At the Risk of Being Unpopular

I found this week that I am closer than I like to be to someone who does some interestingly disturbing to me.

On several occasions, this woman has worked into the conversation, at the oddest times, her personal agenda against abortion. This is certainly weird timing for her. At the time that she had her child out of wedlock, her wealthy family disowned her. Now that it appears that she is back in the folds of her family, because she brought them an opportunity to make more money, she has become born again, and back in the folds of her mother. She apparently goes to schools and clinics in her small town, telling her story and passing out pamphlets, telling young girls that they shouldn't have an abortion. If she can do it, so can everyone else, raise you child no matter what the cost to you or that child. Yadda,yadda,yadda.

There are a few of us around this woman who have become uncomfortable with her times of discussion. In very unprofessional settings, not caring about others around her. Making sure that her agenda is heard.

It's a bit funny. She tried with me, but I stopped her short. She stated that she didn't believe in abortion but did believe in stem cell research. I told her that we couldn't have this conversation. I was the polar opposite. I believed in the right to choose, and I didn't believe in the need for stem cell research. She was appalled at me. After all I had one of the very diseases that stem cell research offered hope for a cure. I stated that I didn't need to live forever, and nor did anyone else. People should make the most out of the time they have, and not be greedy. And mucking up nature and it's already working system, had only overpopulated the planet and killed scores of things and animals that we needed - so I didn't like it. I felt like it was a stupid, unnecessary pursuit, that was being pursued by people who were egotistical, doing things just because they could. And wasn't this against the very thing that her religion guarded supposedly so highly. If you believe that God had a plan, that God had a design, why go screwing with it? She got angry and ended the conversation with me.

One time, such a lifetime ago, I decided to right a term paper on teenage pregnancy. I was fourteen at the time...a big topic for such a young girl. I took out my phone book, and looked up pregnancy counseling. I visited several places, and they, in my small town, were all the same. I was greeted by a very nice woman, who was excited that a young girl such as myself would taken on such a heavy topic. I was asked if I would like to watch some films. I said sure. The films that I watched were of actual abortions, where the bodies of these tiny babies were broken and bloody, often discarded in trashcans, or on dirty operating tables, sometimes with the young mothers dying from infections or bleeding out. I, who grew up in a medical family, had never seen such a thing. I happened to have been exposed to the clinical side of hospitals and knew that these films were bogus, and only shown to me for the right wing religious agenda. Even then, I knew that this was crap. And why guise yourself as "pregnancy counseling", there was no help here, just propaganda. There was not "truth". And why feel comfortable showing such horrible things to a child. I have carried those manipulative images in my head for my entire life. And, in fact, this very action, was one reason that drove me away from the religious agenda. But, I did wonder how many people fell for it. Fourteen is an impressionable age. I turned in my paper with examples and facts, and a parent teacher conference was called. The paper was given an A, but there was discussion about where it was that I was going in life.

Years later, I watched my young cat, who got pregnant once, kill all of her newborns. I thought she was too young to go into heat, I hadn't had her fixed. She bore seven kittens. And about a day later, one summer, I found their half mangled bodies strewn around the walk-in closet they were housed in. She didn't want them. She had slaughtered them all. But, yet we expect our women to act less like animals, although we are that very thing.

Do I think abortion is committing a murder, a killing. Yes, I do. But, I also think that no one can be in a mother's head. I do not believe that there is anything harder for a mother than to kill her own child, for whatever the reason. Given the current system of adoption and the number of abused and forgotten children, what mother would want that for their child...that kind of pain and uncertainty? Death by your own hand is one of the hardest and yet kindest thing a woman can do. There women will live with their choices, knowing that their child died by their own hands. Perhaps, like my kitten, they are being the best mother that they can be for that baby. And there aren't many Christians who take in unwanted babies, and there aren't many Christians who give of their extras to help mothers who cannot care for their children. Where are these women who want so very much to rid the world of abortion when there are so many children in need who are already here? Make that system better, and maybe I would listen to your agenda more. You want people to take personal responsibility for their actions when having sex...well, come on, that's not very reasonable...it will never happen. Fix the system, and perhaps I would believe. Until then, no matter what propaganda I'm shown, no matter what stories I'm told, no matter what god is thrown in my face, I will choose to let mothers make the choices for their bodies and the children.

That is why we cannot have this conversation.