Until now.
So during our country's recent election, I was curious about the reasons people liked the Democratic Party/President Obama. I personally identify most with the Republican Party because of a few key platform items and I wanted to see their point of view.
I had a very nice friend that told me she liked Obama because of 3 top reasons:
1. Universal Health Insurance
2. Pro-Gay Marriage
3. Pro-Choice/Pro-Abortion
When thinking about these reasons I wanted to do a bit of soul searching to determine where I personally stand on each issue. and when discussing how I feel about abortion, I really felt the desire to share my feelings with you.
My argument AGAINST Pro-Choice/Pro-Abortion
I'd always thought that I agreed with the LDS Church's stand that in the case of rape, incest, or life-threatening problems to the mother, an abortion was an option. When talking to the Hubs about when I would abort a baby, I had an eye-opening experience. I've determined that I COULD NOT live with myself knowing that I'd killed a human baby. I know everyone is different, but this is personally how I see it:
Incest- I don't understand how babies are affected in cases of incest. The whole situation sickens me but if they are able to be born without problems, I would have the baby and give it up for adoption. But that is one I don't understand so I can't talk about it much.
Rape- this is the most horrific thing I can image happening to a woman. Not only going through a traumatic experience such as rape, but finding you have conceived a child from it is beyond my comprehension. However, I would never want to add to my emotional distress by aborting the baby. You would know forever that you had killed that child. I think I could get through the following 9 months and give it up for adoption easier than finding forgiveness for myself for stopping the baby's life.
Health Problems-this one is sketchy. If there was absolutely 0% chance of my baby surviving whatever was effecting me, I would abort it so that I could get healthy and have other children. However, if there was any chance that we would be okay, I'd go for it. I figure that if I passed away, it must be my time to go.
I'd also like to touch on the phrase "pro-choice". Lets look at the "choices" that these people have:
1. The choice to have sex. If you don't have sex, you won't get pregnant. Pretty simple. Unless you're a little lady about 2,000 years ago named Mary....
2. The choice to use protection. Everyone should use birth control if they don't want a baby and still want to have sex. Although I would never do it, I'd even be okay with people taking the morning after pill if their contraceptive had broken or something.
If anyone is still thinking that abortion is okay (maybe not for themselves but an okay choice for others) I urge you to watch these next few movies about early term abortion and a partial-delivery abortion. I was particularly disturbed by the last movie with the doctor explaining a partial birth abortion, so keep a tissue handy.
Just explains a developing fetus. Good to watch if you don't understand how quickly a baby develops.
This man demonstrates an early-term abortion procedure.
This last one was the most difficult for me to watch. Especially when he was showing how the baby would be moving and everything. For those of you that are mothers and fathers, you might find this extra disturbing. This is what people call a "partial-birth abortion" and is performed when a baby is in the 2nd or 3rd trimester.
Now I know that many people are going to disagree with me. There are many statistics that show that when abortion rates go up, crime rates go down and etc. Let me ask you this: when do we use killing babies as a "fix" for the crime in our area? I don't think that lowering crime rates is justification of killing. The ends really don't justify the means.
Also, babies aren't convenient! They aren't convenient for 17 year old unwed teenagers and they aren't convenient for 29 year old stay-at-home moms! Being pregnant is hard and having a baby that relies 100% on you is even harder. But loving someone is never convenient or easy and that is what make it so beautiful. What are we teaching our youth when they have such an easy way out of their choices? Society is not made better when no one is made responsible for their actions. Abortion will not help that young person become better. It might just show them that there is a sneaky, backwards way out of every messy situation.
So this is me....taking a stand.
I'M AGAINST ABORTION. ARE YOU?
