Tuesday, January 29, 2008

pro-choice, pro-life, ...pro-abortion?

I've come to the conclusion that, in fact, I am not pro-choice.

I am pro-abortion.

I just don't seem to care as much about the guilt over aborting a fetus one parent would've liked to raise, as I do about neither parent being hampered in what they want to do with their life--and their money.
Finding out which is more harmful to the individual is probably the part of this issue I need to focus any future research on.
I also want to know about the most oft-used justifications for the legality of abortion, because maybe I've got those wrong in my head.
Yesterday I was scaring myself with thoughts of child-bearing licenses.

3 comments:

Hops said...

Objectively, I want to agree with you. Very badly. Objectively, I don't think any child should be born without both of the people responsible for making it in complete agreement that they want it and are willing and capable of caring for it.

But if that were the case, then I wouldn't exist, because objectively, I would have been aborted. This would have saved my mom the hardship of single parenthood, which has definitely impacted her life in a serious, irreparable way. She might have finished college, married a nice, responsible man and had a healthy, happy nuclear family.

So it's hard for me to separate what I absolutely believe in the present with decisions made on my behalf in the past. I know for sure that if I discovered I were pregnant tomorrow, I would be calling Planned Parenthood 10 minutes later to get rid of that shit. I would (and have) encourage every pregnant couple to do the same. But, my mom didn't do that and well, I'm kind of glad to exist.

Regarding the child-bearing licenses: well, that's just silly. And it's rather Orwellian to think that we can regulate what people do with their bodies. Several countries, including the US, have experimented with forced or coerced sterilization programs, all of which have been denounced by rational people that have heard of the golden rule.

I think the problem is that we all attach so many intense and complicated emotions to what is essentially a biological process. Our evolutionary roles as humans are to procreate. We're fucking it up by adding love and money into the mix.

Michael T said...

I agree with you--I'd really rather you have been born.

But I'm not emotionally attached to other people's as-yet-unborn feti. Maybe that's one benefit of time travel being one way.

I understand that other people are emotionally attached to their own feti. I just don't care as much about the feelings of people I don't know. (Is that psychopathic?)

The real problem here is that I'm worried about overpopulation slash overconsumption of resources, and I support most efforts made to leave more room/food for me and my progeny.

Hops said...

I found this little link from CNN. It gives some background on Roe v. Wade.

Also, maybe you're a psychopath, or maybe you just have antisocial personality disorder. I'm not sure one is better than the other and I'm willing to bet you're just fine.

(And yes, I did re-do this comment because of a typo and because basic html makes for less cluttered linking.)