I am really not sure where I stand on the topic of abortion. I think that maybe I would be for abortion in event that the mother has been raped or has no other option because the quality of life for the child is going to be so poor. The rape argument for me is the strongest; if a woman is impregnated against her will, I think that I would totally understand if she wanted to abort the pregnancy to get rid of any possible tangible memory of that horrible event. If she believes that the quality of life is going to be horrible for the child, she does possess the option to put the child up for adoption, which seems like a pretty good idea to me, especially when you consider the growing amount of gay couples in America and people that cannot physically have a baby. The problem with this is that the adoption system in America is not great; it is very expensive and time-consuming, not to mention the fact that there is a real chance prospective parents could be turned away.
I say that I have all of these opinions on abortion, but I am not sure that they would hold if I were required to decide whether to terminate a specific pregnancy or not. I want to say that I would keep the same beliefs, but the topic of abortion is just not important enough to me to actually have strong beliefs on it. It very well could be the case that I would flip and decide not to go through with the abortion in the moment, because at that moment it becomes real. For me, even if I were to believe that aborting a pregnancy was not killing a prospective life in theory, I think that I would feel like it was while in the moment.
To be honest, I hope that I am never placed in a position where I would have to decide whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, because I do not know what I would do. This is mostly because abortions have never directly affected me, and I hope they never will (knock on wood). Therefore, I just simply do not care enough about abortion
I do think that the "can't give the baby a good life" argument might be a bit overblown, as pro-lifers say. As you say, though, the counterargument that adoption should be the fallback is equally problematic, if not more so.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, we allow a lot of people to die in this country because of personal preference and out of a sense of needing to protect people's right to fun. We allow easy access to guns, alcohol, and fast cars all out of a sense that people have a right to explore their personal freedom. The difference I think is that men enjoy these things too, whereas women would face the consequences more directly of not being allowed access to abortion. Does that make the difference? I think so, but it's hard to say.