Buckle Up, Baby

I’m confused by a society that promotes women’s rights as heavily as ours, yet contradicts itself on so many levels.

I’m confused by a society that will grant my future teenage daughter the right to abort her child without parental knowledge or consent.  Yet this same society refuses to pierce her ears, loan her a movie, grant her an email address or hand her a library card without my John Hancock!

Then there are my personal rights. 

I have the right to carry a child in my womb, and then have it aborted during delivery.  The procedure would go something like this (yes, it’s graphic): 

“In a partial-birth abortion, the abortionist pulls a living baby feet-first out of the womb and into the birth canal, except for the head, which the abortionist purposely keeps lodged just inside the cervix.

The abortionist punctures the base of the baby’s skull with a surgical instrument, such as a long surgical scissors or a pointed hollow metal tube called a trochar. 

He then inserts a catheter into the wound, and removes the baby's brain with a powerful suction machine.  This causes the skull to collapse, after which the abortionist completes the delivery of the now-dead baby.”  -NRLC

I, as a woman, have the right to do that.  Yet, should I choose to give birth to this same child and one day find myself discreetly nursing this same child on a park bench somewhere, society is appalled!

Seriously?

Vice President Joe Biden said, "I do not believe that we have a right to tell...women they can’t control their body.” 

My body… my rights, right? 

Yet I do not have the right to drive myself to the abortion clinic without wearing my seatbelt.

But it’s my body!

Our culture demands that women should individually be allowed to choose what’s best for themselves, while on a daily basis, women are incarcerated for selling their own bodies for sex or pumping drugs into their veins.    

We live in a civilization that demands a woman’s right to choose what’s best for her body, but should that same woman repeatedly shove her finger down her throat, slice her wrists, or attempt to take her own life, she forfeits her freedoms for the four walls of a mental facility.  

But… it’s her body, her rights, right?

I’m tired.  Tired of watching people turn a blind eye to something so inconsistent and wrong in the name of ‘the right to choose’.   I’m tired of turning a blind eye to what abortion really is… and how it’s done.

When are we going to wake up and notice that the only difference between what a woman calls a “baby” or a “fetus” is entirely contingent on whether she wants to keep it or not?

When are we going to see the stupidity of a murderer going to prison for killing his wife and unborn child?  Yet abortion is legal? 

And no one sees the inconsistency?

What happens to a pregnant woman who shoots herself in the belly?  I don’t know.  I’m asking.

Do I hate women who have chosen abortion?  Absolutely not!  (See Erin’s story.)  Instead my heart hurts for their pain – because they do have it.  Abortions cannot be done without causing some measure of guilt and pain to the mother… and I hate that for them.

Laws can always be changed, and while I wish they would, that’s not my goal... laws don’t change hearts.  Instead, I’d rather see people recognize the lie we’ve allowed ourselves to believe. 

The lie that life does not begin until that squirming little body completely and fully enters the room. 

The lie that it doesn’t really matter… that it won’t affect me (the physical pain and higher percentages of miscarriages, infertility and breast cancer among woman who’ve had abortions speak otherwise).

The lie that life does not begin at conception – yet pro-life and pro-choice parents alike, giggle and awww over the squirming mass of cells they see thumb-sucking, yawning and kicking on the ultrasound screen.

Is it only a “baby” because it was planned?

  

As a woman, I have the right to choose whether or not I want to get pregnant.  That choice for me would be “no thanks”.  (But should I find myself with an unexpected pregnancy, I will then honor the rights of that child… baby… fetus… whatever you prefer to call it, and will grant it the same privileges I’ve been given by our country’s Declaration of Independence - life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness… and one day I would hold their little face in my hands and wonder how I could have lived without him or her.)

And as a woman, I also have the right to choose to have my doctor insert a tube into my partially delivered child's skull and suck it's brains out.  I can choose!

I choose “no”.

As a woman, I have the right to ask my doctor to inject a saline (salt) solution into my uterus where the baby not only swallows the salt and has its skin burn away, but it also takes an hour for the baby to die.  I have that right.

My answer is “no”.

As a woman, I have the right to choose!  So choose, I shall.

But, by golly, I hope I don’t forget to wear my seatbelt.