I was going to write about choice, because today is "Blog for Choice", but I keep typing things and erasing them, because nothing I'm writing seems to be right. I'd talk about what I would have done had I been pregnant at 16, or if I got pregnant now (very possibly the same thing, the thing we're fighting about). I wanted to talk about this stupid "culture of life" that's not even close to being what they've named it. Mostly, I wanted to talk about how baffled I am that anyone cares this deeply about something that ultimately makes no f-ing sense to care about.
You want to care about saving lives? Then, dammit, save some actual lives in progress. That seems to me a more worthy cause. Protect people who need protecting, and when we stop losing kids because of neglect and hunger and abuse and the lack of universal health care and whatever else under the sun is killing kids, then come talk to me about the unborn. The unborn don't need protecting so much as the born and abandoned, or the born and screwed out of any sort of life by the government. Anti-abortion crusaders are fucked up, because they don't care what happens to your child once it's born. They only want to make sure you safely deliver it into the world, and then they're content to let anything happen to it.
They want to make abortions harder to get, because they're not interested in lives. If they were, they'd know that making abortion harder to get isn't going to stop them from happening, it's just going to make it a more dangerous game. If they wanted to stop abortion from happening, they'd have to actually take a stand and support people besides themselves, by paying more taxes and funding social programs that take care of children and mothers. If these people want to save lives, this is what they fight for. They would fight for access to things like birth control, and the morning after pill, because those things save lives. I've read places that the actual act of giving birth is far more dangerous than the actual abortion, so if you want to save lives, you start to figure out the problem of health care in this country. You promote alternative birthing methods; you support women in productive ways, by becoming a doula or a midwife.
But you don't stand outside of a fucking clinic and scream, "God wants your baby to live, mama" or "Abortion is murder". And you most definitely don't shoot doctors, or bomb clinics. When you do that, you've become a killer. You've taken a life, or two or three, all while shouting at people not to take lives. Do as I say, not as I do? That's ridiculous. Women who want abortions will get them if it's at all possible; you screaming at them or threatening them as they walk through the doors of the clinic will probably not change anything. You're just being an asshole to a woman who is possibly having a very bad day in a string of bad days. And you're not helping a single person.
That's key, I think. Those anti-abortion crusaders aren't helping a single soul. Not one. Maybe if they helped people. Maybe, just maybe, I'd then be able to take their arguments seriously. But I can't. I can't while they stand on a fence and scream about god and babies and god and do no good for anyone.
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