So let's talk about the abortion issue. Issue... now there's a meaningless word... I'd much rather
just say thingy. So let's talk about this whole abortion thingy that everyone seem to blow completely out of proportion....
or is that into proportion?
Alright. First off, we have the extreme Pro-Abortionists - people who believe in abortion to a point
of obsession.... a point where the rest of us just stand back and say, "Whoa there, Jimmy. Slow that horse down." These people
have become so obsessed with abortion that they believe abortions should be available to everyone - men, women, children,
fetuses themselves, cattle, sheep, lizards, everything, everywhere. They're fun to laugh at, but I really feel that when someone
has dug themselves so deeply into a hole I should just leave them alone, so we'll move on.
Next, we have the less-obsessed Pro-Choicers who simply set their person beliefs aside and say that
women who may want an abortion someday in some circumstance can, if they so wish. Those people I respect, but they are rather
blah. I mean, geez, letting people do whatever they want whether you feel they should or not... That's just open-minded, unoppressive,
and when you come right down to it, unAmerican. I happen to belong to this group.
Thirdly, there are the people who quietly find abortion wrong, but they do it quietly, so they aren't
any fun at all. We'll leave them alone, too. (See what happens when you're boring? The teachers look over you in class, and
the insatiable ranters with lil websites find you boring.... everyone leaves you alone. Sounds like you quiet ones have quite
the deal going. I'll have to look into that later on in life.)
Then come my personal favorites, those preachers who have an urge to stand outside abortion clinics
and share their personal and religious beliefs with people who have absolutely nothing to do with them. I love these poeple.
While I would never take away their right to stand anywhere and scream their personal beliefs to anyone, it is these people
I would like to embrace - with a very large amount of C-4 strapped in strategic places on my body and wired to a detonator
in my hand. But that will remain an unfulfilled dream, I fear.
Let's generalize a bit - it's fun, trust me. These people are standardly from the Bible Belt, standardly
white, mostly fat-assed housewives, and the most vocal are usually quite religious. Hrmmmm..... These are the women no one
should screw in the first place.
So let's think about what it is that these extreme Pro-Lifers do to promote themselves and their beliefs.
Do they adopt less fortunate children into their so-called loving homes? Do they stand outside abortions clinics and offer
their homes and money to save these fetuses lives? Do they fund sex-education? Do they fund condom distribution? Do they pay
for any less-fortunate teenage girl's birth control? Do they give ANY sort of example in abstinence - like not having 6 kids?
Do they fund YCC programs? Uhrm... Nope. However, they attempt to prohibit women from going into Planned Parenthood or other
clinics where they think abortions are made available to women. (There are cases of those wonderful trailer-park Pro-Lifers
protesting outside clinics that did not perform abortions. Go figure.) However, consider that almost all 'abortion clinics'
are women's centers where prenatal care is given and taught, as well as clinics where doctors provide other gynecological
care. So these Pro-Lifers are, in some cases, preventing women with, say, gonorrhea from getting treatment. Well, hell! That's
effective in preventing abortions, right? Perhaps in making women suffer through STDs and, eventually, pelvic inflammatory
disease without proper medical attention, the Pro-Lifers are promoting abstinence and safe sex. I suppose that something viral
would work in this fashion to an extreme. I can picture the banners now, "Get a viral STD and you'll never need an abortion!
You'll never be able to have children! Every life has rights - aside from your right to create life. God gave you that right,
but we're right in taking it away - after all we are the only ones who know his will." Rather than saving a child who would
be aborted, they'll just take it one step further and strip women of the very right to bear children, regardless of her intent
to have an abortion. This sounds like a real winning strategy: Women have children, some women have abortions, if no women
have children, no abortions will take place. Yeah, that works.
And then there's the Roman Catholic Church. Now the bishops, I admit, are extremely well-educated,
well-spoken, and they do make good points based on their beliefs. I just have one small question for them: If abortion is
so very wrong and against their God's will, why aren't they founding orphanages and day cares or going into ghettos and helping
those single working mothers who struggle to raise a kid or two on minimum wage? Or perhaps improving the quality of life
for children who were born into those unfortunate circumstances? Last I heard, the most a Priest did to improve some kid's
quality of life was break their vow of chastity to molest an altar boy. When I see a bishop in a studio apartment washing
clothes by hand on the floor in cold water while tending to a six-month old baby and a three year old after having worked
a day as a waitress I will begin to beleive they know what they are talking about.
My American Government class has been discussing this abortion thingy and as a team-building exercise
our dear Professor Jeff divided us into two groups. We were then told that we were the Republicans and Democrats in the House
of Representatives and that we were proposing bills dealing with abortion. I was thrilled. Whoopee. I got the two biggest
stereotypical real-life Republicans on my side - and we were the Dems in the House. Sigh. But they trudged along with me in
drafting our proposed bill. To sum up, it said "Abortion on Demand! According to Roe v. Wade in 1976." The Republican half
of the class screamed, "How can you say that? How is the fetus any different from the second trimester in to the third?" (Now,
I know what you're thinking, but be quiet, we're college kids without children of our own.) I smiled and explained that the
fetus was nothing more than a parasite living off it's mother until the third trimester when it first becomes able to live
outside the womb and is, therefore, a living thing of it's own.
This went over beautifully.
The Republican half of the class kept spouting the basic Republican things about "potential life" and
how there's no one to speak for the baby in the mother's decision. It got to yelling proportions before good ol' Professor
Jeff calmed us down. I then had something of an epiphany that I credit entirely to George Carlin and his Back in Town CD which
I had been listening to on my drive to school. I asked the Rep half of the class if life was sacred. They wanted a definition
of life and I told them that I was getting to it. They admitted that yes, life is sacred. I asked why and I waited for an
answer from the suddenly silent, downcast group. I wish I had been taping this class... never have I struck a group of people
into silence this well with just one question. (I worship you, George Carlin.) And I waited. And waited. No one said a thing.
I continued asking if life is sacred simply because we are alive. They said no, no, no, that's not it at all. So I asked them
what *was* it again. And we sat and waited some more. Class ended quietly on that question. I was disappointed that 10:00
rolled around so quickly. I hadn't even gotten around to the religious aspect of it - I was foaming at the mouth to attack
their "Big invisible man in the sky says so" issue. And the one that standardly follows that also had me salivating, "Because
the book written by a bunch of guys inspired by the Big invisible man in the sky say so."
We talked about it again at the next class and we came up with a new idea on some abortion thingy legislation
that might satisfy everyone, aside from those fun extremists. Why not make abortions legal and safe and governmentally monitored
by increasing the training a doctor must have to be licensed to perform one. Granted, this will also raise the cost, but that's
what Medicaid is for. Make the regulations strict on ob/gyns and make abortions perfectly legal for women everywhere.
