Hey pro-choice people: Pictures of small, vulnerable babies lying on their parents’ chests are not images that support your cause. I am seeing photos like this one and thinking, woah. That’s not a choice. That’s a baby.
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What choice doesn’t look like
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That’s my daughter, Katherine, and she was most definitely a choice. I didn’t HAVE to have her, but I chose too. Unlike when my IUD failed and I found myself pregnant years ago and was faced with a very different choice, Kat was a wanted pregnancy. The choices women make are their own to make and it’s not up to you or anyone else to judge them for it or try and change thier minds. Just something to think about; choice doesn’t always mean abortion.
Your daughter is very beautiful.
From a pro-life perspective, which is understandably what you are going to get around here, when you say a baby is a choice, there is the obvious implication of babies who don’t get to live. When a pro-lifer sees a beautiful baby and the mother saying they are a choice, the pro-life mind flashes toward the baby that didn’t get a chance to live.
It doesn’t imply judgement of what the mom experienced in that moment that led her to abort. I’ve often written, if you peruse this site, that this is not about judgement. I get the factors that lead women to make the abortion choice.
But I really don’t understand how we can get around the fact that a life is lost when mothers choose abortion. There is no undo button, something condom companies seem to understand a bit better than the pro-choice movement today.
That’s the crux of the matter: A fetus/baby/person who doesn’t get to take a breath. Pregnancy is temporary and abortion is permanent and involves someone other than the mother.
There are moments when I’d give my right arm to have a baby, but that is not my choice, either.
I understand choice doesn’t always mean abortion. It only means that 25% of the time in Canada today.
Thanks for writing.
Hi Jen,
Thanks for stopping in at PWPL. Your daughter is lovely!
I think we’re coming at it from two different perspectives. I believe the child in the womb is alive because he/she is growing, that he/she is human because he/she has human parents. I can’t think of these little human beings as ‘choices’ or as ‘pregnancies’ because they’re human. They’re just at an earlier stage of development than the rest of us.
I think children in the womb should be given more consideration in Canada than they are currently receiving- they can be aborted for any and every reason, right up until the moment of birth.
They’re human too, just like born humans, and I feel like just calling them a ‘choice’ strips them of their humanity.
Do you believe that children should be aborted because of their gender? Do you support late term abortions?
Have a great Mother’s Day weekend with your little one.
I’m sorry, but a potential person will never have the same value as an existing person with their own connections and life to maintain. If they choose to keep the baby, and are prolife for themselves, that’s awesome- they know whether or not they could effectively parent a child and deal with that responsibility.
however, being pro choice means that you think other ladies should be able to choose for themselves whether or not they are able to be parents.
parenthood is not something that can be done by anybody. my own mother was woefully unprepared and raised all her kids with neglect and selfishness. no woman should ever be forced to have children and stuck in that predicament.
the prochoice movement is not about killing babies, because more abortions are done BEFORE the lungs are developed enough for the fetus to survive on its own, and BEFORE it has the nerve capacity to feel any pain.
it is too expensive for any woman to use abortion as a birth control method. this thinking is favored by the prolife movement, who seem to think the only women who want abortions are sluts that can’t keep their legs together. this is slutshaming. there’s nothing wrong with sex for fun, intimacy, and bonding. but consent to sex, and its risks, is not consenting to pregnancy, especially if both parties take birth control.
however, birth control is never 100% effective. even women with tied tubes can still have a pregnancy- it’s rare, but it happens. many of the women who get abortions are ALREADY mothers- they just do not have the means to support another child. they want to give their existing children as much love, attention, and care as possible.
abortion is an alternative to PREGNANCY, ADoption is an alternative to PARENTING. a person who does not want to be pregnant should never be forced to stay pregnant! even the United Nations has deemed that it is considered torture to deny women the right over their reproductive future. choosing when and where and how to become a mother is a sacred right for every uterus owner- no person can shame another into taking on a role they do not want.
not everybody wants to be a mother. not everybody will be a good mother.
the pro choice movement is all about making sure children have the best lives possible, with the best parents possible- parents that actually want the children and who will do anything for them, not parents that are stuck and think ‘oh well, everybody will hate me unless i care for this thing’
pregnancy is not easy, on the health or the finances. it severely disrupts lives with nausea, jobs are at risk, and time obligations may get in the way.
no woman* should be forced into motherhood. motherhood should be wanted, and if it isn’t, it should never be forced. think of the children!!!
