Sparked by this post by Scio, Scio who posed a question:
How could anyone support abortion if they knew that they might have been killed? You've had years to realize that if you had died then none of your fondest memories would have occurred, your favorite desserts would have gone uneaten, music unappreciated...how we cannot be fiercely protective of our own lives is beyond me.
My response:
~ Yup, I am fully aware of the dichotamy that I might not exist, but then I wouldn't exist to care. I am also protective of life, of liberty of justice. But I say that if you are unjust, unfree then life is less worth living. Would I die to preserve the freedoms of what I believe in? Possibly. If so I must therefore contemplate the idea that the freedoms I choose to believe in may have lead to my non-life.
You see, I am adopted. Yet I support choice when it come to abortion. The fact I can do this, despite the fact I may well have not existed had my first/birth mother made a different choice. The idea that I would not have existed is almost incomprehensible to the living person here. Yet am I a hypocrite for supporting something that would have snuffed my life out before it was realised?
But this has made me think (ok, in 2 directions: I am following one).
What value do we place on life, any life? Is a foetus more or less worthy than a 5 year old, a 15 year old, a young adult or a mature one? Is the life of a chinese girl baby worth more or less than an american boy? A palistinian soldier versus a Tibeten nun?
Who gets to choose who lives or dies? The obvious answer is that no one should, yet every day there is death. Death caused by the hand of another person. It would be trite for me to say that more die daily in war than by abortion.
I choose to support the right to choose abortion, but I will also try to support those who will change our society so that those doing the choosing no longer feel they need to choose.
People choose abortion because either they do not want to be pregnant, or it is inconvienent, or because they do not want the baby.
Isn't it better to change the world so that being pregnant is not an inconvienence? That the pregnant, the mothers (and fathers) are not discriminated against?
Yet in the UK, and I think america, it COSTS to bring up a child and many people say that if you cannot afford a child you should not get pregnant, that young women who get pregnant and keep their child are 'sponging' because they need tax-payers help to live, to bring up their baby. Is it the same in the US? I guess so.
Sure there are, and always will be, idiots who think the laws of nature don't apply: they can't get pregnant even if ignoring contraception (or avoidence). They are the same ones who refuse to believe that they could ever get lung cancer with a 5 pack a day habit, or drive fast ~ crashes happen to other people ~ or all sorts of other risky behaviour. And society must deal with the results, even if it manages to educate the rest of us.
So question: Does you area allow girls to continue school as teen-moms? Provide health & social care for people who can't work or who are too poor to care properly for a new baby, or another baby? Do your hospitals have free checkups / maternity care? are workplaces flexible with hours, giving the same pay per hour to a part-time mom/worker? is their affordable child-care facilities? Do your colleges or Universities have flexible studying? How much does having a baby cost? Do people look down on single moms/dads? Does your religion accept and help with money & support for someone who has chosen to keep their baby?
No? Then the best way to fight the need for abortion is to fight the reasons women have them.
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