Discussions On Abortion [Reply #5]

The Question:
Abortion: Are You Pro-Choice or Pro-Life?

M.B. wrote on July 29, 2007:

I must admit that I don’t have much more to say here since everyone beat me to the punch, especially [J.H.]’s reply that even had the devil’s advocate angle I was thinking of writing on. Alas, it is now only vanity that drives me to write anything at all.

Just to start off, I believe that as a guy I haven’t the slightest idea of what it would be like to have a parasite sucking the life out of me for 9 months just to have it erupt from me screaming and bloody. So, promoting any very strong opinion on this subject as a man seems somewhat hypocritical. As [J.H.] said, it is the woman’s choice and her’s alone. Or is it?

My love for hypothetical scenarios drives me to think of one of those tricky situations: what if a woman who is pregnant wants to flush the embryo but the father wants to keep it? What rights does a father have in determining the fate of a developing child? Although the woman needs to “invest” more of her time, not to mention her body, into producing this kid, it does take two people to make the magic happen. Just for the sake of arguement, let’s think of the inverse: what if a woman wants to keep a kid but the man doesn’t? Does the man have any say in what should be done? Is the guy liable to pay support to the mother and his unfortunate bastard child? Although these types of situations may be rare to the point of being only interesting mind games, it does pose awkward questions when thinking of legislation regarding abortion rights.

Despite all of these unusual situations, my opinion on the subject remains unchanged. Women get to choose what happens in their insides the same way a man can. I believe the concept of abortion is similar to any type of body modification. Some people don’t get tattoos or sex-changes for religious or aesthetic reasons, however it doesn’t mean that they must be outlawed. Control of what happens to your body is essential to ones freedom. Government is suppossed to make us more free, not less. Don’t get me wrong, I hate the idea of irresponsible women having waterfalls of aborted fetuses coming out of them and flooding the world simply because they have the “right”. Just don’t ban something because someone will do stupid things. If that was the guiding principle in determining liberty, we would have not freedoms at all.

Besides, I always thought it was peculiar that it is the religious Right that supports banning abortion when they also belieive that most people are going to burn in hell anyway. Why bring a child into the world when its mother can very well be an atheist crack whore and has a very good chance of becoming one of the lost? Religious dogma dictates that children that die in the womb go to heaven automatically. So in this sense abortion is a favour to children around the world.

Well, this is my somewhat original contribution to this discussion, as chauvinistic as it may be. However, someone has to look after the rights of the common man. We do make up 50% of the population anyway.

To reply to this post, please do so in the comments section below.

For a complete archive of posts relating to Abortion, click here.

Cast your vote in the poll on Abortion!

Join the discussion on Facebook!