Abortion: A Choice

If you have not read When there is no good choice or have not told your friends to read When there is no good choice then I suggest doing both.

One of the components of the abortion debate which I loathe is how pro-lifers will blindly cling to their stance and stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the degree to which reality, and by extension the abortion debate, is not black and white, right and wrong. There is nuance involved. That nuance is what When there is no good choice attempts to convey.

The article tells the story of Mary Vargas whose fetus experienced Potter's syndrome, a severe lack of amniotic fluid. The article conveys the difficult decisions and choices Mary Vargas and her husband faced which pro-life dipshits ignore. It grapples with the emotional struggle of the Vargas family, who wanted to have a child, as they tried to do what was best for their doomed fetus.

That is the story the pro-life stance fails to acknowledge; the struggle the pro-life stance pretends away. Blind adherence to baseless dogma removes any chance of nuanced understanding and rather adopts a holier-than-thou position maintained independent of the real-life situations with which families grapple every day. As Mary Vargas is quoted in the article, "It felt like we were answering directly to George Bush, and that he was telling us what we were doing was wrong."

The article also touches on Perinatal Hospices, which as I have already stated are basically institutions which support psychosis. But you know what? Even if Perinatal Hospices basically perpetuate psychosis and cater to the illusion that fetuses are little people deprived of hats at least they are trying to help people. And even if that help is misplaced and even if its foundation is ignorance at the end of the day it provides an option to families which can make people feel better. Perinatal Hospices try to ease the pain families experience in a failed pregnancy.

That, I think, ought to be the focus of the abortion debate. It doesn't make sense to be pro-life or pro-choice, to adopt a position estranged from the particular circumstances which give rise to this debate in the first place. It doesn't make sense to craft laws and rules from the position of an uninvolved third party. It doesn't make sense to ignore reality and start with a fabricated, unsubstantiated, transcendental ideal.

Start with Mary Vargas; understand her plight. And then shut the god damned fuck up and let people live their own lives. If an individual, particular family decides to have an abortion then let them. If an individual, particular family decides to go to a perinatal hospice then let them. If an individual, particular family decides to deliver the baby then let them.

The choice is theirs to make. Let them make it.

If we pretend that there is no choice, that there is only the faux-objective truth of the blind adherence to an ideal then we've left the real world and ventured into the realm of fantasy; we've constructed a fairy-tale and founded our stance within that fiction. We've shoved our heads up our collective asses and missed the fucking point: We're trying to help people. Not fantasy people. Not imaginary people. Not platonic ideal people. Not rhetorically defined-to-be people. Not potential people. Not dogma people. Not hypothetical people.

Real people.