U is for...

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U is for uterus.

I give you fair warning, this post is about a very controversial subject.

There was a march on our state's capitol recently by the anti-choice crowd, you know the type, the ones who want to make your decisions for you and then leave you to handle the consequences by yourself, the ones who champion the unborn but can't be bothered with the born.

Somehow, their religious convictions tell them that it's OK for them to be that way, that it's OK to insert themselves in the private lives and circumstances of other women, to interfere and thwart and then leave them with the mess while they go interfere in someone else's life. They can't be bothered with the results of their interference. Unwanted children are still unwanted, often resented, abused or abandoned, causing meager resources to be further stretched affecting all.

It would be so much easier to take those anti-choice people seriously if they were out there adopting all the unwanted children that are already here or at least making sure that they have access to adequate food, housing, and healthcare. I posted as much on my FB page to which I received this comment: It's about believing life is sacred, period.

I don't really have an argument with that but life doesn't begin until birth with that first breath of air. A baby who grows in the womb, who is born and does not breathe is not alive. A fetus in the womb is the potential for life but it is not alive and it is kept growing and developing by grace of it's mother's blood and oxygen. Yes, a fetus responds to stimulus. So does a nerve bundle growing in a petrie dish.

I find them not pro-life so much as anti-choice. Because once it is indeed a life and not just the potential for life but an actual living breathing human who needs care, it seems their interest wanes. For all their anti-choice stand you would think that they would be for sex education and making pregnancy prevention devices readily available so that abortion would not be a necessary option but many of these same people are against this as well.

From this site (a brief fact sheet about who, when and why women get abortions):

88% happen in the first trimester with 61.8% by the first 9 weeks. Only 1.5% of abortions happen after 20 weeks and I would venture to say (but have no documentation to back it up) that the majority of these have to do with saving the mother's life, something else these far right christian people are against. If you get pregnant and something goes wrong, then the living breathing human's life is forfeit. Where's their belief in the sanctity of life then?

The idea that women are going blithely about and having abortions because they can't be bothered to prevent pregnancy or raise the ensuing child assuming it makes it to full term is not just ridiculous, it's ludicrous. It is a terribly personal decision, some more easily made than others perhaps but I would not ever begin to impose my judgement about this on someone else. It is none of my business. Period.

And so I say to all the anti-choice people out there...

Don't want an abortion? Don't get one. And I promise I will never force you to get one as long as you never prevent me from getting one if I so wish.

Do not presume to tell me that you are right and I am wrong especially when your 'truth' comes from a book of myths written to promote a particular version or vision of 'god' that I do not share instead of scientific data.

Do not presume to claim the moral high ground just because I do not believe in your version of god and creation because I am no more interested in christian sharia law than I am muslim sharia law.

U is for uterus. Step away from mine.