Abortion

Abortion! Many people might be asking why I'd want to even delve into an issue usually argued from both sides at the volume of Krakatoa.  For me, it's seeing the GOP, a political party with very little safe political fodder in the age of Trump, run back to this issue, their political safe house, partially safe due to the reluctance of many people to talk about abortion.

But, considering the importance of this issue, we need to talk about abortion and choice.  Not only because we have to come to grips with this issue at some point, but to stop political opportunists from using this issue to drive a far right religious agenda on the American people.  How many other issues are tethered to abortion, as abortion gets voters to the polls?  Also, the idea some don't even want exceptions in abortion law for victims of rape and incest, or in cases where the life of the mother is in jeopardy, is unacceptable.  How can any Christian Conservative think they're doing God's will when they tell a husband and three children that their wife/mother needs to die because the current baby she's carrying will kill her?  And additionally punishing the victims of rape and incest, with some states actually giving their attackers parental rights?  Please...

Before I get into this, let me address two aspects.  First, it hasn't escaped me I'm a male of the species, hence (duh) I can't have a baby.  Where my marriage gives me some input into decisions involving my wife and my children, any man demanding certain abortion laws be enforced on women would be like a random woman weighing in on what types of treatment men can and can't receive for prostate cancer.  Would I, or any man, ever accept that?  No.

Also, the abortion debate is hinged on the specific moment the anti-abortion community has deemed as "the beginning of life," the moment when male sperm fertilizes the female egg.  This is a totally arbitrary timeline.  If you're so convinced a small clumping of developing cells is life, then you should be outraged every time a far more complicated, complex grouping of cells is wasted, such as in war, famine, and executions.  You're the ones who've labeled a specific point (a small grouping of cells) as "the beginning of life." I'm just pointing out your hypocrisy on that specific point.  I could easily go the other way too; if sperm and egg combined make life, then how can we discount the living sperm and living egg individually.  It's like saying eating chocolate or peanut butter individually is Satan's work, but if you have a Reese's, you're divine!  The exact moment a female egg is fertilized by sperm being 'when life begins,' and the decision to waste that same life a few decades later, are determinations made by human beings, not God.  Let's remember that.

With that out of the way, let me share my personal viewpoint:

Outside of cases of rape, incest and the life of the mother, I, Matthew McNeil, am personally against abortion.

Didn't see that coming, did ya?  Yes indeed, I'm against abortion, as is my wife.  I can say definitively, we would never have an abortion if my wife was expecting.  We'd take the baby to full term and love it.  Even if we didn't want the baby, which is a freaking ludicrous hypothetical, we'd carry it to birth and give it up for adoption rather than aborting.

I just made a lot of Republican heads explode.  If I'm a Democrat, and I'm indeed Democrat blue, tried and true, through and through, how can I be anti-abortion?  It's because abortion is a personal issue, one we all need to make individually.

This is usually the point where snarky pro-lifers will float the scenario, "What if your daughter got pregnant?  Would you be for abortion THEN???"

First off, ick!  Secondly, if my young daughter was pregnant, one could make a very strong argument I've already failed as a parent, horrifically.  Republicans know this, so they try to use it as a way to force a false morality upon my decision making process.  "Because I screwed up before, I now need to treat my pregnant teenager like a pretty, little princess, making all the decisions for her, because I'm daddy."  The genie's already out of the bottle.  If she's old enough to make her own decisions in regards to consensual sex, she's old enough to make other adult decisions in her life, regardless of how much I might disagree with them.  I will be her father.  I'll let my opinion be known, but regardless, I'll support her decisions, as a father should, not grab her by the wrist and drag her into a church or into a clinic.

You may be asking, "Matt, if you're a Catholic, how can you have such a cavalier attitude in regards to your child having an abortion?"  Religion is also a personal thing.  How you choose to worship (or not worship at all) is up to the individual.  I've asked God for guidance on this issue, and I feel very comfortable with the positions I have in regards to my Catholic beliefs.

