Aren't we as responsible as the person beating another if we stand there and do nothing? What about if we just watch while the mob kills someone, are we also not in some way part of that mob and thereby, implicitly, tacitly, giving them our approval for the violence they are committing?
When we as women look to ourselves, our minds, our bodies, do we not feel as if we are still owned by men as if we lived in the 18th century? The message all around us is that we are never enough. Is that why we choose the only way we have control and ascendency over men? Giving birth or not, it is the one thing that women can do better than men and it becomes women's power. And in society, power is something that you don't give up without a fight.
In this striving for power, we overlook the real problem, there are two lives that are really in jeopardy, the life of the woman and the life of the child. Each has their own needs, wants, cares, hopes and dreams for the future. We all agree that killing a person takes away all that they ever will be and all the future good that they will do. But what about the woman, isn't it a burden to carry this person to term, to feed, clothe them after birth, provide for education, moral values, and all other needs in the future? Are we taking away their rights, their wants, needs, money, power? Yes and No is always the answer in any moral quandary. Nothing is certain in this world and would we really want this certainty? Yes, you would be safe, but you would be bored and slowly dying a long, laborious death of the spirit. Just look at children over the long, hot summer. When they get bored, they go out and find something to occupy their minds or look at the pandemic as people go out because they must experience life. It's easy to try and confine the human spirit, but it must be set free to see what is out there.
The easy, safe road is abortion. It's convenient, low cost relatively speaking, safe, and mostly hassle-free, but it comes at a cost. The cost of a life of a person that could become almost anyone, a teacher, musician, scientist, astronaut, even president and that therein lies the real issue. How to ultimately judge the value of one person's life in the future to another's without that person? Would we be better if that person had never been born or would it leave a gap, a hole in our existence? How are we ultimately to know? We can't, it is always the road not taken. We struggle with this question and pretend that the road not taken would have been too difficult, too expensive, too burdensome, and ultimately a cop-out. And of course, all of those things are true from a certain point of view. But there is also joy, and love, and seeing your child's eyes looking up to you that can never be replaced by anything else in this world.
In this world of give and take, and mostly take, what is one to think? Either side is full of extreme opinions that would take one aback with their rhetoric. As the old saying goes, one can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. You must decide for yourself ultimately, but calmly, before the situation occurs, and you are making a rash decision that wouldn't be made if you had a choice. Making the decision in the limited time frame before the choice is taken away from you by law is the problem. You, as the woman in the state of pregnancy are full of hormones, which impair your judgement. Maybe you would want the child growing inside of you, who is to know. But you cannot make this decision on the sly so to speak. This causes people to go to extremes to get rid of the baby for fear of judgement on their moral character. Like lying about being a virgin so your father doesn't find out. Over a certain age, one starts to assume you have had a sex and people then wonder if you hadn't, which is the exact opposite problem of youth.
I often wish I had the ultimate answer to these questions, but no one does, and if they say they do, they are lying. But whatever you decide when you get pregnant, whether to carry the child to full-term or not, remember at the end of your life, most people don't regret what they did, but what they didn't do, because they were too afraid to make the tough choices, to try the things that scared them. I want to end this with a quote by Robert Frost:
"I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. "
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