It may come as a surprise to a lot of people who take the time to read my blog posts, but in the wake of the leaked draft of the Supreme Court’s opinion on overturning Roe v. Wade, I find myself strangely numb. I’ve been writing about my thoughts and opinions about the importance of abortion rights for ages, and some of my posts on the subject have been pretty impassioned. I don’t have much to add to my opinions on abortion at this point. All I can do now is offer some observations.
Even though I’ve been on vacation, and we’re headed home today, I have been paying attention to comments made on overturning Roe v. Wade. I think many of the pro-life crowd are shortsighted, at best. Many of them are appallingly ill informed about women’s reproductive systems. Too many people are fixated on the financial aspects of child raising. For instance, I’ve seen a lot of people commenting about how much fairer it will be when women aren’t allowed to choose abortion. One woman poster wrote about how “unfair” it is that a woman can either choose to continue a pregnancy and force men to pay child support, or have an abortion, and deny the man a chance to be a father. Once again, all I can do is shake my head at the idiocy… Does this woman really think that pregnancy is a 50/50 deal?
And I’ve seen a lot of comments from men about “beautiful babies” being slaughtered by irresponsible women who “let themselves get pregnant”. As if they had NOTHING to do with her condition, whatsoever! And so many of them seem to think that women, alone, should be dealing with contraception. I don’t know about other women, but it’s been my observation that more often than not, men are the ones who want to have sex. Many women enjoy sex, but some of them merely tolerate it. And some people, myself included, would be fine with never having sex again.
It would really serve some of these “rights denying” men right if women decided to have a sex strike. I mean, those of us who don’t care about having sex that much. Why not just stop obliging the men? They are so concerned about the sanctity of life, the fairness of child support, the plight of developing fetuses, no matter the condition of the already born mother whose body has been taken up residence in… Why not do the responsible thing and just stop having sex with them? It would serve some of these assholes right, in my opinion.
But it will probably never happen…
I am so grateful that the women before me fought for my right to choose. I have never been pregnant myself, and I doubt I would have chosen to have an abortion if I had gotten pregnant. However, I can’t say that for sure. I’m glad that women before me were brave enough to push for my right to have an abortion if it suited me. And now that it looks like Roe v. Wade could soon be history… I will do what I can for the women coming after my generation. At the same time, I am very relieved that I never had children of my own, even though I always wanted them. The world is becoming too fucked up to believe. And I am glad that I will be 50 in a few weeks, which means that I won’t be caught in the crossfire of this horrendous decision that will likely be made by our Supreme Court this summer.
I keep seeing comments, mostly from men, about the “brutality” of abortion. Funny how they have so little to say when I bring up how very unprepared for pregnancy and motherhood a 12 or 13 year old girl is, after she’s been raped or molested. Funny how they are silent when I tell them I’m a lot more concerned about the already born six year olds whose bodies are torn apart by bullets as they sit in classrooms and churches. Yes, abortion is brutal, but at least developing embryos never know what hit them. They aren’t spending their last seconds of life in terror as some gun toting nut blows them away when all they’re trying to do is learn the alphabet.
Now… with that being said, I guess it’s time to pack up and head back to Germany. We’ve had a great vacation, and I’m ready to write about it… and maybe that will give someone a distraction from the scary news that generates daily. I know a lot of ignorant people think that banning abortion is a great thing. But this decision will cause a lot of people to die. Women will get abortions if they want or need them. All banning abortion does is make the procedure less safe and, maybe, fill up our prison system even more.
But arguing about it, crying over it, or worrying seems to be pointless, now. There’s nothing much more I can do, other than continue to write my opinions… and my opinions seem to match those of most of the American population… the ones who aren’t hamstrung by backwards religious beliefs and power-hungry and racist political ideals that are more about control and money grabbing than anything else.