But for anyone who tries to 'gotcha' me on this, Christians cherry pick the heck out of the Bible.  Many people use the commandment "Thou Shalt Not Kill" to justify their anti-abortion stance, but they ignore it when it comes to the death penalty.  And before you say the whole "eye for an eye" stuff, Jesus' own words in Matthew 5:39-44 told us to stop that.  Jesus, the man who makes Christian's Christian also told us, unequivocally, to feed the hungry and take of the sick without question (or shame standards), and the Bible tells us, clearly, to welcome strangers from strange lands, without exception.

And forgetting all the Old Testament references to God ordering kids killed (and there are quite a few), personal responsibility for your sins is what Christian teachings are based on.  If you're Christian, aren't we all judged by our own actions on earth?  When it's time for my judgement, I can't point to anyone else and say, "they told me to do it."  A Christian God wants you to be responsible for your own actions, and to not force your will onto others.  If you are going to be one of those people who demands strict adhesion to Biblical verse when it comes to validating your pro-life stances, or condemning gays, then you're a MASSIVE hypocrite to ignore the Bible when it goes against your political leanings.

Anti-abortion Christian Conservatives, can I ask why you're even following the Republican Party anyway?  Ever since Roe v. Wade, the Republicans have been gobbling up campaign checks from pro-lifers with the promise, "if you put us in power, we'll pass a Constitutional Amendment making abortion illegal."  From 2003 to 2006, the GOP had complete control of the US House, US Senate and the vast majority of state legislative bodies, more than enough Republican votes to get it passed.  How many Constitutional Amendments did the Republicans introduce?  Zero.  None.  Not one.  They could've easily passed one, but they decided they'd rather have you rubes keep writing them checks as opposed to follow through on their 30 years of promises.  They never wanted you to focus on any other part of the Bible, so they quietly pushed abortion to the back burner, and didn't bring it back up again until it became clear they were going to lose big in 2006.  When you start bringing up abortion in 2016, have an answer ready on why you continue to vote Republican when they've proven they will not follow through on their anti-abortion promises.

The United States is founded on a simple principle, separation of church and state.  The founding fathers didn't want to have one religion, or one version of a certain religion, making the rules for all citizens in this country.  They just didn't, no matter how much revisionists try to insist they really wanted a Christian nation.  If I'm a true American, I need to realize my personal decision on abortion is based on my personal religious beliefs.  If I'm being guided by my version of religion, that's my choice, and my choice alone.  It shouldn't be used as a bellwether for everyone else.  If I'm truly American, it is my job to go out of my way to make sure I'm not forcing my religion on others.  That might be difficult for some, but it's what the founding father's wanted, none the less.

Let's take a few minutes to talk about the term 'pro-life.'  There's one undeniable element of American culture; as many of us claim to care about children, our laws and governmental systems are specifically geared to only focus on the baby, while the baby is in the womb. The mother's health care and quality of life needs during pregnancy are often ignored, and this country is anything but pro-life the minute after the baby is born. Once the baby takes mom's exit ramp, mom and baby are greeted with a shocking lack of societal support for new mothers and families:  skyrocketing day care costs, education costs, the lack of livable wages for everyone, especially single mothers, subpar transportation options, the drastic slicing of social safety net programs, shame hoops we require those seeking government assistance to jump through, the lack of quality housing, and a legal system which seems, at best, indifferent, all while far right zealots call you a lazy moocher who's leeching off of hard working Americans.  If you're a woman who knows she's going to have to tackle all of this on her own, with very little support from the people who demanded you take the baby to term, the choice about abortion becomes more real.  If we cherished the lives of children, and their mothers, half as much as we care about unborn babies, the choice for some wouldn't be so bleak.

