Whose Life?
Only two weeks to go until the US Presidential election (I can’t wait for it to be over!) and voters in Colorado will decide whether or not a fetus deserves a full compliment of human rights. I’ve never lived in Colorado, so I can only hope that the voters there have a modicum of intelligence. Just enough to recognize that giving an unborn child the same rights as its mother is a bad, bad idea.
Last year, Human Rights Watch released Over Their Dead Bodies, a study of Nicaragua’s ban on all abortions, for any reason. And what did they find? Thousands of preventable deaths in women who could have been saved by access to safe abortion services. How anyone can think banning abortion is a pro-life policy is beyond me. Far, far beyond me.
The state of California will also be voting AGAIN on parental consent/notification for women under 18 seeking abortions. And once again, in the guise of protecting young women, this kind of restriction has been proven over and over to be more dangerous for young women. Because, let’s face it, if a young woman is afraid to tell her parents she’s pregnant and wants to get an abortion, no LAW is going to make her do it. She’s much more likely to try something dangerous.
And, of course, there is South Dakota once again voting on whether or not to ban abortions. At least this time they are including exceptions for rape and incest and maybe health of the mother.
All this time, energy and resources being poured into making abortions illegal, inaccessible and difficult are just a tragic waste. Really, all they prove is that the people working so hard to create barriers to abortion aren’t really interested so much in reducing abortions as they are in controlling women’s bodies and women’s sexuality. Because if these so-called ‘pro-lifers’ (or even call them anti-abortion) were really interested in reducing abortions, if they really cared about all those unborn children, they would pour all their time and energy into better sex education programs, better access to contraception and better social services for women and already-born children. Because the surest way to reduce the number of abortions performed would be to reduce the need for them. And the best way to reduce the need for abortion is to reduce the number of unplanned, unwanted pregnancy by providing women with information and resources to gain access to the contraceptive methods that work best for them. And second best, would be to provide social support systems for women raising children -whether with a partner or not- so the idea of a second or third child wouldn’t feel so overwhelming.
The hypocrisy of the ‘pro-life’ movement has really gotten to be more than I can stand. Just look at Nicaragua. Banning or restricting access to abortion is not pro-life, it is anti-woman and pro-death.
Published October 24, 2008 . Filed under: Abortion, Politics
I don’t think it is fair to make such blanket statements as saying that pro-lifers want to control women’s bodies. I am not part of any movement, but I am definitely pro-life. I am a woman that has had one miscarriage and one live birth. Before this, I had never really taken a stand in my own mind on this topic. The moment I think I became pro-life was when I was a few weeks pregnant the second time and thought I was having my second miscarriage because I was spotting. I came in at about 5 weeks and had an ultrasound and just started crying with relief when they showed me his heartbeat. In that second I knew I had a living person growing inside of me and it was my gift and responsibility to protect this child like a mother lion. I’m not looking at this from a political or religious standpoint, but from a human rights standpoint and as a mom (who is also waiting to adopt). It is so far beyond me to understand how any woman that has actually ever given birth could think that aborting their own unborn child is the best alternative to an unwanted pregnancy. Every single one of us started as a couple of cells that eventually had a heartbeat and organs, etc. This is how human life begins. It just seems so wrong on so many different levels. I apologize for rambling and thinking out loud, but it just seems like in the future more evolved societies will look back at us and just think “what did they do to their children in the name of women’s rights?” Obviously what is happening in Nicaragua isn’t the answer, but there has to be a middle ground where death of the mother or child isn’t the outcome. Women need to have more self esteem and respect for their own bodies and have their partner put on a condom instead of thinking that if she gets pregnent, at least there is always abortion to fall back on. This was the case with 3 high school/college aged women I knew. All from good homes and plenty of money to buy birth control– abortion for convenience. Who knows, maybe 1 of those 3 lives that I just mentioned could have come up with an answer to this question or maybe a cure for cancer, or maybe not…….but we’ll never know.
Thanks for your comment. I think you’ve just highlighted what I’m saying about the ‘pro-life movement’ - it’s not actually pro-life. A true pro-life movement would seek exactly what you suggested: a more humane solution to reducing the number of abortions. Restricting abortion access does nothing to reduce the need for abortions. Reducing the need for abortions -by providing better sex education, better access to contraceptives, fostering a culture that honors a woman’s sexuality and right to express it instead of demeaning it- would be a pro-life way of reducing the number of unplanned pregnancies. Unplanned pregnancy being the number one cause of abortions.
I do have to disagree that abortion is done for convenience. The number one reason women give for choosing to abort is they want to be good mothers - and they know that ‘now’ is not the right time for them to do that. Abortion is a difficult decision and rarely (if ever) made lightly. I respect anyone’s decision that abortion is not a good choice for them, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the right choice for anyone else.
If we are looking for a solution that preserves the health and well-being of both the pregnant woman and unborn fetus and if the number one reason women give for choosing to abort is that they want to be good mothers but not right ‘now’, wouldn’t the most logical solution be adoption. It is such a win/win situation. The baby gets a good home (believe me, you have to jump through burning hoops to become an adoptive family in our culture!), the family gets a child to adore, and the birth mom can have the sense of pride that she did the ultimate, most unselfish thing for that child, without any regrets or destruction of life. In our adoption program, it is free to the birth mom and she gets continual nurturing and support and if she chooses to keep her baby she gets continued support in that manner, as well. I can’t imagine what aborting your child would do to the psyche of a young woman, especially one without a support system. With the adoption process the birth mom is surrounded by those looking out for her best interest and rights. Every hoop we jumped through was for the birth mom and her baby and every adoptive family was more than willing to keep on jumping!
Again, adoption can be a good choice for some people, but not everyone. And there is no shortage of children who need to be adopted and/or taken in for foster care.