In conclusion:
“There is no evidence beyond the barest speculation that allowing the abortion of
nonviable fetuses generates a culture in which people take a more callous attitude toward the slaughter of children or adults. Abortion is, in effect, freely permitted in many European countries, and these are much less violent societies than many American communities are now or were when abortion was still mostly forbidden.”
the late Ronald Dworkin
“A three-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly. If our concern is about suffering in this universe, it is rather obvious that we should be more concerned about killing flies than about killing three-day-old human embryos… Many people will argue that the difference between a fly and a three-day-old human embryo is that a three-day-old human embryo is a potential human being. Every cell in your body, given the right manipulations, every cell with a nucleus is now a potential human being. Every time you scratch your nose, you’ve committed a holocaust of potential human beings… Let’s say we grant it that every three-day-old human embryo has a soul worthy of our moral concern. First of all, embryos at this stage can split into identical twins. Is this a case of one soul splitting into two souls? Embryos at this stage can fuse into a chimera. What has happened to the extra human soul in such a case? This is intellectually indefensible, but it’s morally indefensible given that these notions really are prolonging scarcely endurable misery of tens of millions of human beings, and because of the respect we accord religious faith, we can’t have this dialogue in the way that we should. I submit to you that if you think the interests of a three-day-old blastocyst trump the interests of a little girl with spinal cord injuries or a person with full-body burns, your moral intuitions have been obscured by religious metaphysics.”
Sam Harris, on stem cell research. (via we-are-star-stuff)
I’m sure I’ve said this before, but if you believe that it is more moral for a lump of 150 cells to sit in a freezer until the end of time than for quadrapalegics to walk again, Alzheimer’s patients to recognize their family and for people to not have to languish on the donor list for years, if they don’t die from their disease before a viable organ becomes available, your idea of morality is extremely warped.
“A woman’s right to bodily autonomy outweighs fetal pain because we live in a society that does not force people to use their bodies to support others — not their organs, not their bone marrow, not their blood, not their skin. We do not force people to sacrifice parts of their bodies to save others not because we don’t care about a patient’s pain, but because we recognize that bodily autonomy is an essential part of a functioning free society. To suggest that we ignore that and make an exception when it comes to forcing pregnant women carry a pregnancy to term suggests that we force pregnant women to submit to a violation of their rights that we impose on no one else.”
Ana Mardoll
Existing women (who can survive on their own without a womb life support) have rights, and need those rights. if you are aiming, with your prolife identity, to take away the fundamental RIGHT of a woman to control what is taking nutrients and blood from her body, then PROCHOICE will be fighting you every step of the way.
this is not about babies. its about actual women who exist- and the anti-choicers who want to ‘punish’ them for having sex by making children a ‘consequence’.
children are not a consequence. children are not a punishment for sex. children are a giant responsibility that are ONLY for the PARENTS WHO WANT THEM.
the adoption alternative is not a solution- many women are more traumatized about giving a child away than their abortion. the PTSD is way worse. the adoption system is also overloaded- parents want pure, unblemished, healthy, healthproblemless children, not the diseased and drug addicted babies that are born into the system. for every 250,000 parents that START the adoption process, only 100,000 will actually complete it. that leaves more than 900,000 kids to rot in the system, being taken advantage of by some foster parents using them for meal tickets.
yes, some children grow up fantastically in the foster system. this is the exception, not the rule.
‘prolife’ philosophy is really about denying women the choice over their own health and future. Women know whether or not they’re ready and able to be parents. it’s a choice that should be theirs alone, and not up to nosy busybodies like yourselves. you have no idea what’s going on in their lives- but if they chose abortion, its the best choice for them. maybe they’re broke in every way. maybe their partner is abusive and sabotaged their birth control so she would be forced to bear his child, and he would have that much more control over her.
you cannot know, and it is not up to every woman to educate you on the reasons why they’ve made that choice!!!!
keep your nose in your own business. stop trying to fight to take away women’s rights to give them to fetuses that cannot survive on their own.
if you can’t trust women with a choice, how can you trust them to raise a child properly????