What about giving a child up for adoption?  There are a lot of wonderful families who've welcomed in a new family member via adoption, but for an adoption system based in a country known as the land of plenty, with so many 'pro-lifers,' there are some negative realities.  It's hard to exactly know how many kids are growing up in a group home or foster home who are not currently in the process of being adopted.  The number of kids needing a home seems to be between 100,000 and 150,000.  Currently there are over well over 300,000 Christian churches in the United States.  If only one family from every two to three churches adopted one child, there wouldn't be orphans in America.  That doesn't seem like it should be such a big hurdle, yet it doesn't happen.

Let's also acknowledge rates of adoption for white babies are much better than the rates of adoption for minority babies.  If you find out you're pregnant, determine you can't raise a child, and are forced to think about putting a baby into a group home/foster care system for their life, with no guarantee they will ever get adopted, having an abortion seems to be a less complicated path.

And we can't ignore the shocking amount of people, mostly men, who love the act of creating babies, but want no responsibility for the baby after it's conceived.  Jackasses come from all races and social economic statuses.  You can shame them; they don't care.  You can jail them; that only wastes more resources, and a parent can't provide and nurture from a jail cell.  As long as you have people more concerned about their personal gratification than anything else, you're going to have pregnancies, single parents, children given up to a system, and abortions.  And no, mandatory sterilization of American citizens is not an option.

These facts are hard to hear, but they prove we'll never address the abortion debate effectively until we make this discussion more than just pro-choice verses pro-life.

I'm not trying to make light of the tough choices women make in regards to abortion.  I've had friends, women and men, regret their decision to have one, and I've seen entire families crumble at the decision to have the baby.  Life is full of tough choices, hence why we should allow people to make their own decisions, and offer a maximum amount of support for our citizens, regardless of which path they take.

Do you want to know the main reason I, as someone who's anti-abortion, wouldn't be for making abortions illegal?  It's because the vast majority of anti-abortion politicians aren't for making it illegal either.

Let me float two illegal abortion scenarios.  In the first is the Canadian route.  Abortion tourism would be a boom industry, for those who could afford it.  For those who couldn't, their options would be either back alley abortions, with a very high health risk to women, or a child placed into a Dickens-esque orphanage system, or a child born into a society which condemns them for being born, because they're "using up my tax payer dollars!"

How about a more likely scenario.  In this scenario, things would be the same as I described above for the non-ultra wealthy, but common sense should tell you wealthy Americans wouldn't tolerate the politicians they've paid for forcing them to visit Canada for their health care needs.  They'd demand legal abortions in their own hometown.

The day Republicans make abortions illegal in the USA, specialty clinics will instantly pop up in upper class strip malls across the country.  These clinics will offer anti-baby-oscamy's, a procedure which is the exact same procedure as an abortion, only with a new name.  The rich will be able to waltz in at any time and make an appointment for an anti-baby-oscamy, without anyone batting an eye.  The gold plated health care plans will even cover anti-baby-oscamys.  The talking heads of today who scream "abortions are evil" will be back in front of the TV cameras, only this time they'd be screaming about how no one should ever question an anti-baby-oscamy.  "How DARE you try to step between a innocent patient and her anti-baby-oscamist!  That's a PRIVATE matter!"  Abortions will be legal and easily obtained for the wealthy in America, and completely illegal for everyone else.  That's why I'm against making abortion illegal.

To review:  I'm personally anti-abortion, but feel it should be legal in the United States.  You make your own choice.  If we ban abortions, we need to make sure there are exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother, but we shouldn' make abortions illegal because they'd never be completely illegal for everyone, only illegal for the non-wealthy.  We also have a tremendous amount of satellite issues we need to address, as we have this discussion.  Live your own life, be happy with the decisions you make for yourself.  Stop trying to force your religion on everyone else.  Don't be a jerk.

And if you say you're pro-life, prove it to me by insisting the social safety net programs in the USA need to be expanded BEFORE we'd even consider making abortions illegal, making the safety net programs completely comprehensive, so they'd blanket everyone, like a baby.