I’m getting ready to break one of my own blogging rules.  I’m going to talk about one of the three forbidden (by me, anyway) topics.  I feel like maybe I should put some sort of disclaimer on here, but the fact is I believe wholeheartedly the things I’m getting ready to say, and I’m not going to start by offering conditions or exceptions to keep from offending someone.

I’m going to talk about abortion, and why I am against it.

Now, one of the reasons I don’t like talking about abortion is that it’s a very frustrating subject to talk about.  Why? Because as soon as I said I was against abortion, BAM!, many of you slapped a label on me.  You immediately assumed many things about me that, in reality, may or may not be true.  You probably assumed that because I am against abortion, you know how I feel and think about everything.  You probably called me a conservative, and you probably accused me of being in a “war on women.”

Let me start by saying I absolutely am NOT in a war on ANYBODY, and especially not women.  I am, in fact, a woman myself. (Who knew, right?) I love women’s rights.  I believe in equal pay for equal work, equal educational opportunities, whatever.  In fact, I truly believe that ALL people should have equal opportunities, just like those PC disclaimers say on job applications.  You know, “regardless of gender, race, religion,” etc.  I consider myself a very open-minded person, but sometimes I think you SHOULDN’T be open-minded.  In fact, when you know something is wrong, it’s okay to be close-minded.  I can be open-minded about having equal rights, because having equal rights is not wrong.

What I don’t understand is why we, as a culture, think that a woman having equal rights means she has the “right” to have an abortion.

There is really only one major reason I oppose abortion, but I’ll get to that in a minute.  For now, I’ll give you the minor reasons.  For starters, if you believe in God, can you honestly say He would support abortion?  This usually brings up the argument of when life begins, and therein lies one of my biggest complaints about the pro-choice argument.  Consider the following: if I was 26 weeks pregnant, and my baby died of natural causes, it would be a family tragedy.  The baby would be delivered with the utmost reverence and sensitivity.  There would be a funeral, and for the rest of my life I would speak of my deceased child.

Now, let’s look at this scenario in a different way.  Let’s say I decided to have an abortion at 26 weeks.  The baby would be aborted, and tossed out like a ball of used paper.  That’s it.  It’s over.

So it logically follows that, based on this example, it is the choice of the mother which decides whether the baby is, in fact, a living human or not.  This is quite a power given to mothers!  In fact, we are almost deifying women, because ultimately they are deciding if this baby is worthy of life or not!  I can’t go along with this.  It makes no sense.  We can’t have it both ways.  Be honest with yourself.  Is it a baby or not?

Another example for you to consider: if someone kills a pregnant woman, and the baby dies, too, our judicial system will charge the killer with TWO counts of murder.

This is why the pro-choice movement is lost on me.

Every single pro-choice person I have ever spoken to is so versed in political bullshit that it is frightening.  They start in on how it is impossible to legislate, and how pregnant women would have to register their pregnancies or some kind of crap like that.  They want to argue with you about contraception and sex education.  Smoke and mirrors, people.  That’s all.  Abortion is not a political issue.  It is a moral one.

And there is another problem.  People say you can’t impose your morals on others.  Okay.  Let’s talk about that.  What is ANY law but the imposition of the morals of others on the citizenry at large?  Marijuana is illegal, right?  It’s illegal to smoke it, grow it, and sell it.  However, there is a whole population of people who feel like this is ridiculous.  It’s my body–if I want to light one up, why is that anyone’s business?  Right?  The only difference is that the “legalize it” group doesn’t really have time to organize big demonstrations or anything.  They are all at the 7-11 buying pop-tarts.

But I digress.

My point was we all live by laws that are based on a certain moral code.  We all know you shouldn’t kill others, or cause them harm in any way.  So how can we exempt our most innocent from this basic right?  Don’t believe in God?  Fine.  Forget the “moral” aspect of it.  Let’s talk science.  A woman’s body, from top to bottom and all the way around, is designed for one purpose–to conceive, give birth to, and subsequently nurture offspring.  Sorry if that upsets you.  Blame millions of years of evolution.  Or God.  Or whatever force to which you attribute creation.  We are the only species who systematically destroys our own young as a matter of convenience.  The survival of any species hangs on the raising of its offspring.  Didn’t any of you ever watch “Wild Kingdom?”

By the way, please, please PLEASE don’t insult my intelligence or yours by saying “What about rape and incest?”  Look up the statistics of abortion and tell me what percentage of abortions are performed for those reasons.  Let me know what you find out.

Also, I’m not going to address people who think it’s okay for a woman to get an abortion because she finds out she is carrying a “defective” baby.  I have no use for this argument, and if someone believes this, I don’t want to talk to them, I don’t want to see them, and hopefully they won’t ever bother reading this blog again.

To make this a little shorter, I think we are on a dangerous, slippery slope.  We think we are qualified to choose who gets to live and who gets to die.  And what’s worse, we have allowed ourselves to be numbed to the horror of abortion by years of political language and media distraction.  We are inoculated against reality by phrases like “reproductive choice” and “the war on women.”  The truth, though, is that abortion is ugly.  It’s barbaric.  Look up partial birth abortions, which are perfectly legal in this country.  They aren’t common, it’s true, but they are still legal.  I won’t put the graphic pictures on here that show what abortion looks like.  It makes people angry, and disgusted.  It’s upsetting.

As it should be.

So here it is, after everything else I’ve said, the real reason I’m against abortion: it is murder.  Period.  Life begins at conception.  If not, when does it begin?  At birth?  Well, then we go back to that previous scenario I described.  And since I believe life begins at conception, I have to believe that the purposeful and willful stopping of that life is murder.  That is the most basic definition of what murder is–the destruction of life.

Don’t kid yourself.  The 55 million babies that have been aborted since Roe versus Wade were alive.  Way back in the beginning of my first pregnancy, I remember laying on the little table and listening to that thumpathumpathumpathumpathumpa that was my son’s heartbeat.  Make no mistake–that was my son in there.  The same one who is sitting over on the couch now, eating lunch.  The one with the coarse, curly hair and the gap between his front teeth.  That was him.  And if I had “chosen” not to have him, if I had “chosen” to get an abortion, it would have been no different than if I pointed a gun at his head right now and pulled the trigger.

Look at your own child–it’s the same.  Your spouse, partner, best friend, mom, dad–all of them, they all started just the same.

To those of you who don’t support abortion, but who feel like you shouldn’t tell others what to do, I would offer you this quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., from his Letter from Birmingham Jail:

“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.  Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

And this one:

“More and more I feel that people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will.”

For me, it all boils down to one thing.  Thirty six years ago, my mother was pregnant.  She was fifteen when she found out.  Abortion was legal.  She could have done that.  She could have finished school, went on to who knows what.  Instead, she quit school and got married.  She ended up divorced.  But still, she chose life.  She chose me.  That’s not all–the notion that our choices affect only us is self-centered and absurd.  Her choice has trickled down through the years, right up to this very moment.

I’m so glad the choice she made was the right one.

********I welcome and enjoy discussion and even debate.  But to all you trolls and antagonists, don’t waste your time and mine.