This started as a Facebook post. I was just going to share an article with a comment when I realized the comment had reached nonfiction status and signed into WordPress instead (you’re welcome, FBers). I’m about to talk about something near and dear to my heart, which means my voice is a little shaky and I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to make my point. But here goes nothin’.
This is the article I read:
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/242001-hillary-hits-back-against-gop-abortion-bill
It’s a good picture of Hillary, and I have to be honest – I think she’s a pretty smart lady because even though she gets a little silly with Twitter and isn’t my political cup of tea (wink), she uses logic and compassion to make her decisions. OMG WHAT AM I TALKING ABOUT, said my family, church, and everyone in Alabama. Well, hang on to your beard and let me explain.
The article says that today, the House of Representatives passed a bill which bans all abortions after 20 weeks of gestation. In it, Clinton says this is bad because women and doctors are the best authority on women’s health, and random males in politics shouldn’t have control over what they do. I understand her point as an attempt at favoring small government as well as exhibiting human compassion. Don’t let the government in your uterus and don’t let men make baby decisions for women (who are a little more invested in the whole pregnancy thing). Sounds good to me. A bunch of men with law degrees shouldn’t get to decide how ovarian cysts are removed or how many children we’re required to have or what kind of diet or exercise women should follow. Right? The problem is, this bill isn’t about mammograms or prenatal vitamins. In my opinion, it’s not even about women’s health. It’s about humanity. It’s about abortion.
What gives me the idea it’s not about health? I know that the main pro-choice argument meant to appeal to Christians, cashiers, and other people with souls is that women should be allowed to protect themselves from the physical and psychological concerns of dangerous pregnancies and those resulting from rape. Well, it just so happens that statistics are not the same thing as stupid math and have a way of speaking the truth without all the drama. So here are some statistics about U.S. abortion from the Guttmacher Institute, Center for Disease Control, and the National Abortion Federation. These are not necessarily 2015 numbers, but from within the last 6 years:
– 88% of all abortions are performed for non-health reasons.
– 99% of all abortions are performed for reasons other than rape.
– 1.21 million abortions occur every year.
I don’t know how it feels to be pregnant at all, not to mention pregnant as a result of rape or pregnant in a situation which might kill or otherwise endanger me. So, according to the above-mentioned sources and leaving out all abortions performed because of health reasons, last year 1,064,800 fetuses were aborted because their existence might have interfered with their parents’ work, school, finances, or romantic relationships. 1,197,900 terminated pregnancies were the result of consensual sex. Let me point out that both these numbers make up the suffocating majority. It kinda makes me ask, “What about the abortions that aren’t about women’s health? (read: most abortions).
I think the answer is pretty obvious: People put an awfully low price tag on the value of other people. It’s not just America doing it; it’s the history of our world. For example, there was a time when it was okay to subjugate black people as slaves because they were less than human. No, really, they just didn’t feel emotions the same way white people did. They didn’t have the same reasoning skills, memories, or souls. Then suddenly something changed, and guess what, it wasn’t the status of black people’s human-ness; it was white people finally realizing they had been treating actual people worse than animals for a really long time. The consequences have been heartbreaking. Now we look in the history books and think, “Man, we used to be such jerks; how could we ever have treated people that way?” Many saw it was wrong all along, but it didn’t stop others, even Christians, from buying into lies and committing the mass degradation. Less than a century later, Hitler came along and convinced all of Germany that Jews were less than human. It became okay to strip that sect of people of their clothes and dignity, starve them, rape them, shoot them, gas them, dismember them, and mow them into ditches. Droves of people did this because it was their right; furthermore, it was for the good of all genetics. I hope you see where I’m going with this.
To bring this argument up-to-date, humane behavior should take priority with people first, animals last. Unfortunately, that’s just not always the case. We hear over and over, “If we loved our pets, we would get them all fixed. It’s inhumane to let them breed when there are so many pets in the world without a home.” Meanwhile, these same people go on to have their own biological children without a thought for all the thousands of orphan people in our country who will turn 18 with no concept of being loved and no one to visit on Thanksgiving, forever. Children are dehumanized left and right, and I believe abortion is just one example of it. But we just don’t like to see ourselves in that light. We’re all just a bunch of kind, law-abiding citizens. But what do slavery, the Holocaust, and abortion have in common? They were all legal, and most of its supporters did not actually witness it happening.
So now you’re definitely saying, “But fetuses aren’t humans!” I know. They’re not viable to live outside the uterus. They can’t feel or remember. However, the fact remains that fetuses which cannot survive outside the uterus depend on the humanity of adult women, who are the only people who can keep them alive. The women choosing whether to have abortions are human, aren’t they? That’s why they have little humans growing in them, not blobs of amoebas or monkeys or frogs. By the way, babies need us after they’re born for survival, too. Carefully extract a fetus, set it on the ground, and walk away – it’ll die soon. Do the same thing to a full-term baby, and he, too will die. I repeat, they completely depend on our humanity for survival. And I’m sure being born really hurt my head, and I was probably really excited when I took my first step, but I honestly don’t remember those events or feeling one way or another about them. In fact, in my very first memory, I was looking under a barn for a puppy, and I was three years old. Everything before that? Pfft. I might as well not have existed. Should it have been legal to terminate me before then if my parents decided my existence interfered with their finances? Maybe that’s taking it a little far. I was an innocent baby, after all.
By the way, what the heck is a baby? There are many who are really offended that it’s now illegal to abort fetuses after 20 weeks, but I looked up pictures of 20-week old fetuses, and buddy, they sure do remind me of babies. What’s more, most people announce they are pregnant around 12 weeks, and you would never know a fetus was involved. All they can talk about is the baby. Why, when unwanted, is it suddenly scientifically not a baby at all and therefore okay to terminate? And why can’t we say we’re killing it? We’re okay with saying that we kill bugs and weeds and other living things that aren’t really humans, so why can’t we admit we’re actually killing these baby-looking fetuses? It’s not that complicated. It’s sad enough to squash a duck egg that has been fertilized, or perform an abortion on a mother dog because the owners were scared for her or didn’t want to deal with finding homes. It doesn’t really matter how long they had been developing; they were ducklings and puppies, and yeah, they were killed. But they were just animals. What about us? When is it not sad to kill us? When our political leaders say it’s okay? When it empowers women? When we’re really passionate about it?
I am a Jesus freak, so you already knew where I stood on this. And I’m not a political genius. I didn’t even know what GOP stood for until I Googled it just now. I think most people should be allowed to conceal and carry a gun, so you can immediately decide I’m ignorant based on that if you like to make uninformed decisions about people (read: if you like to be ignorant). But respecting human life is not specific to one political party, gender, or religion. Especially for people, the safest place in the world should be in a woman’s uterus. There’s a life in there, a soul with a purpose. It doesn’t matter how scared the father is or how devastated the mother is; that hidden life in her is that of another human. It’s not about politics. It’s about being a person. It’s that simple.
:K
From Where You Are 