Lets start with this: I love femininity. While I think on some level it must suck for women to have monthly cramping, bleeding and hormonal changes for most of their lives, part of me is still in awe of their unique ability to carry human life. I will personally never know the feeling of life being created within my body; the gentle push of a tiny hand against my stomach or the horrible blessing of their foot kicking my ribs. While the ability of women to carry life does not define femininity, it should be celebrated nonetheless.
The fact that pregnancy is now looked at as parasitic is one aspect of abortion that I find most distressing.
I believe women have been preyed upon by militant feminists, women who are single minded in their pursuit of what they view as equal footing with men. They have also been preyed upon opportunistic men who have been all too willing to celebrate what they perceive to be their new found sexual liberation, shed responsibility for the natural consequences of intercourse and simultaneously pat themselves on the back and seek accolades for how supportive they are of 'women's health issues.' They sleep with and use women at a pace previously unseen, all the while shouting "I support women's rights". Additionally, they have managed to convince women this is a good thing.
There are a great many questions that precede the actual abortion process that no one bothers to ask. For instance, some women complain of what they perceive to be an unfair advantage in the balance of sexual power. They say men are free to sleep with numerous women and bolt with no expectation of responsibility, while women are stuck picking up the pieces (which sometimes grow in their wombs). Thus these women desire the same sexual freedom. However, a man who uses a woman for sex and runs from his responsibility is immature, selfish, and a complete prick. So why do women wish to emulate this behavior? Why is our reaction "I too wish to be a prick" instead of "Why are we sleeping with pricks?"
Additionally, why don't we hold these deadbeat men to higher standards? How come they are able to get away with using women for sex? Why do we no longer hold women with such high regard that we do not expect physical intimacy until after we first pledge ourselves to them, for life? As a society, as other men, why don't we ostracize men who act differently? We've done women an enormous disfavor by not holding each other to higher standards. Instead, we've permitted our popular culture to encourage this behavior.
This is one of a slew of issues that need to be ironed out before we even take up the topic of abortion, but instead of actually looking for solutions we're too stuck on the procedure itself, something politicians have labeled as a 'woman's health issue'. Indeed, our government is so hamstrung by the politics of this issue they are unable to even outlaw something as heinous as gender-selective abortion! It seems completely incomprehensible that our government is so impotent they can't even legislate a provision stipulating that when abortions are performed, they cannot be performed solely based on the gender of the baby. How political have we allowed this topic to become when we cannot take even this basic step?
This brings up another oddity abortion has exposed. How ironic, or perhaps just sad, is it that millions more female babies are being aborted worldwide compared to male as the result of gender-selective procedures? Abortion, championed in this country as a woman's health issue, has actually resulted in there being upwards of 40 million fewer women on this planet than there should be! 40 million times mothers and fathers in China and India have decided that their female child was unwanted based solely on its gender. Surely even the most staunch militant feminist must get the feeling that something has gone horribly wrong. How can you not look at this and believe that at least on some fundamental level women have been lied to concerning abortion? I mean my God, women are being selective eliminated by a procedure championed as a women's health issue. I would say it's ironic, but it's much more tragic than that.
In the end, lines of communication need to be opened. There is too much hurt in the world to continue to never take this issue beyond the superficial. We have to be able to discuss this issue as reasonable people or we'll never sort out our issues. We'll never solve actual problems. We must abandon politically trite platitudes such as "Get your government out of my womb" or "No vagina, no opinion." We can't continue to label each other as 'Anti-Choice' or 'Anti-Life.' There are deep rooted issues at play that we haven't even begun to touch because the aforementioned militant feminists and opportunistic politicians continue to encourage us to argue about the inane instead of the substantive. They don't have the Truth in mind, they only care about their personal end game and are hurting the discussion in the process.
