I suppose most--pro-choice and pro-life alike--have the best interest of the mother and the child in mind. I think, the confusion lies in the semantics. When a mother attempts to poison her one-year old child to death or mangle his body parts or deprive him of oxygen, she is accused of committing an evil crime--regardless of whether she thought it was for her or her child's best interest. Now, when a mother goes to a doctor to let him poison or mangle her child to death, even while he is in her womb, people say it is okay...it is her choice, it is her child...it is in her and her child's best interest. This, to me, is mind boggling.
Between a woman who says, "Baby, i didn't mean to have you, i was raped and i was hurt and it is in our best interest if you die" and someone who says, "Baby, i didn't mean to have you but none of this is your fault, so i will make sure that the best things happen to you. If i don't take care of you, i will find someone who really will...I will protect you because I love you. I am your mother and i will not let you die.", it is the former who receives more support from our present society.
A woman has a great capacity to elevate ordinary and sometimes even harsh realities into sublime things. An act as evil as a sexual assault,rape, can be turned by a woman into something that saves. While the one who attacked her chose to destroy her life and take away her dignity, she has the capacity to choose to preserve life, believe in and respect her innate dignity, as well as that of her child's. This is definitely not easy but i believe that every woman has this capacity in her. We just have to help them make these choices instead of just giving them, what seems to be, an easier way out.
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
it is the former who receives more support from our present society.
That's not true at all. Both receive support in our present society, which is as it should be. Women shouldn't have to carry pregnancies we don't want.
It's sweet and all if you think that carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term is the right thing to do, but not everyone feels the same way as you.
"We just have to help them make these choices instead of just giving them, what seems to be, an easier way out."
That may seem like an easy way out to you, but do you honestly think it's that easy. As a human being, it must be an incredibly traumatizing thing to go through, and a hard decision to make.
The fact is that our society probably has a lot more respect for a woman who carries an unwanted pregnancy to term and puts the baby up for adoption, than for the woman who has an abortion. Honestly, I'd probably feel the same way in nine out of ten circumstances. But that doesn't mean that I have a right to say to women who want abortions "no, you can't". If I was asked for advice, I'd probably advise against it, but that's about as far as I'd go.
"Alliance - in international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third."
Ambrose Bierce
Murdering a child is not comparable to an abortion. Why? Because if I have an abortion, I'm not killing a "baby". I'm destroying a bunch of cells. A xygote, possibly an embryo, maaaaybe a fetus, but not a "baby".
When I found out that I was pregnant, trust me I did not plan it . But I still decided to keep my baby. Many women can say it is best to get a abortion in this situatin or in this issue. But when you have a child, your whole perspective on having a child becomes very different.
Choosing to have an abortion is not an easy thing to do and actually having one isn't either. Personally, I wouldn't make that choice, but I would never want to tell someone that they have to have that child, which I believe would ultimately harm the mother and the child. My mother wanted to have me; I can't imagine being born to a woman who saw me as a symbol of a time when she was horribly violated or a symbol of failure or sin.
Do you think, then that abortion should be made illegal? If so, you might also want to look into what was going on before abortion was legal. One account I read said that a woman was so desparate she tried to perform an abortion on herself with a knitting needle. Thousands more women died, along with their unborn fetuses, because there was nowhere else for them to go. http://www.now.org/issues/abortion/120904women-who-died.html
-------------------------
You must be the change you wish to see in the world -- Mahatma Ghandi
Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress. --Mahatma Gandhi
My Blog: http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/kablock