Prolife? for shame. You’re ANTI-CHOICE.
You sure do touch on a lot of topics Amy. I have wondered about the ‘potential’ person idea in a number of contexts including studies in behavior genetics. I was never able to see where there was a point to make the distinction between ‘potential’ person and ‘existing’ person. I have had the same difficulty in seeing that at some point there is a ‘bunch of cells’ and later, even much later, there is more than a bunch of cells. Actually, during the behavior genetics studies I often found the discussion presumed people, at any age, to only be cells. This led to some ‘interesting’ speculations and controversial conclusions. Thanks for the opportunity to reflect on this matter.
Hi again,
I guess for me it boils down to this: I’ve had one semi-wanted pregnancy, one oops with the IUD at a terrible time in my life that ended in an abortion, and then Kat. I can see all the sides here, and both the biological side and the legal side. For me what it boils down too is that women must be able to control their reproduction at all times. This means access to contraception, excellent healthcare and sex-ed, supportive partners and abortion as a. Safe, legal option. An embroyo or fetus absolutely cannot be given the same legal rights as a born person because then a woman’s ability to control her own life is in jeopardy. Our right to bodily autonomy trumps any collection of cell’s potential right to life, and it *must* be that way. A fetus is obviously human, a biological definition, but it’s not a person according to law, and as I said, cannot be, or else all women everywhere immediately become enslaved to their biology.
Fact is, Amy, you were once a 150-celled blastocyst. So was I, and so was everyone else reading this. You were human then, too.
Human rights are for all humans.
You think abortion is the right choice for you? No one, NO ONE is stopping you from having one. It’s your own business, and really, who is going to know? But what we are saying is that it is selfish to ask a doctor to kill your child, and it is selfish to demand that the rest of society pay for your choice.
Please, take responsibility for the choices that you make. That is what adults do in our society.
JeninCanada, that was an awfully nice response.
And yeah, there are SO many sides to this debate. But the fact is, that we ARE all enslaved to our biology. No one has complete control over her health, or her reproductive life. It all comes down to the choices that we make, and the luck of the draw.
But here’s where the biggest problem that I see lies. Morgentaler was decided twenty-five years ago, and the pro-choicers are still hollering that women don’t have good access to abortion-related services. And the prochoicers are, to a large extent, right. Abortion is hard to come by in many areas of this country.
But that isn’t some anti-choice/pro-life conspiracy. The fact of the matter is that abortion is hard to come by because doctors know what it is that is showing up on that ultrasound, and the vast, vast majority of doctors are very uncomfortable killing a human being. Sure, they might do it if the circumstances are dire enough, but very, very few doctors in this country will perform an elective abortion. And the problem is going to only get worse, because a lot of the doctors that perform abortions now have pretty grey hair.
When Morgentaler was decided, it was thought in some circles that the law against abortion was what was holding doctors back from performing them. It wasn’t that at all. Doctors, by and large, don’t perform abortions because it is gruesome work that nobody wants to do. And so, for women in many parts of this grand country of ours, abortion is not a very accessible option.
You say that women need access to safe, legal, abortion. What happens, though, when the demand for abortion outstrips the supply? What happens when not enough doctors are willing to perform abortions to meet the demand? We’re kind of at that point now. Does your right to an abortion trump a doctor’s right of conscience not to perform one?
Amy, you mentioned that abortion is alternative to pregnancy.
Are you saying that the purpose of abortion is to end a pregnancy?
Is that purpose for all abortions?
Is that the purpose for late-term abortion?
Yes, there are less late-term abortions than early abortion. How much less we do not know since hospitals and clinics are not required to report them in Canada and we don’t have access to that information. So it is mostly speculation and generalization based on other countries that do insist on reporting and the poor reporting we do have.
Most are said to be for fetal abnormalities, but again we don’t know. Even if most are done for fetal abnormalities, what about those that aren’t? After 24 weeks the fetus can survive, can feel pain, can breath.
