“Oh no he didn’t…”
“Oh yes I did!”
Let’s start with a question:
How many ways are there to make a baby? Naturally that is.
I say naturally, because I am assuming someone who is getting artificially inseminated is probably not making an abortion decision so lets presume I am also using common sense for the rest of this article as well. If you are incapable of forming logical thoughts, you should probably go read something else.
Now back to the question at hand…
How many ways are there to make a baby?
There is only one way to make a baby naturally; last time I checked at least. A male puts his penis inside a woman’s vagina and ejaculates. The sperm and the egg do some high five shit and next thing you know cells are splitting.
9 months latter a little version of you is screaming all night keeping you from your precious 8 hours of sleep. (Parents, feel free to use that as your birds and bees speech!) #YoureWelcome
So now that we understand that…
We send you back to your regularly scheduled programming, which is already in progress:
“Uhh oh…. I don’t want a baby” said someone somewhere, after a drunk night of playing hide the salami. But, isn’t it already too late?
Couldn’t you argue that at this point the decision has already been made. That you have already done the deed. “Made-your-choice”, if you will.
You had sex; you knew what you were doing. You decided not to use a condom, take the pill or otherwise protect yourself from the one specific result that the act you committed is designed to produce. You may think sex is about the orgasm but really it is about the insemination and propagation of your species. If you cannot understand that concept then do us all a favor and please stop reproducing.
Cant you see that the entire abortion argument is based on a false premise. One where pro-life is different than pro-choice? Cant you see that they have succeeded in getting us to spend our time fighting among ourselves in an attempt to change the wrong part of the system altogether?
We scream at the state for their meddling while we collapse internally as a family? As our entire society rots from the inside out?
Sex is fun but it is also a huge responsibility.
Much like drinking alcohol or doing drugs, deciding to have sex is not something that should be taken lightly.
Think about it. If you go get drunk and kill someone on the drive home, you don’t get to just decide at some point during the trial that you just want to pay some money and erase the entire event from the timeline that is your life.
You don’t get to tell the judge that you made a mistake and that you don’t want to face any of the consequences. Instead, you get to sit in court and probably spend some time in jail. You get to live with what you have done and try to make the best of it.
The difference is that in this case you get to see the pain you caused. You get to look the family of the person whose life you took in the eyes, and feel their pain course through you. The baby has no choice, no day in court and his only family is the one sentencing him to death.
Sure, you can come out of jail and try to get your life back on track and make sure you don’t make the same mistakes again, but you can never go back. You cannot change the past. You can never take it back.
Back to the point
I go back to my article title… “Why All Conservatives Are Actually Pro-Choice”. Conservatives are typically pro-life which happens to be the other CHOICE when deciding to abort or not. Why is that choice diminished among our current pop-culture?
Why is the choice to chose responsibility looked at with scorn or somehow relegated to anything other than what it is… Responsible.
Why is ending life the only “choice”? Why is the argument fought as if there were only one choice to make when facing the decision of an unexpected pregnancy.
I would even argue further, that it takes more courage to keep the baby, but don’t run out of here thinking I am completely complicit with the entire conservative ideology on this argument.
What about rape?
The whole abortion discussion is such a touchy issue. There are so many nuances and you almost always upset someone’s ideology, which is often the collection of everything that makes them, them.
I acknowledge all of these things. I am just trying to approach it with a level head and some rational thought. Anyone who screams at you like abortion is supposed to be a cut-and-dry, black-and-white issue is just plain ignorant.
I could never pretend to tell a woman who had been raped that she has to keep the baby.
That is not my decision to make. I can love her and support her and encourage her to give thought to the choice of life.
I can encourage her to bring the child into the world and at least let them fight for themselves.
I would try to convince her to give them the chance to go out and make something of themselves. To let another family give her unborn child the childhood that she doesn’t want to, or cannot provide.
I would push her to think about the weight of this decision. A weight she will have to carry from that moment forward, but at the end of the day, it is not my body. It is not my decision to make. It is ultimately her choice to make.
The beauty of being human, is that we have to make our own choices. We have to live with our decisions and we are the only ones who can make them. That’s what makes this a pro-choice vs pro-choice debate! One which we must wage on a level stage of ideas and away from emotional attacks.
If there were only one option it would not be a choice. You cannot then, argue the issue from only one side of that choice! You cannot simply discredit the other side of the argument simply because you disagree.
There is a choice to be made, and allowing it to be argued on any premise other than the ones of that specific context is just plain disingenuous.
I still struggle with this issue
I know there are a million other issues at play here. There are a lot of places this thing could go next but I am just trying to start a conversation. I am just trying to get you to think about the premise of the entire debate and understand how we allow these issues to divide us as a nation!
All I am saying is that there is only one way to make a baby, and we all know what it is.
