I’m conservative. That being said, I believe that abortions should be legal, but that we need to stop lying to ourselves. We are not only killing a fetus, but we are killing that little infant that cries at night because she wants her bottle, that toddler that takes her first steps and utters her first word “Mommy,” that girl that scrapes her knee on the playground, the awkward middle school tween that gets her first iPod and discovers rap music, the high school teenage girl that won’t shut up about how terrible her life is, the college student that always asks her parents for money, and the adult that has the potential to start her own family. It’s so easy to not put a face on something when you can’t see it, but that little bit of life inside a woman’s womb is somebody. That fetus has an identity, and we’re striping that from him/her. Let’s stop lying to ourselves—we’re killing something. I find it fascinating how people try to forget that what they’re talking about is a human life, and try to forcefully forget that by simply not thinking about it or encouragement from others about how it isn’t a person yet. It's the thought process of a sociopath. Just because the fetus is not born, not given a birth certificate, and not given a social security number doesn’t mean that it never existed and should be forgotten. Yes, abortion should be legal because you have a right, a privilege even, to dictate your future, but both parties must agree to this because whether people like it or not, it’s half of the man’s child as well. I personally think that abortion is a distractor issue, because if Republicans wanted to overturn Rowe v. Wade, they would’ve done it with the Bush-Reagan Administration with a majority in the House and Senate. Republicans might be sending Democrats on a wild goose chase with no geese. In the grand scheme of things, abortion is not a complicated issue; by making a law with a better argument you make a controversial topic noncontroversial. That’s where people get this particular issue wrong. Stop making the narrative that if abortion is made illegal that women will go have unsafe abortions anyway, so the law should never pass. That’s the equivalent of saying, “Hey, people are going to smoke crack, shoot up heroine, and molest children anyway, so let’s just make it legal so that people aren’t breaking the law and they’re doing these things safely.” Come up with better logic. If a woman gets pregnant from being raped and she doesn’t want to have her rapist’s kid, she can kill that baby. If a woman doesn’t want to give birth, she doesn’t have to have the kid. If having this baby will kill the mother, she can take her child’s life. If you’re a mistress and have a bastard son with a married man, you can go to a clinic and let them work their magic. But what you don’t do is lie to others and yourself about what decision you’re making. Make the decision and live with it. I see merit on both sides, but I agree with liberals, just for different reasons. On the liberal’s perspective, I’d see it as a benefit to that child. If people truly believe that circumstance dictates people’s future, that there is no free will, and someone’s decisions are meaningless in life, then why have a child that the parents did not want in the first place? The kid will live a terrible life if they stay with the biological parents that didn’t want it in the first place. In addition to that, you’re saving tax payer dollars for not having to pay nearly 40,000 per child to put them through foster care. Plus, you’re helping with the overpopulation crisis. Small sacrifices help the whole, right? But this isn’t how they portray the issue and its detrimental to their cause. On the conservative’s perspective, I see it as the most noble thing any right-winged person can do, and people never see it that way. Republicans are altruistic in their fight for making abortion illegal. They are literally giving a voice to someone that doesn’t have one and, believe it or not, that is something that the Republican party was founded on. They have a long history of speaking out against true injustice and giving a voice to people that don’t have a forum to speak out themselves. They did this with the African-American slaves in the Civil War. They did this with women’s suffrage when Republican Senator Aaron A. Sargent proposed the 19th Amendment and was finally ratified in 1920 under a Majority Republican House and Senate. They did this with the 1973 Rehabilitation Act with a majority on the hill for handicapped people and again with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 was passed with George H.W. Bush’s endorsement, support, and signature. The list goes on and the evidence is clear. So, when people make the argument that Republicans are attempting to take away women’s rights, they don’t seem to understand that those are the individuals who fought tooth and nail for the freedoms they’ve been bestowed today. They’re only fighting for the most oppressed group in the entire world, children! Those who don’t have a voice or forum to speak out against injustice, literally. Fetuses can’t communicate, but if they could, they’d choose to live. Abortion is not a women’s rights issue, it’s a civil rights issue. The oppressed are children and the oppressors are pro-choice individuals. And I'm a part of it! The pro-choice movement is an infringement on those American’s rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but that’s not how the law sees it. The only problem is, our government is so massive and too large at this point that the law tends to contradict itself. Those fetuses are protected by the 14th Amendment that states "all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." But, Rowe v. Wade says that it is the choice of the woman under the 14th Amendment. Who do you listen to? The Supreme Court justices from 1973 or the Framers of our nation? Do you listen to George Washington, Ben Franklin, James Madison, George Mason, Roger Sherman, James Wilson, and Will Patterson, or Warren E. Burger, Will Douglas, Will Brennan, Jr., Potter Stewart, Byron Marshall, Harry Blackmun, and Lewis F. Powell, Jr.? I’m not promoting that we change the way in which the law is written, I’m simply working with what I’ve got, and trying to be a realist. If you want to kill your daughter, go for it while you still can, but don’t pull out the innocent card to gain sympathy to justify your actions.
