Is criminalising abortion really the answer?

 

Overnight the Roe vs Wade ruling was overthrown, previously women were able to legally  obtain an abortion up 15 weeks, and there were conditions, safety checks in place, etc. 

After 50 years of legalised abortion in the States, it is now going to become, almost illegal and  may in the coming days, be considered a criminal offence, depending on what State you live in. The decision made in the US Supreme, came from a team of six men and three women.

The pro-choice, pro-abortion team have been wailing, weeping, moaning and decrying what they see as an abomination against woman 's bodies and rights. Alongside them, the anit-abortion, anti-choice, team have been singing, dancing, and waving their equally inflammatory, brightly coloured placards, celebrating this win for the unborn child. 

All of this has taken place outside the White House, and similarly in cities and small towns across America. I am sure by this days' end there will be arrests as tempers escalate and violence erupts, possibly a few people may get shot or even killed, because recent legislation decreed that Americans still retain their rights to bear arms, therefore they still have the right to shoot whoever pisses them off. Often their victims can be as innocent as the unborn child inside a mothers womb.

Of course, if you are found guilty of murder, it's highly likely that you may get the electric chair or the needle. These forms of legislated death are fine in the minds of many American citizens. Interesting isn't it, the strands of hypocrisy weaving through everyday life.

What I find interesting, is that there are degrees of murder inside the American justice system. First, second, third, self-defense, even justifiable homicide.

Justifiable homicide is - "The key to this legal defense is that it was reasonable for the subject to believe that there was an imminent and otherwise unavoidable danger of death or grave bodily harm to the innocent by the deceased when they committed the homicide. A homicide in this instance is blameless".

Blameless homicide sounds like just another way of saying righteous slaughter. With a good legal team, you could probably get off shooting your annoying neighbour, that bad driver in the supermarket carpark, or your violent, physically abusive husband.

Quite a few loopholes for killing. But now, the loophole for getting rid of an unwanted pregnancy, has gone for all women in America. The 11 year old girl who has been repeatedly raped by her uncle and has had only one period in her whole life, must now carry this child to full term and somehow raise it.

The young university student who was raped walking home across campus one night, now has had her whole career ruined by an unwanted pregnancy; the father unknown to her so no child support for the next 18 years. 

The 38 year old woman, living in her parents garage, has now found herself pregnant with her seventh child. She has no money for contraception, the father of her current child only ever stays long enough to get her pregnant again before disappearing. She cries at night wondering how to feed and clothe another child; wondering whether her body can sustain her while she works three jobs every day.

A woman with a life threatening, medical condition, finds herself pregnant and she may die either before the child is born or during childbirth. Either way, the child will not get to grow up with his or her, natural mother.

Before today, there were loopholes in the law for woman to have an abortion and free themselves of an unwanted child. Those loopholes have now been closed.  For a long time, abortion has been called, by some, "murder in the womb".  But to the young woman struggling with the dilemma of an unwanted pregnancy; and in accordance with the medical and legal fraternity, abortion was  a "justifiable homicide".  Until today. From now on, abortion is murder, pure and simple; indefensible. 

It just doesn't seem fair.

And yes it is right and true, that we defend the innocent lives of unborn children, but we need to be defending the lives of all "innocents". We also need to be addressing the causes and reasonings for why woman have "no choice" but to kill their unborn child.

Hats off to all the anti-abortion rallyists, who have peacefully lobbied, demonstrated in streets and towns or tried to find alternatives to abortion, ie. adoption; they saved the lives of thousands of unborn children. Their relentlessness and passion is to be admired. 

Sadly  though, some of them, physically attacked pro-choicers,  bombed abortion clinics,  threatened the lives of doctors and their familes, all in the name of saving  life.

However, now I would love to see those same zealous people, and there are millions, fighting to wipe out rape, child abuse, spousal violence and murder, childhood poverty and illiteracy, hunger, etc.

Could those same zealous people please start lobbying for stricter laws to protect innocent, defenseless woman and children who live with violence and fear of death, every day, in their very own homes, which are meant to be safe havens, places of love and nurture, not dissimilar to a mother's womb.

Let's wipe out, "murder in the home" and the lives of all innocents.  Then we can all sing and dance and celebrate on the White House lawn.