Sunday 8 July 2012

Why I am Pro-Choice


I have decided to take a brief hiatus from being simply a duck who sings, and, instead, be a duck who sings about hard-hitting affairs that are close to her heart.  QUACK.

RIGHT; these are the reasons why I believe that the slaughter of millions can be just fine.  (SARCASM)

1.   People are all like- “The baby growing inside you is a potential life, man, and, like, it needs a chance…” Well, something being a POTENTIAL life means NOTHING.  I have the potential to win the Nobel Peace prize but you don’t hear me banging on about it.
2.   “Life begins at conception, and killing is WRONG”.



Well, DUH.  If abortion was as simple as ‘killing a baby’ then nobody would be arguing in favour of it.  The aim of abortion is not to kill the baby but to stop a pregnancy, even if foetal death occurs as a result.  Someone who enjoys torturing and killing insects is pretty insane, but when you ride your bike you are probably killing hundreds of innocent insects- you didn’t think about those, did you? MURDERERS!
3.   Even if you are about to give birth to Jesus or Ghandi, people who are ACTUALLY alive are far most important than people who haven’t been born yet.  We cannot pin –point the actual ‘moment’ where a foetus becomes human so we don’t know when to give it human rights- no line can be drawn during the pregnancy, (otherwise we end up in a kind of Sorities paradox* where nothing ever becomes anything) so we have to wait until the only undisputable point: birth.

* This: 



4.   Some girls (and, of course, the men who impregnate them) are idiots and should take responsibility for their actions.  However, forcing someone into 18 years of raising a child (particularly if they are young and poor) is not only a pretty disproportionate punishment for simply forgetting to use or mis-using contraception, but puts YET ANOTHER screaming, dependant mouth into the world which drains taxpayer's money.
5.   If we take from woman legal power over her own body then we are spitting in the beautiful face of feminism and dragging the world back towards the dark ages.  I despair just as much as anyone when I hear about a woman recklessly getting pregnant and thoughtlessly having an abortion; her actions may be morally wrong, but, legally, she NEEDS to have the option.  Damaging the position of women as free, rational, autonomous individuals is, I think, far worse than destroying what, ontologically, is a mass of living tissue.
6.   Abortion is a horrible, ugly thing, and I hope to God that I never have to go through one.  If we were educated more about what the procedure actually entails we would be far, far more careful about having safe sex.  It is not as horrible or as ugly, however, as a society where women regularly died from backstreet abortions or having their bodies simply giving up at 35 after years of being forced through pregnancy after pregnancy, giving them no chance to achieve any sort of life at all.

And THAT is why I am pro-choice. J

Here’s a duckling:





8 comments:

  1. Adoption is better than abortion. There's plenty of people who would love to have a baby but can't (even IVF doesn't always work) and would be good parents if they had a chance to adopt.

    It's safer for the mother too, it's not widely known that quite a lot of abortions result in damage to the mother's body.

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    1. Wow- that was a long comment! Sorry Michael. :)

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    2. Of course, in an ideal world adoption seems on the surface to be morally 'better' than abortion in almost every case (other than when the abortion is performed for health reasons.)

      I'm sure that every woman who has an abortion knows that adoption would be morally better, but she is still perfectly within her rights to get an abortion and not be judged or criticised for it. (I mean, I'd roll my eyes to if I heard a woman laughing to her friend about getting an abortion in her lunch break and how cute the doctor was or something, but this NEVER happens! No person in their right mind would be that cold.) When it comes to a woman's own body (and thus the foetus inside it) nobody understands the magnitude of what she has to do better than the woman herself, and nobody, not even extreme Christian protesters, can make her feel any worse than she already does about doing it. Apparently the recuperation room after a woman has the procedure is just the darkest, most horrible atmosphere to be in, and if anyone I knew had an abortion, even if I disagreed with her reasons for doing it, I would be right there beside her because I know that, in fact, the morally 'right' decision is not what the world objectively believes is the right decision, but is the 'right one for HER.'

      If I got pregnant, adoption is not an option for me. It would put me out of action for a good two years in total while I regained my physical fitness, body strength, and not to mention, mental health after giving up what is essentially my baby. I've only got about 10 years left to play the kind of parts I will be cast in, and I don't want to spend any of that time worrying about the child that I gave up.

      Besides, there are plenty of slightly older children who also want to be adopted. Instead of bringing a new child into the world I would argue that it is better to help a child who others are reluctant to help. whatever way you look at it, wanting to adopt a newborn baby rather than a 3 year old child is selfishness. In fact, having a child full stop is selfishness when it really comes down to it. Sometimes, the bravest, most courageous thing a woman can do is have an abortion, because, even though she knows it will haunt her forever, it is the best thing for the world that she does so. Perhaps the childless couple who would have adopted her baby will go on to adopt a five-year-old instead and change his life for the better. An existing child is far more deserving of happiness than a foetus.

      I'm not sure what I'd do if I got pregnant, to be honest, but I know that the decision I would have to make would not be easy, and would certainly not be helped even by throwaway comments such like- "adoption is always a better option than abortion."

      I know you're not just making a thoughtless comment and you are, of course, perfectly entitled to your opinion; I'm just trying to express why I slightly disagree in the best way possible, and unfortunately it's difficult to express my opinion on this subject without it coming across very strongly! :)

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  3. I think being pro-choice and pro-abortion are two different things; I am pro-choice in that I am all for women having options and if you start chipping away at them then we can only travel backwards. However, I cannot truthfully say that I am pro-abortion; I don't think they are two sides of the same coin, more like two bookends; put together as a pair but really very far apart. So my theoretical and actual standpoints are really rather different, unclear as that may be.

    Also, I hate to get legal on you (in fact, I hate law haha), but in some cases in Scots law, a potential life is not nothing but can be treated in the same way as children already born. It only happens in very specific circumstances but the principal is still there.

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    1. I agree; no person in their right mind is 'pro-abortion' in the sense that they think the action itself is a good thing.

      Instead, feminists recognise it as something, while pretty horrible, essential to their movement.

      Of course, it would be much better if contraception always worked and there were no diseases that threatened mothers' lives, then there would be no abortion at all and everyone would be happy.

      I think it's the same as in English law- I know that when a woman wants an abortion she has to get permission from 2 different doctors. (At least according to my R.S. textbooks!) What disgusts me is that people are not even legally obliged to give out the morning after pill. They have to refer you to someone that will, but still...just horrible.

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    2. Which, WHILE pretty horrible, IS essential to their movement*

      Wish I could edit my comments! :)

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  4. Point number 2 is the one I always think is under-represented. It's particularly odd for people who eat meat, perhaps?

    In point 3 you say "we have to wait until [...] birth". This is further than the law currently goes, as I'm sure you know. Are you in favour of pushing the 24-week limit higher?

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