Planned Parenthood offices around the country. Anyway...birth control? Fine. Great. Unconstrained access, which encourages people to take responsibility. Abortions as birth control? Not a chance.

Now, before we launch in to abortion "rights", let me state unequivocally that in cases of extreme need - including BUT LIMITED TO safety of the mother, rape, and incest - abortions are understandable. Not encouraged, necessarily, but understandable. A woman who has undergone the terror of rape, the emotional scaring of incest, or is in danger of losing her life due to a pregnancy gone wrong, should not be forced to carry and give birth to a child. HOWEVER, the vast majority of women who DO have abortions are emotionally scarred by the knowledge that they have terminated a life, and if my daughter had been raped, I truly believe that it might be more beneficial to her to bear the child and put it up for adoption, knowing, therefore, that something beautiful and wonderful emerged from her trauma and that that child has the opportunity to live happily in a loving family rather than reflecting on her destruction of that life years later, thereby adding to her trauma. Still, in those cases, I see abortion as an acceptable alternative to continuing with the pregnancy, SO LONG AS the pregnancy has not reached the second trimester.

No, we don't know when a zygote actually become a person, but we do know that children after 3 months of development in the womb must be disassembled, to put it mildly, prior to removal from the womb, so in my book - and most other people's, I'd venture to say - that constitutes enough of a human to consider it a child and not a fertilized egg. So, first trimester ONLY.

But back to my friend's reasons for women have the right to an abortion.

She stated she'd rather a child were aborted than raised in awful circumstances or with terrible parents. As far as I'm concerned, that negates the existence of most every human being at some point, and denies those who won’t make excellent parents or who suffer in crappy conditions the opportunity to procreate. Each of us has been someone's child, and only the most grossly depressed wish they'd never been born, no matter how wonderful their folks or their upbringing. My parents made mistakes. I myself have undoubtedly made mistakes. And sometimes we don't even realize, as parents, that we're making mistakes, and never apologize for those mistakes...or we do realize we're making mistakes, and still don't apologize. That is human nature. I'm glad my parents chose to retain me as a human being in my mother's body even though they knew that, at some point along the way, they'd make mistakes. I'm glad they kept me, even with the knowledge that some day my father might be out of work and our living conditions may not be ideal. Additionally, should we prevent people from having the opportunity to parent just because their children will be raised in less-than-ideal conditions? Does a parent's inability to afford a large and spacious home instead of rent a tiny, cramped apartment preclude them from the opportunity to try to become pregnant? That is preposterous. Allow the child to experience both the joy and suffering of life! Sometimes we get stuck with crappy parents, and sometimes we get stuck in crappy circumstances. Can anyone really say it would have been better to be aborted than to have survived? Someone "can’t" have a good life, so their parents shouldn’t be made to become parents because those parents won’t allow for adoption? Who are we to make a decision like that?

She argued, too, that her father, himself adopted because her grandmother did not have abortion as an option, has health problems aplenty and is not familiar with his family history to be able to know where his asthma came from, or to know whether or not he has any number of cancers somewhere down the line, what-have-you. She stated that he and a few other adoptees she knows have suffered emotional trauma because of their "abandonment" by their birth mother. But I know several adopted people who have NO health issues and have suffered NO emotional trauma due to being adopted. It goes both ways. Is that enough reason to say, "Sure, absolve yourself entirely of responsibility and go abort that baby!"? It doesn't hold water.

She argues that the world is already overpopulated, and that this is a scientific truth. It may be a scientific truth, and I cannot contend with that, of course, but I very seriously doubt that ANY of the women heading to abortion clinics are thinking to themselves, “Man, I just can’t bring myself to overpopulate the world any further.” Moving on, then...

She mentioned that her own mother had had an abortion many years before, effectively destroying the child that would have been her third, thanks to financial difficulties and a struggling relationship with her husband. "We will never understand what that could have been like for her, so none of us are in a position to judge." Personally, I don’t understand the liberal idea of NOT passing judgment on people’s actions (people are a whole different story), nor do I understand the need to extend to people the opportunity to make bad choices! I imagine her mother must have been in one hell of a position when she made the choice she did, but I also believe her decision was inherently wrong, and though I do not judge her, I must, as a human being, judge her action, which in my estimation, regardless of the circumstances, was an obscenity. I think her mother is a good woman – always did, still do – but I am both horrified and disgusted by her decision and cannot say, “Oh, ooooooooops, time to be PC…your poor mom!” Particularly where my own situation is concerned:

When I was conceived, my mother was on radioactive medication for her thyroid, and believed, after going off her birth control, it would take some months for her fertility to pick back up, by which time she'd be free of the radioactive meds. Unfortunately (or fortunately for me?) she got pregnant just a few weeks later, and was told by numerous doctors that I would be mentally and physically deficient and die before the age of 2. My parents felt very strongly that it was wrong to terminate a life just because that life would be difficult for them to handle and went ahead and had their baby...me. Some would argue - particularly liberals - that I am indeed mentally deficient, but I'm more or less healthy, so it all worked out in the end. In other words, all my parents would have been doing would be killing a baby just in case that baby had health issues. And that, people, is Eugenics.

What are Eugenics? Well, Nietzsche wrote, based on Darwin's survival of the fittest, that the human race should weed out those of us who are defective so that they are unable to propagate and continue perpetuating a defective breed. The Nazis took this a step (or two) further by practicing Eugenics, which means that they sterilized or murdered those they deemed defective genetically...those they believed to be unfit for breeding. This included people with mental or physical defects and those with emotional imbalances, or those of any cultural heritage that sullied their Aryan race. They determined what sort of humans they would have populating the earth and then attempted to prevent all others from bearing children. When children were born "defective," they were removed from their parents and killed. Sterilization was a form of preemptive abortion, and murder was just plain murder. Eugenics, practiced by the Nazis or by any party, is the complete devaluation of human life.

Abortions also completely devalue human life – human lives that liberals generally claim they want to improve and to aid.

Overall, I view the pro-choice argument the following way:

1. It completely devalues human life.

2. It enables women to escape the consequences of their own irresponsibility.

3. It teaches our society that there is an “easy way out” when you make a “mistake” through that irresponsibility.

4. It teaches our society that because a human is not an independent human, they are not “really” human. That can apply to myriad people – babies, the young, the elderly, invalids – and is effectively eugenics, one of the most despicable ideas ever to enter the minds of humans and the foundation of Nazi ideals.

Finally, my friend argues that regardless of all other points, women have a choice as to what happens with their own bodies. I argue that that is entirely correct! But in my view, those women made their choice when they had sex. The greatest risk of sexual activity is pregnancy, and all women must be prepared, when they choose to participate in coitus, for the fact that pregnancy is a distinct possibility, whether they are using birth control or not. (After all, it is widely understood that there is no such thing as birth control that works 100% of the time, unless you include abstinence!) If a woman chooses to have sex, she chooses to accept the responsibility for whatever that act may bring.

And yet there are many who insist on providing them with an opportunity to escape responsibility for their actions. AND that we should do it in such a way that makes that escape free, secret, and available to all, including 12 year-old girls. Rather than teach responsibility, we offer, support, and supply murder for free! And this is the problem, plain and simple.

So what is the solution? First, TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR SEX LIFE, and encourage others to do the same. If someone comes to you seeking your opinion on abortion vs. adoption, HELP THEM ADOPT! Direct them to adoption agencies, call 1–800–537–2229 for information on how to place a baby with an adoptive family, get online and go to http://www.providentliving.org/ses/birthmother/searchprofiles/0,12268,2133-1,00.html (LDS adoption services) where you can search through the adoption profiles of couples desperate but unable to have their own child...and some of those profiles are heartrending! Do anything you can to help, except to support their desire to escape the consequences of their actions, if only to spare them the heartache and shame of aborting a child.

Also, get registered and VOTE. Call your senators, your house reps, your local legislature, and write letters to the White House to beg soon-to-be-President Obama to put our taxpayer dollars toward adoption instead of destruction. Encourage our legal system to reverse Roe vs. Wade by writing letters to all 9 justices. Be active. Blog about it. Talk about it. Because by the time this post is published, you can bet I will have.

Help me protect our society from its own bad parenting: allowing its women to escape the consequences of their own actions while concurrently damaging their psyches and emotional stability. Please, do SOMETHING.

And someday maybe I'll be able to write

Problem Solved,

Mommy

PS: I have now sent emails to both CA senators and my House rep, and mailed a letter to Mr. Obama just today. I'll be mailing letters to the Supreme Court Justices tomorrow. Please do your part. And if you need stamps, I've got them!

PPS: Under NO circumstances should you or anyone else EVER do an image search on Google using the word "abortion." Unless you're pro-choice, in which case, google away.