Bullets For Babies, Judgment For Jesus

Personally, I find the gunning down of three people in cold blood to be a slight defect in the pro-life stance.  But perhaps that's just me.

Despite the fact that it has been substantiated that the "selling baby parts" Planned Parenthood video was doctored, and that abortions account for nowhere close to the majority of services PP provides, those determined to believe lies cite them as true.  Abortion is SO evil - murder, in fact - that the only fitting response is, naturally, more murder! 

Do these zealots have any clue as to a woman has an abortion?  Beyond their Grade 6 rationale of "Cuz she's a slut?"  Zealots, are you listening?  Have a seat.  I'll type slowly.

Sometimes contraception fails and she is in no position to raise a child. 

Sometimes she doesn't have a support system to help her. 

Sometimes a human, because she is human, makes a life-crippling mistake and does not want to make another.  (Yeah I know, "A baby is never a mistake!" Having one, though, often is.)

Sometimes the father is abusive.

Sometimes she finds the thought of giving the child up even more traumatizing. 

Sometimes it is dangerous to carry the pregnancy to term. 

Sometimes that danger is physical. 

Sometimes it is mental. 
Sometimes the father abandons her.
Sometimes she has fundamentalist zealot parents who will disown or forcibly marry her if they discover she's pregnant. 

Sometimes being pregnant will cost her her entire career. 

Sometimes she's just learned that her husband is cheating. 

Sometimes she's pregnant because some man - or multiple men at once - decided that his penis had a right to her vagina whether she was up for that or not.  (No, rape does not "shut that whole thing down".)

Sometimes - and I'm sure you'll appreciate this plot twist - that man is her uncle or grandpa or cousin or dad!  Well isn't that cozy.

Gosh, why do these sluts keep seducing their relatives?

"BabyKillerBabyKillerBabyKiller!!!!!  It's not the baby's fault that its father is a psychopath and its mother is 12!!!"

The things that radicals say and believe are beyond comprehension.  No one thinks that abortion is a good time.  What it is, however, is highly personal.

I would wager that most women would not have abortions for all of the above reasons.  Some might have one for a few of them, or one of them, and some women - including pro-choice women - wouldn't have one at all.  The belief that all women who support reproductive rights would choose an abortion for themselves is categorically false.  What makes these women pro-choice is the understanding that it is their decision to make. 

To those who postulate that pregnancies from rape are a "gift" -- it is only because I am not prone to profanity that this sentence isn't evolving very differently.  So let me just say this.  Shut your mouths.  Shut them tight.  You have not a clue of what you speak.  A women who chooses to have a child conceived in this way is tremendously brave, and of course she may come to love and embrace her child and see him or her as a blessing and a part of herself in time.  But to assert that someone who has already survived the ultimate violation must then endure the continued occupation of her body against her will for 9 additional months -- this is simply inhumane.  Many of you make no exception for the life of the mother either.  Well that makes perfect sense!  We're so pro-life that we'll let a living, breathing woman die to save a fetus, and then we'll have a beautiful born baby whom we can place in its mother's dead arms!   You, zealots, are twisted.  You do not get to wave your Bible and appoint yourself overlord of anyone else's womb.  Back the hell off.  Focus on the fractures in your own lives.

I can't believe this still needs to be said, you know?  Because it's 2015.

I also just want to doublecheck a couple of things, zealots.  You're willing to help support these babies whose births you force, right?  Because you are not only pro-delivery, but pro-LIFE!  Woohoo!  The pursuit of happiness for all undesired and poverty-stricken babies!  And you want to protect African-American and Hispanic-American and Arab-American fetuses too, correct?  I would assume so, because... well... LIFE!  I just want to ensure that one "type" of in utero life isn't the only one you're fighting for.  Because that would be weird.

Also, my conservative friends, I assume that because a ridiculous number of innocent children are accidentally killed by firearms each year, that you want strict gun laws as well as abortion laws -- right?  Because the lives of little ones are precious!  So I assume that you were on your phones with your congressional representatives the moment 20 beautiful innocents were mowed down at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, screaming to stop the murder.  The deaths of those children mobilized you as much as the death of 20 fetuses, right?  I just want to make sure that your love for life isn't inconsistent.  That would make you hypocrites, and heaven knows you are not that.

Maybe you're just a scourge to Christianity.

