This is not about moral choices, which abortion most certainly is and like all moral choices, one that must be weighed in light of one's own beliefs and in light of the consequences one is able to cope with.
A choice that is made for you is neither moral, nor a choice.
It's not about the "right to life." Do not speak to me about a "right to life" when in the same breathe precluding the right of the individual to be morally sovereign.
This fight is really not about abortion. I don't really know of anyone who approves of abortion, much less champions it as something that should be available without some questions.
But it's not really about whether or not women should be permitted to choose to bring a pregnancy to term. Since the issue is choice, one must acknowledge that one cannot support the one without supporting the other; compulsory abortion is as vile as compulsory pregnancy.
One would assume that persons of good will who had honestly considered the implications of their belief that all babies - indeed, all pre-implanted zygotes were special, precious and worth every effort to preserve them would do everything in their power to make it possible for women who chose that path to do it properly, thereby largely ensuring abortion would be a rare answer to rare and tragic situations.
Where is the day care? Where is the unstinting support for women and children's health? Indeed, where is the welfare, for those situations when good intentions are smashed by circumstance? Katrina would be one example. The loss of a spouse’s job, or the spouse would be another.
We see none of this. We see no support conceded save within the context of a particular sort of traditional marriage, a type of marriage that most Americans could not nor would not contemplate
This is not about a right to life. Not for anyone. It is about the imposition of a particular lifestyle upon everyone with dire consequences imposed on those who disagree.
But how can they achieve that, given the lack of widespread support for the true cause?
You hide your true agenda.
Let us go back to Roe v. Wade, and before that, to Connecut v. Grizwald. Grizwald was not about abortion; it was about the right of parents to secure birth control, and whether or not it was proper to criminalize giving council about it.
Quoting from the majority decision:
The present case, then, concerns a relationship lying within the zone of privacy created by several fundamental constitutional guarantees. And it concerns a law which, in forbidding the use of contraceptives rather than regulating their manufacture or sale, seeks to achieve its goals by means having a maximum destructive impact upon that relationship. Such a law cannot stand in light of the familiar principle, so often applied by this Court, that a 'governmental purpose to control or prevent activities constitutionally subject to state regulation may not be achieved by means which sweep unnecessarily broadly and thereby invade the area of protected freedoms.' NAACP v. Alabama, 377 U.S. 288, 307, 84 S.Ct. 1302, 1314, 12 L.Ed.2d 325. Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives? The *486 very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy surrounding the marriage relationship.
Emphasis mine.
In fact - as then, as now, such regulations have everything to do with regulating the private behavior of persons, and imposing penalties upon them for seeking to evade certain "moral codes." The law was not aimed at the condom or the diaphragm – it was aimed squarely at the right to choose.
Not just the right to choose a baby or not. It’s not even about the right to choose to plan your family or not. It was aimed at the right to make choices informed by expert, dissenting views.
Now, we can argue the validity of one choice over another from a theological viewpoint until the cows come home - but even then we would be missing the real point. Because the real point is no more about morality or religious mandate than it is about anyone's putative "right to life."
It is, in fact, an attempt to impose upon our culture a rigid, culturally and legally enforced family structure where the man dominates and controls the woman, and the woman exists to breed, enable the domination of the man, and indeed, validate his domination so that he will go out and act that way in the world.
He will, of course fail. Failures will be attributed not to his nature - for only some people are naturally dominant. It will be attributed to his "weakness of faith," for which he must submit to guidance from those blessed with greater faith... yadda yadda, etc.
In a Patriarchy, there is no room for pluralism, even among patriarchs. There is no toleration of even minor variations of will. The only dominant will be the one that succeeds in dominating all others to his will. By whatever means.
This is a vision combining the worst aspects of the last throes of the Holy Roman Empire and the era of the Borgia Popes. It is the wet dream of those who would rule by stealth, who would contemplate and have in fact executed conspiracies and campaigns of lies intended to deceive people of faith.
This is not about abortion. And it is not about reproductive choice. It is not even about the debate as to whether the Constitution implies a "right to privacy."
This is an attempt to establish a capability to remove your right to mind your own private affairs, indeed, to arrange your own private life as you see fit based on your own ideas of right and wrong, of in fact "being responsible" for your own choices and consequences.
Those who would have you choose otherwise are never satisfied with the real consequences of choices they think poor, there's always a tax or a prohibition or a restriction they feel perfectly reasonable to impose "for your own good."
But read the decision again. The court would have had no quarrel with regulation of contraceptives, or even banning them entirely. This law was directly aimed at criminalizing choice, and the activity of informing a choice.
And that is what the people behind the "pro life" people are in favor of. They are really "pro their sort of life." And if you are not Goodlife, you will be made into Goodlife.
That is to say, dead.
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