written 13 October 2018
published 20 October 2018
By the narrowest margin in 140 years, the Senate confirmed Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court, creating a conservative majority: the conclusion of 40 years effort by the Federalist Society to establish corporate dominance. Since few voters support this oppression, they use extremist Catholic views on abortion as a moral rallying cry, ignoring the corruption caused by such constipated sexual attitudes.
Being a man, I naturally have an opinion. Abortion is the killing of a potential human: that is the point. "Killing" and "potential human" lead to further consideration. "Thou shall not kill" is one of the Ten Commandments, but humans can't live without killing something to eat. When Ram Dass was asked why it was okay to kill a carrot and not a cow, he said the carrot didn't scream as loud.
Even though we value humans more than other lifeforms, society kills people all the time. Sometimes using judicial process and the death penalty, sometimes a cop goes into the wrong apartment and shoots the owner by mistake. In some states, if a person feels threatened, the law allows them to kill in "self-defense". The lucrative, taxpayer supported, American weapons industry, the largest in the world, creates products designed to kill people. Exported to the rest of the planet, people, even children, are killed indiscriminately. The justification for these killings is rarely discussed, and are sometimes only financial.
The youngest premature baby to survive was five months in the womb. Until then, the mother is essential for survival, and therefore has a unique stake in the process, independent of any human law. At puberty, a woman has about 300,000 eggs, of which only 0.1% may actually ovulate, and a man will produce as many as one billion sperm in one ejaculation. Most of these potential humans are destined to die unfulfilled. Fertilization is not achieved by the first sperm to arrive. The egg is involved in selecting which sperm is accepted, because life is pro-choice. Once fertilized, less than 50% come to term.
Consequently, I consider a fetus a "potential human". Christian zealots attribute personhood to the single cell at the moment of conception, with rights separate from the mother. Following that reasoning, any assault on the developing fetus must be prosecuted. Any company manufacturing and distributing teratogenic (fetus harming) chemicals in the air, food, or water, should be tried for assault and possibly murder. Anyone causing undue stress to the fetus, including poor lifestyle choices by the mother, should be tried for assault. This would create a large, intrusive, and expensive social program.
Our culture expects that a pregnant woman is responsible for safely bringing a child to term and paying to support and raise it. If a woman decides she can't, or won't, take on that obligation, she should have the option to choose, as the quality of life of the child is at stake. If society decides to eliminate that choice, then the taxpayers are obliged to take responsibility for the child.
The self-proclaimed "pro-life" movement considers only the quantity of life, not the quality. This isn't pro-life, it's pro-birth, and they should properly be called "birthers". Birthers insist every child be born, without taking any responsibility for the quality of life that child will endure, a misogynistic urge to punish women for having sex.
Quality of life for mother and child is one of the main reasons a woman considers having an abortion, a personal moral issue between herself and her God. In my lifetime, the world population tripled. Choosing smaller families increases the quality of life for the individual family and helps the entire planet. Educating women improves the quality of life for the whole society, so women need to be able to defer childbirth, and plan for parenthood.
A healthy society would insure that every child be wanted and loved. Birth control is superior to abortion as a method to achieve this, but the same birthers who are opposed to legal abortion also fight against affordable access to birth control and prenatal care. They prefer unplanned parenthood, treating pregnancy as a punishment. Ironically, the Federalist Society judges who self-righteously destroy quality of life for real humans, religiously defend the legality of fake corporate personhood.