It's too bad you don't realize that all of these bundles of joy whom you soooo want the best for are compromised every time Planned Parenthood is threatened.  Because you see, when you threaten availability of contraception, more unwanted pregnancies occur, resulting in - tada! - more abortions.  Who knew???  When you threaten HPV screening, you risk pregnant women with malignant cervixes.  When you threaten breast screening, you risk malignancy in life-giving breasts that nourish.  When you threaten AIDS testing, you risk babies born with HIV.  It is also critical, but perhaps not coincidental with regards to it being a target for your disdain, that Planned Parenthood provides these services to many of the poorest and most disenfranchised women in America.  But when you can focus all your energy on the unborn, who has time to care about the living poor?  Sheesh... they really should just pull themselves up by the bootstraps already.  Unfortunately, that's a bit of a pickle for those who can't afford boots.  When you threaten these services, you right-wing militants, you risk babies growing up without mothers, or not growing up at all.  But hey, what's a little cancer? 

Then there's the small matter of showing up near clinics to use humans for target practice.  What the hell.  Some of you say it is justified.  WHAT . THE . HELL.  Inciting violence, and going so far as to murder civilians to try to advance your social/political/religious agenda.  If only I could remember the term for that...  That is how "pro-life" you are, you sick soul-deficient proponents of hatred.  I have no more words for you.

It is evident that these people, these extremists, do not care much about kids at all.  They think they're fooling us, but they're not.  They are fixated on zygotes and fetuses, rather disinterested in children and youth.  When one rabidly cares about a baby's life, that obsession doesn't dissipate at the moment of its birth.  It escalates.  When one cares about a baby's life, it's also generally a good idea to give a crap about its mother.

But this is Planet Fundamentalist, where a female's value is significantly lower than a male's to begin with.  Women having sex outside of narrowly defined parameters is an immoral act befitting punishment.  The primary role of a woman IS that of incubator; abortion is a blatant and defiant rejection of that role. 

Therefore the truth of Christian extremists, as I see it, is that pregnancy equals penance and "pro-life" equals payback.  

I have long believed that Bible-thumpers hate abortion NOT because it ends the life of an innocent child but because, in their eyes, it saves the life of a guilty woman. 

Extremists view abortion as a way in which loose and wanton women can erase their abominations -- abominations which fundamentalists want them to carry in the form of visible pregnancies, and subsequent children whom these same people will then not give a damn about.  They want to punish women for not being chaste; for frolicking in the filth of unwedded fornication.  This is the same reason why so many of them hate contraception; no woman shall have sexual autonomy without baring the scarlet letter of unplanned pregnancy.  The offspring conceived by these women... I do not believe that the militants "love" these babies.  I would go so far as to say that they loathe these babies.  They view these pregnancies as the fruit of impure and ungodly actions, and use them to dole out moral judgment.  They aim to hold these babies' gestation periods hostage not out of some overwhelming compassion for the unborn, but out of a desire to brand and inflict shame on women for their supposed sins.

Clearly, not all pro-lifers are this far-gone.  Nor are they all homicidal maniacs.  I was very much pro-life once upon a time, and violence against those who opposed me never once crossed my mind.  I mean, violence???  How does that ever enter the equation?  This is radical fundamentalism.  This is God in shreds.  This is so severed from anything that Jesus Christ, who frankly seems like he was pretty awesome, could ever want.  It is hard to fathom.

Motherhood.  An exquisite and extraordinary thing.  Also the most profound responsibility on the planet.  It is amazing that random people think that they can dictate the motherhood of others.  It's as if they truly believe that being pro-choice means throwing weekly third-trimester abortion parties and rejoicing over terminated pregnancies.  "How much fetal tissue can we vacuum out of wombs this week, folks? Let's bet on it, eh?  Winner buys drinks!" 

There are things that are both unfortunate and necessary.  There are things that are devastation on one hand and salvation on the other.  We would all love a planet on which EVERY baby came into the world healthy and wanted, to a healthy mother and father who loved each other and loved their baby just as much.  Thankfully, that happens a chunk of the time.  But ours is a very imperfect, very unjust, very complicated world.  It is hard to understand how so many cannot see that the ideal is not the whole story.  It is harder yet to know that they CAN see this, but deliberately try to inflict pain on women they deem whores -- in the name of Jesus.  Perhaps they need to remind themselves of the other woman, not His mother, whom the adult Christ loved best. 

My heart weeps for those murdered, and for those who loved and will always love them.  But the will of women and the side of right is so much stronger than this.  Planned Parenthood, our sisters need you.  Keep fighting.  Keep caring.  Keep going.

So help you God.

- T.T.