Most can mean 51% to 49 %. If after accurate reporting we find out that 51% is for fetal abnormalities. What about the other 49%. Or is it Ok for those healthy, viable, fetuses to have been aborted?
What is the purpose of an abortion after 24 weeks of a viable healthy fetus. Is it to end a pregnancy or to ensure the fetus is not born alive? You can end a pregnancy without killing the fetus at this stage.
There is NO LAW in Canada regarding an abortion after 24 weeks. Shouldn’t the life of these fetuses be taken in consideration?
What do you think about the Gosnell case? He was ensuring fetal demise outside of the womb. Do 3 inches really make that much of a difference in worth?
I am honestly asking the questions Amy. I hope you can clarify help me understand the pro-choice position on this.
Sheesh. We are all ‘enslaved to our biology’. To be is to be something and if we see that that constricts one’s freedom either we are ‘enslaved’ or we are using a problematic definition of freedom. If freedom is to do or be anything one wants then existence conflicts with one’s freedom. If, on the other hand, freedom is to be what one is then being oneself is freedom while doing anything one wants can be unrealistic and self destructive.
Thanks, David. I grow weary of this “enslaved to our biology” terminology on the other side. You might as well say I’m “enslaved to breathing.”
Now, even if everybody concedes that a fetus has personhood, it still does not have more rights over my body than any other person, not a president, not a rapist, not a boyfriend. I can hear y’all getting ready to argue- but what about the fetus’s body? Here’s the answer: it’s inside the woman’s body. It’s growth directly effects her body, organs, joints, and health.
Let’s use an example to make this pregnancy situation clearer. There’s a guy in the hospital, and his kidneys are failing. You’re the only perfect match, and you live 1000 miles away. He would not survive a surgery to take a kidney (the risk of rejection is too great), so the hospital informs you that, if you were hooked up in a bed beside this man, they could ensure his survival if your kidneys filter his blood for him. You’d have to pay your own cab fare to come to the hospital after work, every single day, and you can’t eat sushi or peanuts any more (the man is allergic to peanuts, but they are your favorite food). Every day you’d have to make this journey (sometimes twice), fighting car sickness as the cab swerves crazily through traffic each time. This man has a giant family that loves him very much, and they are all sad to see him in the hospital.
So, now your options are to a) Let the man die or b) become his kidney slave for a whole year. You’re selfish if you don’t do it, and you’d be saving a life. He’s a person, and so innocent, he never asked this to happen to him! You can put up with nausea and avoiding foods and bodily invasion and paying for cab fare, it’s not that inconvenient! You’re the only match, you’re so selfish if you don’t save him. His whole family is counting on you and praying that you’ll change your mind and be a kidney filter.
This is what you’re asking women to do when you’re asking them to carry a pregnancy against their will. Except in the above scenario, there’s no health problems for you, and no incapable dependent that shows up after the year, that you need to pay for and raise with manners and appropriate taste and ideals and socialization. Because if you don’t, you’re still selfish and a bad mother and you should have though about children before having sex (never mind that it’s never asked whether she was on birth control or any of the situation surrounding her situation).
In the last two hundred years, we’ve redefined many things on this planet. Who can vote. Who are considered people. Who can marry. What marriage is (hint, it’s different now because you can’t sell your daughter for sixty cows and four goats, and if you’re widowed you don’t automatically shack up with your ex hubby’s brother). Abortions have been around since time immemorial. The Romans even harvested to extinction a certain plant that would induce abortions.
When abortions were illegal in the states, bodies of women would turn up at the morgue all the time as a result from back-alley abortions. The day Roe vs Wade was passed and abortions were legalized for women, the deaths stopped overnight. That’s powerful. That’s why I’m pro-choice. Women always need a safe alternative that won’t destroy their health.
The Gosnell situation, by the way, was created by the ProLife mindset. Women didn’t have safe, legal, nearby access to abortion, so they went desperately to that butcher (because he was in the same state as they were, they didn’t need to cross borders or increase travel fees). He was performing infanticide, by the way, not abortion- those infants could have survived outside the womb. Not all abortion clinics function this way, and any late term abortion should be performed in a hospital. That situation is sickening and is the reason there needs to be regulated, legal clinics. Back alley butchers like that will only increase in number if abortion is made illegal.
