It never ceases to amaze me what people will do and say to defend their beliefs.
People will picket corporations, raise their voices at friends and families, collect insane amounts of money and even become violent. These actions, while necessary at times, also can be indicative of extremely biased and uneducated individuals that do not understand the ideas they are fighting for.
So when the topic of abortion comes up, I often hear whoever is having an abortion enjoys killing the child and they are just finding an easy way out of the poor decisions made in the heat of the moment. This idea that another human enjoys the thought of killing a child is sickening.
There is something distinctive, and definitely morose, about the thought of a person enjoying sadism in this manner. While there may be sociopathic people out there who delight in the destruction and pain of other people, the general population of men and women do not. That is why when I see anti-abortionist people rallying outside of a clinic with signs that call doctors “murderers” and “baby-killers,” I shudder.
How ignorant are we, as humans, to demote the severity of abortion and the implications that follow? We often say what we would do if the situation ever arose, but I fully believe no one knows exactly what they would do. There are too many extraneous variables present in each circumstance.
What if the woman was raped? What if the woman finds out that the child will die shortly after birth, and that defects are present? What if having the child will put the mother at risk, possibly killing her in the process? Notice that these questions are always about the woman.
The woman is the one who goes through with the procedure, and therefore should have the most say in what happens to their body. As a man, seeing other men try to consciously make the decision for woman is appalling. As much as we, men, want to try to fix and control the situation, it is inevitably not our decision to make as it is not our body. Abortion is a hot topic that can divide random people, friends and even whole families.
It is never horrible to have opposing viewpoints on these conflicting topics, but it is horrible to demote other humans into a category that is less than human for having a viewpoint that is differing from a personal belief. As ethical and empathetic humans, we need to realize the viewpoints of each side.
We need to have compassion not only for the anti-abortionist but also the women who make the choice of abortion.
As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
