What I Really Think About Abortion

In the wake of the Planned Parenthood baby part sales videos, there have been some rabid facebook postings, some strong feelings, and by some, a disturbing lack of strong feeling. 

I'm positive that my constant 'likes' and links related to the issue of abortion have driven most of my facebook friends to drink or unfollow me, or both. 

This blog post is meant to explain why I can't shrug it off. 

When I was about 12 or 13, my mom brought me with her to a few meetings of the "TeenAid" organization. Designed to provide education for teens and adults, TeenAid was also about alternatives to abortion and help for teen girls and young single mothers. This was back in the late 80's, and I recall Planned Parenthood being discussed at length. Pp's agenda of population control and the elimination of especially black babies was a hot topic even then. Thirty years ago Planned Parenthood was suspected of selling aborted baby parts, but it was very difficult to fight against this large, tax-funded, government-shielded organization. 

I can't even start to think of all that's taken place behind closed abortion clinic and "women's health" doors in the past thirty years. I can't imagine what it took to get the evidence, at such long last. Balls, is what it took. And prayer. 

Everyone knows it's not about women's health. Give me a break. It's about angry fathers, silent mothers, scared spineless boys, shamed girls, all looking for a way out. It's about getting rid of the evidence. About saving future plans, protecting reputations. It's about shame, and removing it any way possible. More and more it's about hardened women and couples who aren't "ready", don't care, and aren't concerned about sex because if they mess up, it's easily and freely dealt with. 

And it's not about "well they will find a way to do it anyway, and it won't be as safe, as sterile."

"Butchery!" they cried in the past. And they were right, and abortion is still butchery. Well-said. 

We've all seen too many movies that make it seem like every second woman was having horrible, deadly abortions because there was no alternative. 

Anyone with half a brain knows the insane number of abortions performed yearly by sanctioned, clean, government-approved clinics is a tidal wave, a tsunami, compared with the drop of past back alley abortions. And guess what? Killing the innocent unborn is equally wrong in either situation.

The argument doesn't wash. It's not an argument. If I hear, "Well. We must provide clinics, or they will find another way, an expensive, unclean way!" I will throw up. 

Keep it clean, by all means. No unclean abortions for us modern men. 

Now don't get angry with me. I know very well that all of these stories involve people, individuals with complex histories, family situations, fears, and real needs. I know that. No one is trying to downplay the complexities of every woman's story, her fears, her feelings. 

HOWEVER, and this is where the rubber meets the road and the crap hits the fan, 

ENDING THE LIVES of the very young by crushing, dissecting, and pulling them apart either inside or outside of the mother's womb is desperately wrong and evil, no matter HOW COMPLEX the story!!

Do you hear what I'm saying?

No, we cannot address all the poverty and misunderstanding and rape and lust and then hope that will clear things up on the ugly abortion front. 

No, it won't work. It's not working.

Think. 

If there is water pouring out of a reservoir, running around trying to hold back the streams will never work. Bucket brigades will throw water back in today that will pour out tomorrow. Trying to stop up the spring is futility. No! Put up the dam, close the floodgates. 

Aborting babies needs to be illegal.   That's it.

Somehow we've bought the oft-repeated mantra that abortion is a "grey area", and that the black-and-white part is the ability of a woman to control her own body.

 No, it is black-and-white that abortion is murder. The "grey area", if there is one, is everything else. 

If abortion is not possible, then we will have to find ways of dealing with poverty and abuse and lust. As long as the gate is open, the sheep will run through. As long as killing humanity's smallest members is legal, we will keep doing the easiest thing. As long as the dam is open, the water will pour out. 

In the days of slavery in the US (yes I know we still have many horrible forms of modern slavery), those who didn't speak out against slavery were silent because they didn't really believe the negro slaves deserved to be free. People didn't really think they were equal. Because if they did ...they could not help but fight slavery.

Those who are silent or "conflicted" about abortion don't speak up because they aren't sure it's really murder. They aren't really sure that the baby is a live human being who is being killed. I'm not sure what more evidence is needed to convince people, quite honestly, but they don't or won't believe it.

Because if they did, if you did, you could not help but fight abortion!! Why the silence?

The historically documented arguments against ending slavery were at once compelling and ridiculous. 

"What will happen to our plantations?"

"What will become of the slaves? Where will they go?"

"Our lives will be ruined."

"Our economy will be in shambles."

"Some slaves don't even want to be free! They have good masters!"

"How will America support the weight of all these freed slaves?"

Compelling because these were real questions about real people. Complex, human, emotional, fraught with meaning and the weight of decision, the course of lives.

Ridiculous, because no people on earth should be slaves, end of discussion. Slavery is never right, it is always wrong! The enslavement of a human being to another needed to be ended, come hell or high water. And in many ways both came. But the slaves were FREE. FREE! It was finally over, and nothing else mattered in the face of that hard-won freedom. 

Yes it's like Auschwitz. All the whispered stories, the cattle cars, the neighbors who covered their ears as their friends were dragged from their houses. There were pictures smuggled out, people who actually escaped...And Yet, the camps were not shut down until the Allied armies were physically upon them, until they came face to face with death staring through the bars. 

"Work makes free." 

Not even close. But they had a hell of a lot more chance to work for freedom than the unborn babies at the end of a scalpel. It's our job, to work. Until they are free to be. 

Can you hear the shades of the arguments against slavery? "Will there be room for them." "My life will be ruined."

"What about me."

I'm convinced that the real reason we are so slow to challenge abortion is white-hot selfishness. "With those potential children dead, there is more room for me." More jobs for me. More for ME. 

Let that echo off the cliffs of the world! We, the living, are breathing the air. The dead make way for us. 

Thus the emptiness of the human heart. 

*  *  *

The Right vs Left debate is bent on destroying all hope of change; don't get me started on that. The Republican/Democrat/Liberal/Conservative posers are using this issue as a prop for their inconsequential mud-slinging, making it seem like there is another side besides right and wrong. "Take my side!" Leave the party bandwagons broken in the ditch. We can walk faster toward truth and freedom for the unborn without them. It's not a party issue, it's a life and death issue. A human issue. 

May life prevail, may silence end. 

I challenge you to not be silent. Speak for the freedom of the children that will be, and may we never ever again profit upon their fragile bones.