The abortion debate is made into a polarizing issue in order to keep people divided and occupied with an issue that will continue to run in circles. Meanwhile amidst all of this those in power can be assured that we will not pay close attention to what is going on. This is why issues are presented as polar by the media, we see the same thing with gay marriage debates. If we are given a rational approach to such issues, where the shades of gray are allowed the opportunity to be presented, then people would have a much more sober and moderate stance on such things. This would mean that those in power would no longer have an issue to keep people running on the mouse wheel over. This is exactly what they fear most: a mass of citizenry that is not preoccupied with artificially polarized debate. Or rather, a mass of citizenry that is not preoccupied with anything trivial for that matter. Because if we are not preoccupied by whatever it may be, our jobs, our kids, our toys and games and phones and computers, celebrities, our looks, our cars......then you have the recipe for something like a revolution?
But getting back to the abortion debate. This has been weighing on my mind for most of this past month.
A woman's right to choose has absolutely nothing to do with being "pro-death" or "anti-life." But it has everything to do with keeping a male majority government out of our personal lives, choices, and off of our bodies. The abortion debate has nothing to do with the "sanctity of life" which the holier-than-thou moralistic ones like to dish out to inflate their sense of importance. If sanctity of life has anything to do with this, then these ultra-conservatives would recognize their hypocrisy when they support the death penalty, gorge themselves with meat and animal products, and profess their love of guns and thirst for war. Even more hypocritically, these NEOCONS proclaim how the government should stay as far away as possible from their personal lives, and stay out of the market etc etc...yet they support ending abortion rights which is putting the government in direct relation to a woman's decision to give birth and raise a child. Through not supporting a woman's right to choose, one is supporting a system of oppression. If women are no longer allowed to decide what they can do with their own bodies, and are effectively forced by the government to have a child without planning, then this is a system in which women relinquish their personal ambition and countless opportunities for education and careers- because now children are dependent upon them for survival. Although women are capable of working and raising children, it is extremely hard when the woman may not be in the best position to do so. Instituting BY LAW a system such as this effectively keeps women oppressed because it makes it harder for women to go beyond being mothers and housewives. It keeps women from having the same opportunities as men. This is oppression, and I don't see how that fits into what we like to think America stands for.
Just like with abstinence only education, do people really believe that kids are not going to have sex? They certainly are, and now they are doing it without knowledge of disease and how to use contraception. Outlawing abortion will not keep abortions from occurring--it only drives up the instances of hackjob procedures which threaten women's health and lives. Ignorance is the key formula for atrocities to be committed down the line. It is a slow insidious process of keeping people divided, ignorant, and women pregnant and out of intellectual society. But I suppose I'm just being a nagging bitch right now, and should go find some dishes to wash and not think too hard.