Roeing and Wading through a Sea of Arguments: Questions to ask yourself.
To abort or not to abort? Ah…that is the question.
The train of media discourse may make you think that this is about whether or not women should be allowed to choose abortion. Nope.
Fundamentally, this is an argument about whether or not abortion is something that can enter the realm of choice. Some say yes, those are the pro-choice peeps. Others say no, those are the pro-life pals.
Who will win?
How am I supposed to know? I don’t have the gift of prophecy.
What I do know is that it is important for people to make a reasonable decision about where they stand on the matter. Because your stand will be asked of you, either by the government or the other masses of matter that join you to make up the total ‘masses’ the media never shuts up about.
For what it’s worth, I think you should temporarily isolate yourself from the media noise and popular group thinking, to think for yourself. To REALLY think, because no matter what, you owe it to yourself not to get swept away by agending agendas.
13 Questions to Guide Reasonable Reflection
These questions will help you draw up context and premises for your conclusion on abortion.
- Is pregnancy currently a communal or a personal affair?
- Should pregnancy be a communal or a personal affair?
- Does pregnancy currently affect females alone?
- Should pregnancy affect females alone?
- Is the professional and social world, more open or more hostile to pregnancy?
- Should the professional and social world be more open or more hostile to pregnancy?
- Is human life an objective or subjective reality?
- Should human life remain an objective or subjective reality?
- Are human rights currently universal?
- Should human rights be universal?
- Do all women want to be mothers?
- Should all women want to be mothers?
- What are the viable options (outside abortion) available for women who don’t want to be mothers but end up pregnant? (The tie-breaker dun-dun-dun!!!)
Jane Roe: A Woman, Failed
In 1970, Norma Leah Nelson McCorvey, who you know as Jane Roe was 23, pregnant with her third child and living in Texas, U.S.A. She didn’t think she was in the financial or psychological position to go through a pregnancy; especially with the unhealthy situationship she had with alcohol and drugs.
Now, I want you to know that Norma didn’t have the best childhood. You know how they say it takes a village to raise a kid? Well I think her village failed her.
By 10, she had run away from home with a friend, and when she was found they hustled her off to reform school until she was 15. From reform school, Norma moved in with a male relative who is said to have abused her. At age 16, she entered her first marriage but soon divorced. Her next marriage was at 22, and that also ended. But the two kids she had were not in her care. Both put up for adoption.
At the time of Norma’s third pregnancy, the state of Texas ONLY permitted abortion when the pregnancy endangered the woman’s life. Pregnant women who didn’t fit this bill would have to travel to another U.S state to get it. The only effective restraint women in Texas had was sapa, or poverty as the boring English call it.
Enter Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, top-notch lawyers who had been trying to overturn abortion legislation in Texas. To build an effective case, they needed a pregnant woman who wouldn’t be able to bail to another state for an abortion. It began.
Weddington and Coffee faced off with Henry Wade, the Dallas Country District Attorney. Norma signed an affidavit that birthed Jane Roe and put the lawyers in full control of the case.
You know the story, in 1973, the Supreme Court of America eventually ruled in favour of Roe and established abortion as a constitutional right for women under the Fourteenth Amendment which makes provisions for personal liberty and privacy:
“No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
What did this ruing mean? Whatever states said about abortion in their legislation didn’t really matter anymore. Norma could get an abortion in Texas. But she never did. The ruling didn’t come in time for her to. She had the baby and chose adoption.
Norma was like the mascot of the movement. She hardly spoke because of how inarticulate she could be, and when the game was over, no one really cared about her anymore. Failed again.
Eventually she became prolife and converted to Christianity. It apparently all started with a kind pastor who happened to live next door. In the end, she became a Catholic and even though some prolifers consider her a ‘trophy convert’, I just hope she wasn’t failed again. I just hope she found love and support because that’s what she had been searching for.
Why does SCOTUS want to Overturn Roe v Wade?
I find it tiring how global media works. Every week we’re all collectively drugged into being scandalized by elaborate headlines. Just a minute ago, it was Putin the Terrorist of Ukraine, then Elon the egotistic billionaire and now it’s Roe vs Wade.
I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of living through historic events. Can’t we just rest?
Anyway, in the 98 page opinion document of the Supreme Court which was leaked, the basis for the reason behind the 1973 ruling is challenged.
“The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision...The abortion right is also critically different from any other right that this Court has held to fall within the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection of “liberty”.”
Put simply, Roe’s argument is not a sufficient foundation for federal establishment of a right to abortion.
Final Thoughts on the Saga
Everyone seems to be searching for an ultimate truth to hinge their arguments for or against abortion on.
For the pro-choice movement, personal autonomy is presented as the philosophical truth.
For the pro-life movement, the intrinsic value of human life is presented as the philosophical truth.
Which one is the ULTIMATE truth? That which supersedes the other?
From the looks of it, the answer is going to be left to democracy not critical thinking. Which is why it is important for each you to think for yourself.
Remember our 13 questions? After years of repeatedly asking myself those questions and learning about Norma’s life and the different ways she was failed, I came to the conclusion that the promotion of abortion as a solution is a maladaptation to the ways in which society has and continues to fail women.
You can agree with me, disagree or hurl insults at me the way both sides seem to enjoy doing to each other.
However, that conclusion lead me to a decision I value greatly: to throw myself into helping the women around me in their immediate needs. To ensure that they never feel alone.
It’s not a peachy decision, and I’m not some saint for making it. What I am is a human being that recognizes that humans are frail and need help no matter what.
It’s my shot at Agape.
Imagine if we were all pro-charity. Living in this world would bang.
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If you were recently canceled for your stand on topical issues, you may want to read this.
