Abortion – Join us for a month of Controversy

Abortion

Letter A from our August dry run of the Blogging from A to Z Challenge

I have had an abortion, and I’m not sorry about it either. If that means we can’t be friends, I guess that’s just the way it is. You probably wouldn’t like me, anyway, though, so I can’t truly be sorry about that, either. I do hope you have a nice day. I know I will!

Here’s the thing. I have been told that abortion is “irresponsible”. I would posit that the sex in which I engaged to get myself into such a state was the “irresponsible” activity. Multiple sexual partners, and it was well over ten years ago, so I can’t even recall if it was protected or not. Yeah, definitely irresponsible!

I do recall that at the time of my abortion I was extremely depressed and looking for love in all the wrong places. I was emotionally unstable, unemployed, hated myself and my life, and had NO business becoming an unwed mother. Not when I already had another child of which to take care, one whom I was failing at the time. It was another two years before I got my collective shit together and became the mother my son needed me to be.

[password-protect]

But that’s just *MY* story. I’m sure others use abortion as post-sexual birth control. And there are some who might have an abortion post-rape. And some women who have an abortion are correcting faulty birth control after having taken all the so-called “responsible” measures to avoid this condition. For each of these situations, abortion isn’t irresponsible. The actions leading up to it may or may not have been irresponsible, but the abortion itself is the most responsible act in the whole deal.

Here’s another thing. Women who are denied an abortion are also subsequently frowned upon for needing financial assistance in raising the child they are forced to carry and birth. That seems extremely silly. You can’t have it both ways, pro-life ninnies. If you are going to hogtie a woman into becoming a mother, you damn well better be prepared to give her the assistance she is going to need. Because, again — choosing abortion was probably the most responsible act she would have chosen, had you not gotten up in her business.

And that’s what ticks me off the most about the whole issue. Mostly, I wish people would just get over the whole whats-going-on-between-my-legs-and-in-my-uterus thing. An anonymous writer at the online magazine Jezebel.com wishes that, too. Her article “Why I Won’t Come Out About My Abortion” prompted excellent discussion in which either she or a similar woman (not sure which since it’s all anonymous) explains, “Ironically, I feel more conflicted about speaking openly about my abortion than I did about having it.”

My feeling is this. It’s been proven scientifically viable for men to carry a child to full term. If men want to weigh in on the topic, they ought to be lining up as volunteer surrogates to care for the unwanted fetus. And pro-life women? If you aren’t already in line, your opinion on abortion is moot as well.

[/password-protect]