"Abort, Retry, Fail?"
Never, "OK, Great, Jawohl!" No. Just three bad options.
Abort: Give up. Kill the operation before it even has a chance to flourish.
Retry: Yeah right, that'll work.
Fail: Basically computer language for "I win, you lose. Again." What next, "Master"?
Boy, nerdy computer jokes from the 80's sure do make a perfect lead-in for a subject as lighthearted and airy as abortion, don't they?
According to polls spanning 35 years, 47 percent of Americans currently describe themselves as "pro-life." 45 percent, meanwhile describe themselves as pro-choice. (I think maybe the other 8 percent call themselves either "Stupid-from-the-T-shirt-I'm-with-Stupid" or "swing-voters" or "pro-indecision" or "pro-go-f*ck-yourself.") Not only that, but the trend seems to unmistakably indicate a steady movement toward the pro-life position over the course of the last 15 years.
So yeah, here's the thing: I dispute the facts contained within the polling. (Maybe I even wreckon they aren't true.)
I would like, instead, to submit the completely unverifiable opinion that 95 percent of American parents are pro-choice. If the question is asked the right way.
Maybe if it were phrased a little like this:
"Do you support or oppose the opportunity for your 14-year-old daughter to end a pregnancy resulting from rape committed by a family member?"
Go ahead. Oppose that one. Try.
Try harder, maybe?
No? You'd like her to make up her own mind here? You think the molested kid ought to have a say in the outcome? Maybe you believe she should make the decision as to whether the fetus is brought to term? What's that, you say? You'd like her to "choose" whether to keep the baby?
Yeah, I thought so. It will not only take a special type of person not only to suggest that your daughter give birth in that situation, but then to MANDATE it... that's cold and harsh. That's not even tough love. That's, what, just tough, I guess.
You can call me on my extremism, and say that I'm using the most far-fetched example to support my case. I freely admit I am. You pose the question, "Should rich snotty promiscuous women living in Manhattan be entitled to the right to casually murder their viable unborn children, up to thirty seconds before delivery, and celebrate with martinis afterward?" and you're probably going to get something less than 95 percent support. Do they even allow negative numbers in polls?
But you make it personal -- your kid is the one seeking deliverance from an impossible situation -- and I confidently assert that almost every parent suddenly (miraculously) converts to the pro-choice camp.
Not because abortion is SO COOL. But because there comes a point where ideology fails, and you have to resort to unconditional compassion for your living flesh and blood, over whatever ideals you might subscribe to in your ivory towers. And because you can't really make this decision for her. And if you can't make it for her, you necessarily support her right to make it for herself. Hey: You've just earned your pro-choice merit badge.
You can call abortion "murder" or "the easy way out" or "a coward's choice" all you want, until it's your kid facing that dilemma.
Even my friend "Donald" (not his real name), who claims he and his wife have agreed in advance to not abort a child resulting from her being raped, has to consider whether he'd really tell his teenage daughter that she's not permitted to choose in that case.
(That's a real conversation I've had recently. "Don" sticks to his pro-life guns -- my word, there's an exquisite phrase -- even when his wife is hypothetically victimized. This is laudable. If abortion is murder, it's murder no matter the circumstances, and murder cannot be condoned. I respect and almost admire Don's ethical consistency. He's a good guy, deep down, even if like all of us political animals, he suffers from a lack of perspective at times.)
Anyway. Other people have made this exact same point before, no doubt. Some probably more eloquently than me, and some probably even more sarcastically than me. (No, I think that's possible. Barely. But it can be done, with Hulkulean effort.) But this is the first time I've gone down this road, so thanks for bearing with me.
If it's you or your kid, do you support the right to choose abortion? In any case? In some cases? And if you think you wouldn't go the abortion route in the end, do you support other women having the same choice? Or do you believe that life begins at or near conception every time, in which case your pregnant daughter's out of luck... or even then, do you allow her the chance to see things differently?
Parting thought, then: Instead of viewing abortions as expensive birth control for the callous and the careless, how about we spend some time thinking of them as painful choices for our daughters and sons?
(Maybe I should have been a preacher after all.)
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