1st
An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of etc. etc.
Back in the day, my old man ran a consulting business out in Falls Church, Virginia. When he first rented the space he couldn’t understand why the rent was so cheap until a bomb threat was called in about three months into his lease.
It turned out that there was a clinic that provided abortions in the same building. The threat turned out to be bogus, fortunately. And that was about as heavy as it got in terms of protesting.
Every now and then my old man would come into work on a Saturday and there would be dozens of little white crosses lining the perimeter of the entire building, or the occasional guy with a placard, but that was pretty much it. I never asked him what he thought about the whole business, but since he kept his office in that building until he retired I have to assume that the goings on in that clinic didn’t bother him.
It didn’t bother me, either. I am a firm believer in a woman’s right to control her own reproductive destiny, however she chooses to do so. Does she want to use the pill? Fine. Does she want to practice abstinence? Fine. Does she want to use an IUD? Fine. Does she want to use condoms? Fine. Does she want to have a child? Fine. As long as that key word “WANT” is involved, then I’m okay with it.
But occasionally, a woman will forget to take the pill. Occasionally, abstinence surrenders to raging hormones (and PLEASE don’t pretend that sort of thing has never happened to you.) Occasionally, IUD’s don’t work. Occasionally, condoms break. So what happens to the woman who has done everything that she can to avoid pregnancy but gets pregnant anyway?
There are only three options. First, she has the kid and keeps it. Second, she has the kid and puts it up for adoption. Third, she makes a trip to the clinic.
Not being a woman, I have no earthly idea what it would be like to have to bat those three options around. But I’m sure it can’t be an easy decision to make. Having a kid when you aren’t expecting one cant be easy. Nor could it be easy if you are neither mentally or financially able to handle it. With regards to adoption, pregnancies are very public physically, are they not? So how do you handle the public aspect of option two? How do you deal with everyone saying “Oh, you are GLOWING! Is it going to be a boy or a girl?” every damn time in line at the 7-11? Every trip in a crowded elevator? Every step outside the door? And how do you handle giving the kid up for adoption regardless? I mean, after nine months of THAT, it’s sort of an emotional commitment, isn’t it? Then there is option three, which is the sticking point. The BIG sticking point. The sticking point which gets people really mad, one way or the other.
There are a fairly heavy pack of questions involved, aren’t there? When is it really alive? Is it a person, or a blob of cells that wouldn’t fill up a teaspoon? Which way is up? The folks in the white coats say one thing while the guys in the white collars say another. What is a seventeen year old girl with a looming college scholarship to do?
The thing is, if the pro-life folks were simply against abortion, then I would understand the mindset, even if I don’t necessarily agree with it. And I do think that a lot of women who have had abortions understand the mindset as well. I mean, I don’t know any women who are just PSYCHED to run to the clinic and get one, regardless of what one of the more popular narratives might say otherwise. Sorry, Rush, but I just can’t imagine that any woman is a big fan of the procedure in general. Nor can I imagine that they are fans of running a gauntlet of people who are screaming ”MURDERER!” every step between the car and the clinic door.
So, yeah, its an emotional subject, I get that. But I really dont think its just about abortion, because for a lot of the pro life folks, abortion is just an end result of what they perceive to be a much bigger problem. They are against birth control in any form. They are against condoms. They are against informing anyone that birth control even exists. I’m not exaggerating. Check out pretty much ANY pro-life group and you’ll find that right in the mission statement. The idea of sex without at least SOME shot of having a kid out of the deal is abhorrent to them.
So with that being the way of thinking, I don’t think that these guys (and they ARE guys, really, most of them) are necessarily all about the lives of babies as much as they are all about enforced biblical obedience for women. If preventing abortions is the paramount concern, wouldn’t preventing unplanned and unwanted pregnancies be of the utmost importance? Shouldn’t they be promoting the hell out of condoms and birth control pills and not just “chastity?”
But in their arguments and protests they never seem to go anywhere but back to the 50’s and earlier. And we don’t live there anymore. We don’t live in a place where women have to go “stay with their cousins” for a whole school year. We don’t live in a place where women are required to have their bodies be passive recipients of whatever fate throws at them, whether it’s one slip up on prom night or whether it’s a rape. We shouldn’t go back there. Ever.
So Doctor Tiller out in Kansas is dead, and even though I know saying this won’t change many minds on the subject, it should be mentioned that for every one abortion that he performed, he probably prevented a hundred of them by prescribing the pill, or implanting IUD’s, or tying the tubes of women who felt that they had had enough children, or by keeping a bucket of freaking condoms on the receptionists desk.
I hope that maybe this occurs to the Randall Terrys of the world before they add the inevitable “Yeah, BUT…” to the news of Doctor Tiller’s murder. As in, “We deplore violence, BUT we must also consider the lives of all the babies that will be saved,” or “We don’t condone murder, BUT Doctor Tiller’s death will mean that thousands of abortions will be prevented.”
I hope it will occur to them, but I won’t hold my breath.
