Thursday, December 10, 2009

Pro-choice, anti-abortion

A classmate of mine founded a pro-life group a year or so ago. She's friendly and willing to put up with my habit of saying whatever I disagree with. It's gotten so bad that the first thing to come to mind is almost the exact opposite of what I truly believe. But that's not the point.

I asked her if she's heard of a "pro-choice, anti-abortion" group before. She had not, observing that groups tend to be at the extremes. This saddened me.

I would like to see a group which respects choice, but tries to make the choice easier. They'd work to prevent abortion rather than banning it. So they'd promote contraceptives, and abstinence.

No those are not exclusive! I bet you're not having sex right now and I bet you have at some point used a condom or birth control, so they are clearly not exclusive. Abstinence has been found to be pretty useless for sex ed. Not only does it fail to stop sex, it also tends to leave the students woefully undereducated, so then when they do have sex, it's is incredibly stupid sex, so unwanted pregnancy rates go up. Perhaps abstinence wasn't the right word; more careful sex?

Mothers-to-be would be better informed about adoption options as well.

The overall goal is to make it so no one wants an abortion. Imagine if no woman had an unwanted pregnancy. Even aside from abortion, that would be great, because it would mean they would have control; to choose to not get pregnant and also to only make the choice to get pregnant when it is absolutely what they want. If a few babies slip through (to put it lightly: stuff happens), adoption could take over.

This group would avoid moralistic language. That gets nowhere. Instead it would focus on practical solutions and treatments instead of Bible-waving and screaming.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I agree with your blog!
Abortion is taking someones life away I also know. A sad thing. :)

Jarrod said...

The problem is in the nature of the argument, it defies compromise.

"Is abortion the taking of innocent life?"

If the answer is yes, then it's atrocity and must be fought with all the fervor atrocity calls for.

If the answer is no then there's no point to regulation, as it's nothing more then a medical procedure.

Klepsacovic said...

@Janet: To kill is never good on its own.

@Jarrod: While I agree that atrocity must be fought, it is curious that we still have war. I suspect that the atrocity angle is no the true (original) reason for opposition to abortion, for if it was, war would have just as much ore more opposition. What is the original reason for opposition to abortion? I don't know.