Society brainwashes people to believe that children are a consequence and punishment for women who dare to control their pleasure by having intercourse. S e x is one of the many things that has been redefined in the last hundred years or so. We’ve evolved past the animalistic stage where intercourse is only for reproduction. The purity myth needs to go.
We now have intercourse to relieve stress, bond with lovers, experience intimacy, and grow as people. With all the nerves in the clitoris, it’s impossible to believe that women are destined solely for reproductive actions. The main function of the clitoris is pleasure. Intercourse for pleasure is inevitable as the sun rising and setting.
Children haven’t really been redefined- they’ve just been given more freedom to be who they want to, and more safety (in some ways- they are woefully neglected in others).
Children need proper parenting and loving care. Children that grow up without it know the difference. I know. I’ve felt what absent-parenting is like. If I had been aborted, or if my older brother (the result of rape) had been aborted, I’m sure my mother’s life would have been very different, and a lot happier. Children didn’t fix anything in her life, we just made her give up on everything sooner.
Not everybody is equipped for parenting. Not everybody is ready for that responsibility.
Rethink your pro-life status. It’s okay to be pro-life for yourself. But the official prolife status tries to making abortion illegal for everybody. It’s making a choice for everybody that not everyone believes in. Be Pro-Choice- let women decide when they’re reading to raise a child. They know when they’ll best be able to care and raise and love and lavish attention upon a child. It’s when they’re ready, which cannot be determined by anybody but themselves.
Women deserve good health. Women deserve safe healthcare. Women deserve to choose when they will become mothers.
Won’t you consider trusting women and fighting for choice instead?
Finally, most modern abortions (eightyeight percent) are performed before week nine. Only 2% of abortions occur after twentyone weeks, and these are cases where the fetus is wanted, but either the fetus is in danger (which endangers the mom), or the mom’s health is in danger, meaning neither of them would survive if she continued. Very rarely does a woman not realize she’s pregnant, but in some cases periods continue, and birth control continues. Proper medical specialists, by the way, will never allow their personal beliefs to interfere with the patient’s wishes and requests. There are many young doctors, and doctors in training that don’t hold on to archaic ideals and always put the patient’s comfort and safety as a priority.
FYI, my taxes pay for many things I disagree with, including the PM and Cabinet’s salary. Including paying for students to be bussed and indoctrinated at that ridiculous March for Life and Misinformation. I indirectly pay for guns that kill families overseas. I indirectly pay for many things that go against my beliefs, but if it makes Canada a better place for people to live and be happy, so be it.
The Guttmacher Institute is a great online resource for global facts about abortion. It’s the website of this post.
Thank you, anybody who took the time to read and understand the message I am desperately screaming across the universe.
Hi Amy,
Can you provide the Canadian source for this statement:
“Finally, most modern abortions (eightyeight percent) are performed before week nine. Only 2% of abortions occur after twentyone weeks, and these are cases where the fetus is wanted, but either the fetus is in danger (which endangers the mom), or the mom’s health is in danger, meaning neither of them would survive if she continued.”
It’s my position that it’s impossible to make such a statement since abortion data in Canada is so hard to come by. EFC released a report on this last year.
http://files.efc-canada.net/si/Abortion/BlackHolesEFCAbortionDataReport.pdf
I’m open to being corrected however. I’d appreciate a hyperlink if you have it handy.
Thanks.
Nope, no canadian sources. I guess Canadians don’t feel that their personal health is any of the public’s business 🙂 I made some spelling/skimming errors with my rush to impart information, and that 88% fact should read that 88% are performed before the first trimester is over, and over half of them are done before week 21.
Global trends show similarly all over- the places where it’s illegal, more women die and violence against women and children is more prevalent. Where it’s legal, there’s a lower crime rate and children get better care from parents. Making it illegal causes many problems. Trusting women with a choice creates better societies.
Also, that pdf you linked is from a religiously affiliated source, so it’s unreliable. Proper scientific papers will not have an inherent bias when presenting information, and all the information will come from scientific and peer-reviewed sources.
