Nick+Speaks

Nick F. PoV
I think I deserve my own page on this one, mostly to stay away from the heat of everyone else's scathing remarks

Abortion is, and always will be, a sticky subject, no pun intended. On the topic of abortion especially, opinions are like a ** h ** es, everybody's got one. Hopefully mine doesn't offend anyone because this, of all subjects, is very sensitive.

As I sit here listening to depressing music, I truly do contemplate the ramifications of ending life, and it is life whether you think it is sentient, feeling, deserving of rights, worthy of life, or otherwise. If nothing else, this is life. A single cell is life. The sperm cell was life before it ever entered the egg. The egg was life before it fused with its partner and began to replicate. The embryo is life. There is no doubt, even Pro-Choice supporters will not deny this. But does all life deserve the same weight, the same value? Some state their opinions on both sides of the argument. The same people who scream for the removal of chickens from cramped cages, that wail for the cows to be set free and put out on free range, and that shed tears for the environment and how we are killing it, are often the same that endorse the wanton slaughter of millions of fetuses every year. On the flip side, the same people who argue in favor of nailing baby cows to the floor so our veal tastes better and who hang chickens by their ankles from a conveyor belt so it is easier to decapitate them, they are the strongest supporters of preserving what they deem to be life. The entire argument reeks of hypocrisy.

My opinion is, unlike most of my opinions that I share with you all, one of patient moderation. I do not like the subject of abortion. I personally feel that it is taking life and that it should not be performed unless the baby truly endangers the life of the mother or if she was a victim of rape or sexual assault. This being said, I do not believe it should become illegal or revert to being illegal. Although the number of women who died annually from self abortions in the pre-Roe v. Wade was over 5,000 a year, that is only a third of one percent of the number of aborted fetuses in the U.S. per year. Even though I personally am against abortion and feel like it is taking life, I do realize that it sometimes becomes necessary.

Imagine this, an 18 year old girl in high school our age). This girl is a good student, she succeeds in school and balances her homework with her social life. She is all set for graduation and has a partial scholarship that is supplemented with federal aid to go to a four year university. She has a boyfriend and has for almost a year and they, of course, have sex. They both use protection, but somehow a mistake occurs and she gets pregnant. She knows that this baby will change the life path she has set. She is not ready to be a mother, and when her boyfriend finds out, he leaves her. She will graduate in time and, more than likely, no one will ever know she is pregnant. But college, her future that she has planned, is gone. She has no money to support the child and neither do her parents, she is only going to school based on financial aid. If she wishes to have a successful life and pursue her dreams, an abortion is her only option, and I feel that is acceptable. It is a mistake she learned from and it will never happen, to her at least, again.

Exhibit B. This next exhibit lost her virginity when she was fourteen, she has never had a steady boyfriend and she parties and drinks every weekend. She becomes pregnant and heads over to Planned Parenthood to dispose of this latest nuisance. The people at PP already know her name, she has been in and out for the last three years. After scheduling her appointment, receiving the pills, and walking out the door, she is back to her normal life.

The first girl, while I still believe it is morally flawed, has, in my eyes, some ground to stand on. The second girl should be in jail for murder. Abortion as birth control is as vile as walking into your neighbor's house and killing their whole family.

Abortion is ending life, whether it is life with the same rights as a full fledged human being, that is up in the air. Some feel that it is, and some people feel that anything that wants rights should apply for U.S. citizenship on its own, even animals (Kyle and Ryan...).

I do not know who is right in this moral quagmire, but I believe what I believe regardless of which zealots scream on all sides of me. Media attention for this subject is, to me, inane. To put it bluntly, the women who argue fervently for the woman's right to choose look like a bunch of feminist lesbians who wouldn't be near a man for long enough to get pregnant, and the people who argue for preserving life are, quite prominently, a bunch of crotchety old men who lack the vaginas to even have babies.