Those Old Abortion Blues

I know the anti-abortion forces think they’re on a mission from God and that’s what’s so depressing.  I mean if they want to replace logic with faith in their own lives that’s their business, it’s when they decide that they know what’s best for the rest of the world that it all hits the fan.

It’s bad enough that many states now have passed laws demanding that anyone seeking an abortion must go through certain mandated counseling but when those places of supposed counsel turn out to be houses of religious proselytizing, staffed by frustrated would be missionaries instead of medical personnel they are violating the human rights of every woman who walks through their doors.

I find it ludicrous that the same knuckle draggers who rant against science when it pertains to ecology, evolution, or climate change are the first to embrace it to try to prove why women shouldn’t have abortions.

Abortion is never a first choice among the pregnant women who eventually choose it. Not being pregnant is always the first choice. Isn’t it strange, therefore that those who are most against abortion as a choice refuse to allow the teaching of that which, will be most effective in keeping abortions from happening. The easiest way to keep a woman from getting pregnant is to use contraception in any one of its many, (no pun intended) conceptions. The Catholic Church has been the primary villain in this piece, coercing Irish, Italian and Hispanic women to pop out children in the double digits. Now the Church is being challenged in the baby derby by Orthodox Jews and Mormons.

Do any of these religious groups realize that the religious proselytizing over birth control and abortion actually, like most religious laws came originally from social problems? Early man, before machines, needed many children to help support the family unit. It was either a farming or a hunter/gatherer economy and one kid just didn’t cut it.

Times have changed, s have the needs of society and the abilities of the planet, and now, multiple birth is the social and especially the ecological problem. The planet is at a point where it can no longer support the billions of little humans swarming over the fields, through the forests and into the cities. We have passed the balancing point and are now depleting the planet’s resources faster than the planet can replace them. We have to stop having babies or at least multiple babies and we have to encourage other societies, especially those who can’t support them, from having too many babies too. In this the Catholic Church is nothing short of a major disaster, promoting its anti-contraception policies throughout Africa and Asia, even in populations that are producing starving babies on the steps of the churches. This is ludicrous, outrageous and inhuman.

I understand the forces against abortion. Even if the science is muddy, the sentiment is certainly front and center and the drama is overwhelming but the fact is, if they won’t get on the contraception bus they have no right to complain about the results. “Just say no,” may have worked when Barbara stuck her hand in old George’s face but for a couple of panting, frustrated teenagers hyped on bubbling hormones it just ain’t the answer. Anyone who thinks it is, either hasn’t been paying attention to the world or is too dumb to walk upright.

Read an article by a lady named Katie Stack on her experiences in one of the many Crisis Pregnancy Centers that purport to be medical institutions but are really just houses of religious propaganda. The interview process she went through was horrendous. The purpose of the interview was not to counsel her on the many possibilities available to her but to convince her to have the baby. I mean when a woman goes into one of these places and the first question she’s asked is “What is your relationship with Jesus Christ?” the only sensible answer is, “He’s not the father.”