Please research data that does not come from a biased source. Avoiding anything with “Evangelical” in their name is a good start.
The only people who view “children as punishment for having sex” are pro-choicers. It’s their own judgement of the situation, which they then cast on pro-lifers, who don’t identify with the “children as punishment” meme for themselves, or anyone else.
When prolifer’s use phrases like ‘you did the pleasure so you can’t escape the pleasure’ or ‘keep your legs shut’ they’re implying that children are the punishment that can’t be escaped when intercourse has been had. Children are “mandatory” and if you have sex you shouldn’t be surprised that pregnancy happens, and that you must keep the pregnancy because you knew it could happen when you had intercourse. it’s circular logic that assumes all women are sluts that don’t know the consequences of their actions. However, not every woman wants to be a mother, and so they should have the right to prevent that potential thing from coming to term and suffering its whole life because it isn’t wanted. Prolifer’s keep telling ProChoicers things like that, so it’s really their terminology I’m talking about. “You should have known better before having sex!” which is the biggest load of stupid I’ve heard.
ProChoice people regard bodily autonomy as sacred, and not to be given up just to push an unwanted child into the world. ProChoice people value children AND the parents that have the job of raising them. It’s not a job for everybody. Abortion is there to terminate a pregnancy so that a woman doesn’t need to take on that job along with all her other obligations.
Here’s an interesting (if biased) recent canadian article, Faye. I don’t have access to the database their data is being drawn from, but they’ve tried to source their facts. http://rabble.ca/columnists/2013/01/benefits-decriminalizing-abortion
Apparently, Canada having legalized abortion also means we have the lowest abortion rates in the entire world. Will you look at that! Less unwanted children means less suffering for everybody.
If you believe that all fetuses need to be carried to term, you are literally making children a punishment for people who don’t want children and had sex. If they do not want children, forcing them to have children and then raise one is NOT the solution.
regarding the “you were a blastocyte” argument, yes, i was. however, if i was aborted as a blastocyte, i would not have cared even slightly. Know why? because i was never even aware! i wouldn’t be that upset if i was jettisoned into a sock as a sperm either. i had less potential for life at that point but it was still potential. that whole argument is rediculous.
i am a man and i have very little place in this argument as such (i lack the equipment). i will say this, though, i have experienced the “lost fatherhood” pro-lifers say men regret. yes, SOMETIMES we do, as it was in my case. To be honest though i would not have it any other way. i am glad she had a choice even though it was against my wishes. it is not my place, or yours or any individuals to impose your will over somebody elses body.
I do want to go back to the Gosnell issue because Gosnell was a back-alley abortion. One day what he did was illegal and the next legal. He was also involved in the Mother’s Day Massacre. I’ll let you read up on the story for the Wall Street Journal.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324030704578422883948238160.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion
What Roe did was make back-alley abortions legal. Those doctors that did abortions illegally now cold do them legally.
Amy, again. Is the purpose of terminating a pregnancy?
Is that purpose of a late-term abortion? You can terminate a pregnancy at this stage without killing the fetus.
“Nope, no canadian sources. I guess Canadians don’t feel that their personal health is any of the public’s business”
What other health related surgery do we NOT have stats for? That hospitals don’t need to report or document? That the public can’t have access to?
Darn, I really have to reread d my comments. sigh.
…Gosnell was a back-alley abortionist.
…from the Wall Street Journal
…now could do them legally.
Of course Canada has the lowest abortion rates, reporting is not mandatory.
Hmm, over half of them are done before 21 weeks….according to your statistics.
Would you than be Ok with an abortion like Gosnell did? Deliver the baby and then snip the neck. The child is not viable and it is safer for the mother as there are no grasping instruments in the uterus.
At what point of fetus development in your opinion is an abortion infanticide? The earliest premature baby is 21 weeks and 5 days.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1380282/Earliest-surviving-premature-baby-goes-home-parents.html
I haven’t yet met ‘Pro Lifers’ or ‘Pro-Choicers’ who agree on their concerns in a uniform way. I haven’t yet found anyone who doesn’t think, research or speak without bias. But I have met people who can discuss issues.
