Having children is selfish. It's all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet.
Every person who is born uses more food, more water, more land, more fossil fuels, more trees and produces more rubbish, more pollution, more greenhouse gases, and adds to the problem of over-population.
If you hear the same beeps I hear, they are kind of like in that old movie "It's a Wonderful Life," in which every time a bell rang an angel got his or her wings. Every time you hear a beep another woman joins the call – in a way gets her wings. Really. It might seem far-fetched to some of you, but for many a woman the experience of having an abortion is much more than just a medical procedure. It's often one way of claiming her wings – her wings of independence – taking charge of her own life – summoning up from inside herself the courage to claim her freedom from the old oppression of the past. It is about nearly every thing in our culture that has to do with anything. It is about life – death – sex - power – religion – God – right and wrong – family. An unplanned pregnancy challenges a woman to look at everything – her hopes and her dreams, her relationship choices, her ideas about family and career, her plans for the future. For many women abortion can be a transformational experience – one where she actively chooses what she wants for her life - one where she is in charge. One in which she is "born again."
It seems like ancient history at this point, but as one who came of age as a 1970s Ivy Leaguer, no self-respecting career-oriented peer who conceived out of wedlock would have considered bringing that pregnancy to term.
And sacrifice the promise of a "good" marriage, rewarding career and children who would later be born to two involved, concerned, emotionally and financially secure parents? The tradeoff was not worth discussing.
Apparently the crazies are out in full-swing today. Coming in from Union Station and walking to my job, I spotted a row of anti-abortion activists wielding their favorite favorite weapon - giant posters of bloody, dismembered fetuses...
Crazies just plain, old make me angry. I don't want to converse with them, I would rather just circle distantly around them like you do aggressive, screeching monkeys at th zoo, and fantasize about burying a machete in their head. FUCKERS.
No one, neither the patient receiving an abortion, nor the person doing the abortion, is ever, at anytime, unaware that they are ending a life. We just don't believe that a developing embryo or fetus, whose mother cannot or will not accept it, has the same moral claims on us, claims to autonomy and justice, that an adolescent or adult woman has.
I think there is a need for us to talk more about what it is we are doing, when we carry out or support abortion. We – in the states – have dealt heavily, up to now, in euphemism. I think one of the reasons why the ‘good guys’ – the people in favor of abortion rights – lost a lot of ground is that we have been unwilling to talk to women about what it means to abort a baby. We don’t ever talk about babies, we don’t ever talk about what is being decided in abortion. We never talk about responsibility. The word ‘choice’ is the biggest euphemism. Some use the phrases ‘products of conception’ and ‘contents of the uterus,’ or exchange the word ‘pregnancy’ for the word ‘fetus.’ I think this is a mistake tactically and strategically, and I think it’s wrong.. And indeed, it has not worked – we have lost the high ground we had when Roe was decided.
My objection here is not only that we have lost ground, but also that our tactics are not good ones; they may even constitute bad faith. It is morally and ethically wrong to do abortions without acknowledging what it means to do them. I performed abortions, I have had an abortion and I am in favor of women having abortions when we choose to do so. But we should never disregard the fact that being pregnant means there is a baby growing inside of a woman, a baby whose life is ended. We ought not to pretend this is not happening.
* Jane (The Abortion Counseling Service ) was the CWLU's [Chicago Women's Liberation Union] underground illegal abortion provider that performed over 11,000 safe abortions, many performed by Jane members themselves. [source]
MY WIFE AND I just had an abortion. Two, actually. We walked into a doctor's office in downtown Los Angeles with four thriving fetuses — two girls and two boys — and walked out an hour later with just the girls, whom we will name, if we're lucky enough to keep them, Rosalind and Vivian. Rosalind is my mother's name.
We didn't want to. We didn't mean to. We didn't do anything wrong, which is to say, we did everything right. Four years ago, when Tina and I set out on this journey to have children, such a circumstance was unimaginable. And yet there I was, holding her hand, watching the ultrasound as a needle with potassium chloride found its mark, stopping the heart of one male fetus, then the other, hidden in my wife's suffering belly.
Ultimately, I don’t understand antiabortion arguments that centre on the sanctity of life. As a species, we’ve fairly comprehensively demonstrated that we don’t believe in the sanctity of life. I don’t understand why pregnant women — women trying to make rational decisions about their futures — should be subject to more pressure about preserving life than, say, Vladimir Putin.
However, what I do believe to be sacred — and, indeed, more useful to the earth as a whole — is trying to ensure that there are as few unbalanced, destructive people as possible. By whatever rationale you use, ending a pregnancy 12 weeks into gestation is incalculably more moral than bringing an unwanted child into this world.
