Been doing some thinking lately. Occasionally with this blog I like to sit down and have a crazy opinion fuelled spiel about something that’s been on my mind - and this is one of those times.
Tonight I’m going to talk about an issue that is never very far from the back of my mind - purely and simply because it fills me with anger and terror and a very awful sense of helplessness and sorrow. Please don’t stop reading when I say I’m going to talk about abortion.
I feel that, as a young woman, I really do have a right, nay, a responsibility to say how I feel about this complicated and controversial issue (I think men have a right to an opinion also, but hearing an opinion from a man can really make some pro-abortion campaigners angry because they feel that the issue doesn’t have the same implications for men. I mean, all this is obvious, but I digress.) To put it pure and simple, I cannot see abortion as anything but out-and-out, brutal, clinical, government-sanctioned murder. Murder of the innocent and helpless, which wrenches my heart when I contemplate it. I’m not ashamed to say that I’m crying physical tears as I write this. There is no way that any scientist or philosopher could ever find a way to convince me that a developing child in the womb, an embryo, foetus, whatever, is not a human being. A human being, a person, with all the right to life that any person in the world ever could be said to possess.
But this issue is not limited to the silent and invisible holocaust of the unborn.
In his book What’s Wrong With The World, author G. K. Chesterton says:
‘Now (to reiterate my title) this is what is wrong. This is the huge modern heresy of altering the human soul to fit its conditions, instead of altering human conditions to fit the human soul.’
The suffragettes certainly had a point in their insistence on votes for women. Because it isn’t as if the decisions and laws made in Parliament have no effect on women: oh, no! As well as subjecting women to the same punishments and limitations as men, laws took legitimate rights away from women; such as the right to not be abused by a spouse, or the right to see and care for their children if a marriage broke down. I think no right minded person could now say that women should be barred from a democratic vote - though at the time many people, even sensible and kind-hearted people, thought that giving a vote to women would mark the beginning of the apocalypse.
Of course, these people, however good-hearted they may have been, they were wrong. In this modern, enlightened Western hemisphere it is almost universally recognised that women and men possess equal human rights under God, or the law, or whatever it is that binds them. (I am, of course, speaking distinctly within Western culture - I am aware that in other parts of the world and ways of thinking women receive no such acknowledgement.)
But, bizarrely enough, what Western culture seems to have entirely forgotten with its inclusion of women into all the rights and privileges of society, is that men and women are not exactly alike, and what may have functioned well for a male-dominated culture simply cannot be found workable in a world of sex equality.
Back in the day, feminist views on abortion were quite different. Alice Paul, author of the original Equal Rights Amendment (1923) in America is quoted as calling abortion “the ultimate exploitation of women." What could be less natural and more invasive than a culture that expects a woman to have a growing infant cut out of her womb simply for the sake of convenience? I say, if we live in a culture in which a woman’s unexpected pregnancy can prevent her from completing her education let’s blooming well change that culture! Don’t chop and change people to fit conditions - change the conditions! Pregnancy is not a disease, it is a natural and expected consequence of sexual relations. Speaking of which…
I know I come across as a massive prude when I say I believe in total celibacy outside of marriage. Since the sexual revolution people (again, in the West) celebrate the right to do whatever they like with their sexuality.
I won’t pretend to believe that everyone thinks, as I do, that sex is an intimate and beautiful expression of love between a man and a woman, though I’m sure there are a lot of people who would like to think so. From this perspective, I cannot see promiscuity as anything but an exploitative and degrading use of sex. Sex without total trust and commitment is a sad, sad use of a good thing: and is not in the smallest instance ‘loving’. Promiscuity does hurt men as well as women - STDs, emotional damage, etc: but the consequences for women (including the aforementioned STDs, etc) can often be much more severe, even without bringing pregnancy into the equation.
I’m no conspiracy theorist, but I think that, when weighing the damage done to women by our culture (and I haven’t even mentioned body image, weight issues, objectification, discrimination or any of the myriad of other problems the world throws at women) one will quickly realise that society is disproportionately difficult for a woman to navigate.
Why then do we get lumped with the horrific option of ‘kill your baby’? Why not ‘let’s support you through your pregnancy’ ‘how about the thousands of couples waiting to adopt?’ ‘motherhood is an honourable state’.
Pro-’choice’ advocates ignore such choices as those I have above listed. They also say that the choice should be left up to the woman, whom, I think, in her fragile hormonal state, with no other options offered to her and heavy pressure from friends, family, school, work and society at large, will see no other path before her. I can’t describe the guilt and pain that these women often suffer for the rest of their lives - you can find testimonies from such women here. And here.
Plus, as I'm sure most pro-abortion feminists don't realise; in other countries, particularly developing countries where women do experience significant deprivation of rights, a common practice is to kill unborn baby girls, specifically because of their gender. This is not right. This is not giving women choices and rights, this is murdering girls before they even have the possibiliy of becoming conscious of them.
Why don’t we teach people the self respect they need to be able to say no to noncommittal and unloving sex? Why don’t we teach our young people to be responsible for their actions? Why don’t we consider the thousands of childless would-be parents?
Why do we devalue the unborn child?
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