Abortions are often necessary, and only each female, in her own unique circumstance, can determine what constitutes a legitimate abortion need. No one has the defensible authority to second-guess or demonize any woman who arrives at that conclusion.
The death of even a single already-born, living, breathing, socially functioning female from medical complications, wire hanger/back alley desperation, or suicide—because safe, legal pregnancy termination was unavailable to her—is a far worse travesty than the “holocaust of murdered babies” in which “of” is the sole, not-wildly-inapplicable word.
That’s why we must always defend the ability to choose. Girls and women have an unequivocally valid claim to personhood rights. Zygotes and embryos do not.
What’s most offensive is the constant, cruel depiction by conservatives of those who obtain abortions as being “irresponsible” or “selfish.”
Why are the boys and men who get females pregnant never so described?
Some female abortion opponents very admirably limit that orientation to their personal selves. They wouldn’t compel others to carry unacceptable pregnancies to term. Unfortunately, there are few things rarer than such believers.
Much more common are the “women’s auxiliary” members of the male-dominated, profoundly sexist anti-choice movement, who betray their own gender by embracing what, if successful, would add America to benighted global places where tens of thousands of females perish because abortion is brutally banned.
The following provides a different perspective for those with a smug righteousness about their “pro-life” views:
A teenager discovers she’s pregnant after her first date with a boy.
Since her parents are strict evangelicals, she doesn’t dare tell them what’s happened.
She contemplates abortion, but has been taught that terminating even an early pregnancy is murder.
She ponders running away. But where would she go; what about her education and future plans? How could she support herself and care for a demanding infant?
The girl grows increasingly morose.
Then, during a school football game, she leaves the clamoring stadium and walks to the nearby river, splashing forward into deeper water, until only her head is above the surface.
The last thing she hears is the cheering crowd, then her own gasp, as she vanishes beneath the current . . .
No female should ever find herself in a similarly hopeless situation.
Driving others into dead-end circumstances is the very antithesis of morality. It’s how good and evil trade places, unleashing hurt and harm much worse than the problem originally targeted for a wrongheaded “solution.”
There is no ultimately ethical, non-destructive option to free reproductive choice.
Death-dealing moral imperialism thrust upon females is the inevitable outcome of blindly fetishizing the unborn. Adoption is plainly an unrealistic alternative, on a mass scale.
Compulsory birth, ordered under some sort of fascistic edict, shouldn’t be tolerated.
Those who disagree should listen to what medical professionals so horrifically experienced as they treated women whose lives bled away in hospital emergency rooms before Roe v. Wade.
Going back to that dreadful era would be an abomination.
We need comprehensive sex education and ready contraceptive availability, not ignorance-promoting “abstinence only” indoctrination or punitive Hobby Lobby-style American Talibanism.
We must additionally demand humane governmental policies providing the healthcare, nutrition and other supportive aid that, if present, would go a long way toward eliminating the fear and frequent, actual impossibility of bringing children into a painfully unjust society.
Tellingly, the same conservatives who champion “babies” in the womb often lose all interest after they’re hungrily crying in impoverished mothers’ arms, as proven by their recent willingness to cruelly slash food stamps (SNAP).
Choice must prevail, or wide-ranging subjugation and suffering will surely result.
Dennis Rahkonen of Superior, Wisconsin, has been writing progressive commentary with a Heartland perspective for various outlets since the ’60s.
Well written and by a man, which shows some do have empathy. Sharing.