Boy there is a lot of comment on this; ‘What Choice Doesn’t Look Like’.
One theme is ‘freedom’. Defining freedom as doing what you want when you want is problematic as what one wants is inherently involved with what can actually happen. The reality is who one is is real and what one lives in is a real world and both have definition. The person and the world are not whatever one might want them to be or how one might want them to coexist. On the other hand I would consider seeing freedom as actually living out who one really is in the real world. One’s living as one’s true self in the real world sounds possible and freeing. Therein lies ‘life’ and ‘choice’.
Another issue seems to be around the ‘pre-born/fetus’ and there doesn’t seem to be much disagreement on ‘what/who’ the ‘pre-born/fetus’ is. The rub seems to be in what freedom is and how one’s definition of freedom affects what one thinks about or does about the ‘pre-born/fetus’.
Seems to me reasoning ‘freedom’ and ‘pre-born/fetus’ has potential.
Oh, Amy.
When we say that all life is precious and sacred, we are not just referring to unborn children. YOUR life is precious too, and I’m really, really sorry that you didn’t get that message when you were growing up. The world is a better place because you are in it.
So much pain. And abortion doesn’t take that pain away. Not usually, anyway. Instead, it multiplies the pain.
I am someone who was raped and got pregnant and had the baby, gave her up for adoption and then asked for her back before it became final. I guess I am a slave to my biology, as we all are. The reason I did not have an abortion is because I knew that the blastocyte, embryo, fetus, unborn child inside me , who I did not want to be there, was not me and it was human, small and undeveloped but with its own unique DNA. The only way to stop being pregnant was to do violence to it and me, by sticking a vacuum aspirator up my vagina and sucking it out – another kind of rape. So, I didn’t. If I wasn’t ready to be a mother, which I thought I wasn’t, there were thousands of people out there, who would happily take the job on. There is no such thing as an unwanted baby in this day and age.
The funny thing is when I ended up keeping the baby, the prochoicers among my friends, all thought it was an emotional decision, that deep down, all the time I had really wanted the baby and that is why I didn’t have an abortion. To prochoicers, the magic thing that makes pregnancy, childbirth, parenting and babies acceptable is emotion, whether you want the experience or not. It is all subjective. I told them all that the reason I didn’t have an abortion was that I couldn’t kill a human being, however you want to describe it, that was not me even if living in me. Couldn’t do it because I knew I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. It looks like murder to me. So, I didn’t. But there was no emotion there at all – I didn’t want to be pregnant.
It is absolutely and always has been beyond me how prochoicers can drool sentimentally over a wanted baby, – I’ve seen them do it, tracing its development in utero, keeping sonograms as baby’s first picture, wallowing in the pain of miscarriage, but turning it all off – when the baby isn’t “wanted.” That is the culture of narcissism – it’s all about how you feel . Nothing has intrinsic value except feelings. that is why choice is “sacred” – you choose based on your feelings.
Well, JeninCanada and AMyfist, I would be very uncomfortable with the ability to turn it off and turn it on. A baby is a baby when it’s wanted and a clump of cells, a pregnancy that can be terminated, a parasite, a nothing, when it’s not. So, we all live based on emotion. Either human life is sacred or its not and when its not and when we draw artificial lines that says wanted on this side, love and sonograms and photograph albums and welcome and unwanted on this side, the aspirator or the saline solution or the lethal drug or if you are really unlucky Gosnell’s scissors or his toilet bowl on this side- well that is what the Nazis did. Life for the Aryan, death for the Jew. And whatever ideology you have to justify it – in this case, bodily autonomy, can’t hide the ugly facts.
In this day and age, every baby is wanted by someone and every child should have the right to know he or she lives because they are human beings not because their self-absorbed mother decided that this was the right time on their life’s journey to ‘parent.’ I’d like to be nice about it, but after Gosnell I am losing my politeness. One gets the photo op because the choice was thumbs up – she was wanted. The other gets the aspirator and the hospital waste disposal or incinerator because the choice was thumbs down- not wanted. No intrinsic difference. Yuck.
Nail on the head Mary Ann.
Mary Ann, that was very well said. I have immense respect for you and what you have been through.