Bottom line?
You cannot make abortion illegal.
OK, fine, you are legally able to, if you get enough votes and blahblah, but my point: you cannot stop it from happening. If you make it illegal, women who want to terminate their pregnancy will continue to do what they had done for centuries before Roe v. Wade (and what many women still do, even in this "civilized," first-world country, out of fear or ignorance) -- take care of business themselves.
Whether they do it with a wire hanger, or a certain combination of herbs and vitamins, or jumper cables, or a fall down the master staircase (Scarlett O'Hara-style), they're going to find a way to terminate that pregnancy. The only difference is how much you want the woman to risk her own life.
"Pro-life"? If you make abortion illegal, dude, you get two for the price of one! Instead of the potential child being aborted, now you're getting rid of the potential child and the woman. Awesome.
The anti-choice agenda is not even realistic. Making abortion illegal is not going to make abortion go away, it's just going to make women's rights go away. And how are you going to enforce it? If abortion is "murder," then we need to punish the "murderess," right? What should that punishment be? What about women who miscarry? Are we going to put them all on trial?
Instead of fighting for something that's not going to work, let's find a way to achieve our common goal. Let's open out eyes and realize that abstinence-only education does not work, that abstinence is "not realistic at all." Let's educate teens about birth control, de-mystify sex, de-taboo it; let's give women and teens access to birth control and other basic health needs. Let's give women -- especially rape victims! -- emergency contraception. Let's keep women from getting to the point where they even have to make this choice.
This is probably my biggest reason for being pro-choice. Of course it's a horrible procedure, of course it would be great if we didn't have to do it, and yes there is part of me that cringes at the thought of it all. But bottom line-- abortion is not going away just b/c we want it to, and if we're truly going to respect and treasure LIFE then we MUST allow for safe abortions for those who deem them necessary.
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