There are some situations in which the process is taken out of the hands of the woman (forced sexual relations, rape, date rape, etc) but for the most part, people having abortions are there because they already made one bad choice. Because they chose pleasure over sense. Because they had sex and got pregnant, and now are either not prepared or are unwilling to accept the results of their actions.
Instead, they are sitting in the courtroom, signing a contract with the judge, trying to erase history. Cashing in on one of the few instances in life where you can actually apply for a mulligan.
So… I’ll leave you with a couple questions:
Does that mulligan come at the expense of a potential life?
And, is that a choice you are really ready to make… especially for someone else?
I think most sane people would agree that an abortion is a tragedy, no matter the circumstances. I don’t have any problem with conservatives making passionate pro-life arguments, I happen to agree with the pro-life position in many respects. What I do have a problem with is the attempt to codify the pro-life position in law. If conservatives truly feel they are in the right, they should have confidence in their arguments, and not attempt to fall back on legislating their version of morality.
Good on you. Strong, powerful and courageous article.
This is the same kind of closed minded thinking that you accuse the right of. There is no “false” and no “period” to this debate.
Not to mention you are just plain wrong. Life is a choice. This is a Pro-choice vs pro-choice debate. You are just playing to the argument of the left that abortion is the only choice. They have corrupted the term.
That is why I wrote the article. Because you are arguing a false premise. If they are not pro choice then that would presume that there was only one choice. And that is definitely not the case.
If one can chose to abort then one can chose not to abort. Hence, both options are different sides of one “choice”.
The title was intended to draw comments, emotions and viewers so that we could even have this debate. So if anything the title is dead on!
#BoomSon
Great article! Love the drunk driving metaphor. People also don’t realize that many times young women are “forced” into abortions by their parents, the baby’s father or just have one because they’re scared and it’s legal/”easy”. The emotional damage that is done to MOST post-abortive women is beyond repair. You will never be the same again. Somehow this issue seems to be looked over when abortion is being discussed. No one wants to talk about the ugly side of abortion…so, they label it “choice” instead. That sounds so much nicer. Have you ever seen the tools that are used to abort a child? Do you know that they don’t let these women see the ultrasound? I’m so tired of the pro-life argument being seen as “anti-women”! No, I’m FOR women and FOR babies. I’m FOR women being empowered to make better choices when it comes to sexual relations. I’m FOR women NOT having to deal with the emotional (and sometimes physical – more often than you think) ramifications of abortion. I’m FOR women who are afraid to tell anyone that they got pregnant. Let’s support women in this way…why does our “support” always have to lead to death? Let’s help women see that its is OKAY to choose life!
I agree with your first point, but that is not a problem solved by taking the choice to go to term or abort away, that is a problem with those doing the forcing. The rest of your points however lack merit.
For one, abortion does not appear to increase mental risk (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/26/abortion-mental-health_n_814582.html), if anything, the study seems to show having a baby is more risky. But that’s inconsequential, as the woman can choose for herself, and doesn’t need you nor the govt to protect her.
Also, no one has ever seen the ‘tools … used to abort a child’ as we don’t abort children, we abort a fetus. But again, this point is moot, as it does not matter what the tools look like. To bring this up is an attempt to tug on emotion in an arena (law) where logic and reason should dictate.
I hope that you are active in supporting women, and providing valid alternatives like birth control and adoption, perhaps even donating your time or money to organizations that help troubled mothers financially, both during and after child birth. But I also hope you are not someone who believes the answer to this dilemma is to ban abortion, as then you are in fact anti-choice.
Not even sure where to start, but here goes.
First off, not every pairing of egg and sperm happens due to being irresponsible. Condoms can break, and even if they don’t, they are only ~98% effective, and the same thing with the pill. I’ve known people to get pregnant taking all the typical precautions. I’ve also know a woman who had tubal ligation, to only end up getting pregnant. So its not just irresponsible people getting abortions.
Second, sex is about whatever the people want to make it. It most definitely can and will be just about pleasure at times, and at other times it is about procreation. No one has to follow your rules about sex, just as you don’t have to follow anyone else’s rules about sex, outside of socially accepted standards involving mental competence and age.
Third, 70-75% of all conceptions either don’t implant, or result in a miscarriage, so to claim that conception = baby is grossly inaccurate. Because of these facts, your analogy to drunk driving also doesn’t fly.
Fourth, Conservatives are trying to overturn Roe v Wade, and legislate to ban abortion. That is not allowing choice, that is someone else making the decision for you. If all it was were Cons saying “hey, I choose not to abort, and you should too” there would be no debate, there would be no issue. And if Liberals were trying to legislate that all women who are raped MUST get an abortion, thereby taking away your freedom to choose, I’d be fighting them just as hard. So its not really honest to say that Cons are actually pro-choice, when their legislative attempts have demonstrated the opposite.
