Abort Your Laws, First

Sex is cool, right?  Sex feels good.  Sex sells products.  Sex inspires people.  Sex is the social taboo, which is somehow also a cultural zeitgeist.   How can it be both?  How can rappers talk about skeeting all over bitches, (and that song is a party song), and skeet is radio-friendly, but bitches isn’t?  Really?  Are we all going to pretend that the radio DJs don’t know what those two words mean?!

Abrupt transition:  abortion.  I tell my students all the time that they can’t do persuasive speeches about abortion.  There are really a variety of reasons for this exclusion.  #1 is that they aren’t going to change anyone’s opinion in a 3-5 minute speech.  #2 is that I don’t want to listen to the incessant rambling of people who don’t know what the fuck they are talking about. 

I have never had an abortion.  I had two children prior to being married, a detail which is really no one’s business, but which is relevant to this argument.  I had wonderful parents who assisted in the child rearing, and my finances were fairly stable.  I am not every woman.  I am a woman.  One.  I do not, nor can I, speak for every woman.  For that reason alone, I am sick to death of this ignorant, irrelevant, vestigial, asinine, and ongoing legal argument about abortion. 

Are we STILL arguing about this?  How many people are in the world?  What number of people do the earth’s resources sustain?  How many countries allow rape as a legitimate recreational or penal activity?  How many men “accidentally” have growing fetuses in their innards?  How many unwanted, abused, neglected, malnourished children do we already have in the world?  Are we willing to support all of these unwanted children, financially, emotionally, and indefinitely?  Can we just stop this nonsense already and allow women the choice to evacuate a clump of cells (which, yes, of course, has the potential to become a child), if the women acknowledge that they neither want nor are willing to care for an impending child?  The very nature of these fucking ridiculous and prohibitive laws are an embarrassment to an enlightened culture.  

I have children, because I chose to have children.  As a mother (and a person of intellect and compassion and rationality), I would never impose my choice on someone else.  It was mine.  I will own it, and I will deal with the repercussions and responsibilities for the rest of my life.  We should expect nothing else from other people, than that they choose, they accept, and they act accordingly. 

If certain states make abortion prohibitive and illegal (again), it will result in the death of mothers, who already have a full and developed central nervous system, a family, and a life.  The difference between that woman and a clump of cells with potential is enormous.  As hyperbolic as it sounds, the slippery slope here allows for the banning of masturbation by men, simply because their sperm has the potential to become a life.  Potential is not actuality.

The ultimate irony is that the drum-thumpers of this procreative policy are Republican:   People who constantly run their mouths about how the government should stay out of the daily lives of its constituents!  Apparently, only in cases involving stealing large caches of money from people or leading them into a costly, deadly, endless series of wars.  The premeditated murder of war is seemingly okay, but preemptively eradicating a mass of cells is unthinkable.  What hypocrisy.