(no subject)

[commotiocordis]

So this is in response to something xx_housecat_xx posted in her journal asking about people's views/responses/emotions regarding abortion. And my response became long and such, so I figured I'd just throw it over here. As I went way off topic of her initial query. And ended up staying up way later than I planned so that I could finish typing it.

It gets kind of personal, though, so if you're not comfortable with that for some reason. . . .


Good topic. I've actually thought about this a lot, about how people say that you can't ever actually know what you'll do until you're actually in that situation and I think that I can still say that I know that I would never do it.
(Whoa, long sentence.)
(Edit: rather long response in total. What can I say, good topic.)

I know a lot of my anti-abortion stance comes from the fact that that was how I was raised; Catholic and more or less conservative. And though I'm essentially neither at this point, the pro-life thing is one of the few viewpoints I've retained. And I've realized that one of the main reasons for my keeping it is because my mum tried to have kids for so long and couldn't. I'm the first of 3 kids out of 6 pregnancies that actually took, not even counting the undoubtedly countless that never did or miscarried before she knew. And I've never been able to comprehend why someone would throw away something that some women try so hard for and can't get. But I know that's really hard for a lot of people to understand, the desperation and sorrow and such that comes with not being able to have kids. It's almost irrational, honestly, the amount of pressure that women have to propagate successfully, but it is the biological purpose of life, so it makes sense that there's this huge drive for it.

Regarding the whole "you can't understand until you're in that situation", I think it works both ways. You can't really understand the entire debate until you've had to try to keep your kid siblings in the front room while listening to you mom sobbing in her bedroom after just having been told that the baby she's carried for 5 months and will carry for 4 more (after having two later-term--one late first, one early second trimester--miscarriages and thinking she was out of the woods) has no chance of surviving. (That's still one of the most harrowing memories of my entire life.)

Plus there's the whole I see it as murder thing. Because, um, that's a person. In there. Not random growth. Having babies, the fact that we can do it, the fact that an entire sentient being can come from the union of two zygotes is what I've seen for a long time as the greatest miracle of the universe. I mean, if you think about it, it's pretty wicked beautiful of a phenomenon. Sentience as a whole is pretty wicked cool if you think about how many species are not sentient and how we managed to get the luck of the draw (or survival of the fittest, I suppose) and come out on top. And that somebody would willfully destroy that before it even had a chance and furthermore that it would actually be legal sort of baffles my mind.

And I understand the wanting an abortion for rape/incest/whatever, but if you report it, they automatically give you a triple dose of birth control that induces menses within 48 hours, thus preventing pregnancy, thus not actually needing to terminate a child (though I know that some people would consider the birth control thing abortion in itself, but I give a bit more leeway than that). Barring that, say she didn't want to report it at first and by the time she finds out it's too late for the birth control thing, I'm semi-okay with early abortions in that case.

But here's the kicker. Banning abortion = pretty much impossible. You ban it completely, you're a heartless bastard who cares nothing for the emotional welfare of abused and raped women. You ban it except for in cases of rape or incest, all of a sudden you've got every woman who wants an abortion claiming rape. Pretty soon, nobody's going to investigate rape seriously at all because it will have become synonymous with simply wanting an abortion and rapists will walk the streets free.

So it doesn't really work. My opinion is that the best bet is to provide birth control and better education. None of this abstinence education shit, real sex education so you actually know what's going on when the time comes. That's what's going to lower the abortion rate faster than anything. Let's put some money into better, cheaper, and more insurance coverage for birth control instead of male impotence drugs.

But yeah. I think the one thing that cemented my knowing that I'd never ever be able to get an abortion was something my mom told me about after having and losing her 6th kid, Riley. We had known that he was terminal since her 4th or 5th month, and sometime in there she and my dad had seriously talked about aborting him. Because all the doctors had told us that there was no chance, he probably wouldn't even make it to term, it would probably be cheaper, etc. And my dad had sort of been for it because basically it was fucking up my mom (totally understandably, you know) and by extension our whole family. But mum said no. A, they weren't clear/right about what was wrong with him and she knew they were wrong about what they had initially said at that point because of things they had said earlier, etc., and if they were by chance wrong and only found out after they had killed him that he wouldn't have died in the first place, she wouldn't be able to live with herself. And this had already happened to us before, more or less, as my parents were given some list of things that were possibly wrong with my brother Tyler way back 7 years earlier, all or most of which were terminal, and he came out okay. (Well, you know. Little brother kind of okay.) Those, of course, were never given as certainties like Riley's was, but she didn't want to take any chances. But the way she phrased it still nearly makes me cry every time I think about it:

"I had to live with carrying him for 9 months. I would have had to live with the possibility that I was wrong for a lot longer."

So yeah. That's essentially why I'm against it. To put it in a nutshell.

Wow, now I'm all somber and teary-like. Nice job, Cathryn. *pokes*