Sorry, not all Conservatives are Pro-Choice, potentia is not a valid ethical ground to disallow abortion, and until such time as a fetus has the consistent, meaningful brain activity required to sustain consciousness (~25-28wks according to modern science and medicine) there is no “someone” whom you are making a decision for.
Michael, I love you bro but I think you missed my point. I agree with a lot of what you say but I was attacking the premise of the argument itself. Trying to look at things from a different perspective and making people think about it in a different light.
I understand that contraception is not 100% but between two competent adults you should be covered. At the end of the article I acknowledge that there are many other arguments to be made, I just wanted to make mine.
I agree with you about forcing life and forcing abortion, neither of those are winning positions, but I think that is precisely the argument I made. I am not a down the line conservative so I challenge their stance as well.
Conservatives are pro choice. There are two choices to make. birth/abortion. Each of those options are a choice. Responsible sex is a choice and I know you might want to present an argument to the contrary, but most abortions are due to carelessness and not anything else.
I get that you were attacking the premise, but you did so with a specious argument. There are choices to make unless Roe v Wade gets overturned and a law is passes banning abortion, which is what the majority of Conservatives would like to see, from my experience. Then there is no choice, there is a dictate. So I will reiterate that your headline is inaccurate, as only SOME Conservatives are pro-choice. On the flip side, I know of no Liberals trying to enact legislation that forces anyone to get an abortion.
If you can somehow get all Conservatives to stop trying to ban abortion, and only make the decision for themselves whether to abort or not, then you can make the statements you have. Until then, its just not true that ALL Conservatives are pro-choice. And believe me, I’m not pro-abortion, and I’d like to see as much done to get people to choose to keep it to term, or not get pregnant in the first place, as anyone else. But what I see from the Con side more often than not is not proactive education for alternatives, but a wholesale attempt to make abortion illegal, as if somehow that is going to stop it from happening.
It’s not about forcing people to get abortions, it’s about forcing dependence on our society and splitting us along the social divides. And that the liberals do plenty of.
The article title is 100% true. That’s where you keep losing my point. Life is a choice. Just like death is and choosing to keep the baby is a powerful choice.
One that we should encourage more people to make. However, just like drugs, and anything else, legislation against it is not the answer. It just doesn’t work that way.
Get the government out of our lives is pretty much the moral of that story.
The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states: “nor shall any State
deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;
nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the
laws.”
I am conservative. I believe the 14th amendment applies here. However, personally
do not want to ban abortions.
What I would like to see, however, is pro-choice people call an abortion what it really is.
The premeditated murder of an unborn child.
I would like to stop sugar coating things and inform women and men correctly about the procedures the ‘pro-choice ‘crowd has so neatly sterilized. Therefore, women can make an
informative choice.
I have often wondered how pro-choice people can toss the same pregnant mother in jail, and take the ‘blob of tissue’ away from her when it’s born for getting drunk, or smoking a blunt while pregnant, the charge will be ‘delivering drugs to a minor through the umbilical cord.’ unless of course, she did not want said blob of tissue, and was on her way to the abortion clinic.
I do not understand why is the unborn baby is a minor sometimes, and a blog of tissue at other times.
The pro-women’s choice crowd has taken away the choice of life, from the unborn female child. The woman more often than not, have been feed propaganda from grade school that sterilizes, and candy coats what abortion really is.
The unborn child did not choose conception, nevertheless, will fight to live every day from the time of forced conception, until his last breath. The parents choose its conception by having sex in far too many cases unprotected, and carelessly.
No sex, no conception period! That is a choice as well.
If given a voice and you were that unborn child, which would, you choose; a life of hard knocks, with a single unwed parent, or while still in the womb of your mother being ripped
apart live?
I myself am ‘pro educational choice’. Educate the women on all the real facts, and offer them options for the baby’s life.Then if they still want to have an ‘abortion‘after knowing all the facts go for it!
#LifeIsBeautiful
I’m sorry Lisa, but aborting a fetus is not murder. Keeping consistent with how we would treat an adult in a vegetative state, without the meaningful and consistent brain activity required to sustain consciousness there is no right bearing person, and life support can be removed without a murder having taken place. Apply these same logical standards to a fetus, and before the 25-28wk point, its not murder because without consciousness there is no person and without a person the 14th Amendment does not apply.
You are right though, the unborn fetus did not choose conception, as it does not possess a brain capable of even the most rudimentary of thoughts. And this may surprise you, but in hindsight I would 100% support my mother choosing to abort me.
As for criminalizing what a mother does while she is pregnant, I don’t agree with that at all.
I am pro-education as well as pro-choice and
pro-lets-hope-they-choose-an-option-other-than-abortion, and I’m glad to
hear you are as well. At the end of the day, the biggest fact of all is that banning abortion will not eliminate it, so what is the point? Better to spend energy on educating, perhaps even donating time or money to needy mothers to minimalize abortions.