A few days before I left Facebook per my fast (which feels like forever ago), I posted the following video on my profile:
https://prolifereplies.liveaction.org/my-body-my-choice/?fbclid=IwAR0Qsd93U-KAcSsJEPWoY3VeCiENwq_zk-dRKr8CGRedfA8XWRAllslkECo
Simply put, this is a pro-life advocacy video. And simply put, I agree with it.
Politics is really not my favorite area to venture into. I have conservative views. And I have liberal views. And I have moderate views. And I have Christian views, which includes perspectives into each corner that I just named. As far as my news-watching, it really is largely limited to sports. My attitude on watching and awaiting the results from Election Night 2016, for example, was different from just about everyone else in the country, regardless of which side of the political aisle one was on. While many people stayed up late in anticipation and fear to find out who our next president would be, I simply went to bed. I reasoned that I will find out in the morning, anyway. Staying up late vs going to bed at a reasonable hour wasn't going to change the results, anyway. After all, I had done my duty and voted.
That said, there are a few things I do care about. Abortion is one of them. Ironically, when I was a younger man, I identified as pro-choice. Now I'm pro-life. The video above can and will explain better my perspective and reasoning than I can. Here are a few common lines of thought I want to address, though:
1.) "My body, my choice." I agree with that statement when it comes to sex. I don't agree that any woman should ever be subjected to unwanted sexual activity by a man (and vice versa). As a man, I have had to teach myself that a woman's body is not mine. (And no, I have thankfully not had to learn that the hard way!) The only body that is mine is the one that I'm inside. And yes, I do have a choice when it comes to that body. Such as, not attempting to impose on another person's body.
2.) "What about people who had sex and are not ready to be parents?" Mistakes happen. And to clarify, by a mistake, I don't mean the baby. I mean the choice to have sex and risk a pregnancy. Bottom line: this is why adoption agencies exist. I don't believe in forcing someone to be a parent, especially if they don't want to. (It's a dead giveaway that that person is not ready, and the person who suffers the most, even if kept alive, from having a parent who doesn't want to be a parent, is the child.)
3.) "What about poor people, or people of color, or those that have been marginalized? Shouldn't they count as people if we're going to count unborn babies as people?" Um, yes. Absolutely they should. So, why should it be the other way around where you have people who are for those that are poor, of color, and marginalized, but not for unborn babies?
4.) Back to "my body, my choice." The reason I am pro-life and not pro-choice boils down to this reason: life begins at conception, not at birth. That means, in God's eyes (and not our own, sorry), inside a pregnant woman's body is not her body, but someone else's body inside of her body. That means, it is not her body, her choice, but rather someone else's body, but still her choice. And when she chooses to abort another person's body, I'm sorry, but that is murder.
5.) The one question that might lead me to question the broad-brushstroke attitude I'll admit I have about it: situations have come up where a man rapes a woman, gets her pregnant, and gives her an STD (or even 2 of the 3). This gets stickier. Because as I've already expressed in bullet point #1, a man raping a woman violates "my body, my choice". What then? What also about cases where a woman becomes deathly ill because of the pregnancy, and what if ... abortion would actually save her life? And conversely, what if choosing not to abort means that the mother-to-be dies? I would hate to have to be the one to make a decision like that. My official answer to those questions is this: I don't know. I don't think I would be qualified, even in this blog post, to make the call on that one. I think it would be better for me to let someone else decide.
It is interesting, though, that this topic has only come up because of our current president has vowed to overturn Roe v Wade, and there has been more movement recently (ok, a month ago; here is a link to a video talking about it). As a result, I saw more posts on Facebook about it, including one from a business contact who expressed not only dislike for our president's renewed vow, but issued a challenge to all men that she was connected with on Facebook that silence assumed consent. As I said earlier in this post, I don't like politics and prefer to remain disengaged (and silent) most of the time, primarily for my sanity. I felt a fire lit under my bottom. So I posted on Facebook.
I eventually realized that there might've come a point for me to talk about it further in depth. I've decided that today is that time.
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