Wednesday 20 June 2012

Are there *good* and *bad* abortions?

First, read this to understand the particular meaning I'm addressing when I use the terms *good* and *bad* with regard to the medical termination of a pregnancy.
I am making a decision.

The only thing that makes my abortion decision different from anyone else’s abortion decision is that some people who are against abortion will think that my abortion is acceptable.

Some. Not all. Maybe not even most. I honestly have no idea. My life is not in danger, after all. I have not been raped. I merely think that I might not want to sit around, feeling the symptoms of pregnancy, for god knows how long, until a heartbeat stops and the ripping pain kicks in and the blood starts flowing on its own.

Let me be clear. I have options. It’s just that they all suck. That’s kind of how bad news related to pregnancy works.

If you are pregnant, and do not want to be, all of your options suck.*

If you cannot seem to get pregnant, and want to be, all of your options suck.**

If you are pregnant, and won’t be soon, all of your options suck.

There is no universal good option. There is no universal bad option. But for each individual there is an option that is the least bad. Here is why I am pro-choice. If someone has to make a decision and the best they can hope for is the least-bad option, I don’t believe I have any business making that choice for them.
This is the decision that CON CPC MP Stephen Woodworth would want to criminalize.

Instead of letting a woman and her attending physician determine why a pregnancy might be terminated, Woodworth wants to debate how the government would legislate to control these decisions.

Such as anti-choice legislators in Georgia are currently doing.

In addition, if a woman were in the same situation as the author describes in her plight, and she chose to let "nature take its course", her miscarriage could be investigated by police to ensure that she had not engaged in any criminal activity that would have caused the embryo or fetus to be expelled from her uterus prematurely.

This is the inevitable outcome when legislators decide what is the "right" gestational period, when "personhood" commences and who owns women's reproductive capacity.

1 comment:

karen said...

That's a good article.

I am amazed (and so saddened and also outraged) by the inability of this government to see people as individuals with widely differing situations and points of view. I think they truly want us to be a bunch of homogenous obedient automatons.

Thanks for all the work you are doing over here.It helps for keeping one's hopes up.

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