Let's Talk About Abortion

September 6, 2021

I've been meaning to write an entry on this topic for quite some time, and since the new law in Texas has made it a hot topic once again, let's just get into it.

Let's begin by saying that, obviously, abortion sucks. Nobody actually likes it. That's why people who are pro-choice use that term instead of "pro-abortion." Their chosen terminology signals that they trust a woman to make her own decisions, along with the advice of her medical provider, and that they don't think they know better than everyone else (including the woman herself) about what should be done. Contrary to what many conservatives, Fox News anchors, or anti-Planned Parenthood folks might want you to believe, literally nobody is out there saying "Yes! Let's kill all the babies!" That simply just doesn't happen.

But sometimes, a person becomes pregnant and doesn't feel that carrying that child to term would be the right thing to do. And yes, whether you want to believe it or not, the right thing to do is on that person's mind.

There are numerous reasons they might not feel it's the right thing, including things like rape, health conditions, the mother's life being at risk, emotional trauma, the fetus having little or no chance of survival, gender dysphoria (for transmasculine people), homelessness or an unstable living environment, an abusive spouse/partner, drug addiction, and many other things.

Only the person whose womb is in question knows exactly what their reasons are, and it's rarely an easy decision to make.

And believe me, sometimes it's also the most humane thing, the most compassionate thing to do, just like putting down a beloved pet, or letting a loved one on life support go. If you've ever worked in certain aspects of the healthcare field, you'll probably understand why there are some cases in which being born would be a far worse outcome for a potential child than being aborted. I've worked in some of these aspects of healthcare, and the things we've seen out here would traumatize anyone.

Nobody is using abortion as a form of birth control. Most abortions happen after birth control fails, a condom breaks, or a person is assaulted and no protection was used by the rapist. Nobody wants to have to have an abortion. I can guarantee you that pretty much 100% of people who've had one would have preferred to have never gotten pregnant to begin with. Abortion is the last resort and an excruciatingly painful decision for many people.

So yes, I get it that abortion sucks.

Now let's talk about abortion as a political tool.

There are a lot of people out there that I believe truly view abortion as murder and a fetus or even an embryo as a human being, in which case, I can understand why it's so upsetting to them. They truly believe they are doing the right thing by opposing abortion.

But their beliefs often are not based in actual, real-world facts and science. I saw someone share something the other day that claimed an embryo has a heartbeat as early as 16 days, along with some other inaccurate "facts." But for the first approximately 14 days of a "pregnancy," the embryo doesn't even exist yet. See, pregnancies are counted from the first day of your last menstrual period, which is around two weeks prior to the ovulation that allows the pregnancy to occur. So on the day you have sex and become pregnant, that actually marks the beginning of your third week of pregnancy (of course this is approximate because not everyone ovulates exactly the same number of days into their cycle). That's right, conception doesn't occur until the third week of pregnancy. And implantation doesn't occur until about a week after that. And yet there are people sharing false information that an embryo has a heartbeat at 16 days old, when it hasn't even been implanted into the uterus yet.

Even at six weeks, the cutoff under most "heartbeat laws" such as the one in Texas, the heartbeat they refer to is not what they tell you it is. While there is some electrical activity, it's not actually a heartbeat, because the heart has not yet been formed. From what I understand, if you're pregnant, your healthcare team might use the word heartbeat to ensure you that the pregnancy looks healthy so far. That electrical activity can be a good sign that a heart will develop the way it should; but at this stage, the cells developing in the womb are not even a fetus yet, but an embryo, and the idea that it would already have a heart is a little far-fetched.

That electrical activity can occur in many things that aren't "alive" such as fruits and vegetables, or just a clump of cells in a petri dish. In humans, if you have pulseless electrical activity (known as PEA for short), meaning that your heart is doing something but doesn't have a pulse, you're in cardiac arrest. I've done many a round of chest compressions on patients with PEA in the emergency room. Technically, those patients are not alive. They're coding. If we can't get a pulse back, the doctor will call time of death after exhausting all the resources. PEA does not equal a heartbeat.

So if a lot of pro-lifers' beliefs are so inaccurate, where do they come from? It almost seems as if someone randomly makes it up and shares it, and everyone else just blindly believes it's true.

Most people who oppose abortion seem to identify as Christian, and yet, as far as I can tell, abortion isn't actually mentioned anywhere in the Bible. In fact, the Bible implies that life begins at the first breath, which would insinuate that only a fetus that's developed enough to breathe on its own if removed from the womb (usually around 24-28 weeks according to medical websites I've found) would be considered as having the potential for life. A fetus younger and less-developed than that, if removed from the host body, could not breathe or support life, meaning it isn't alive if you take into consideration what the Bible says. Nobody is aborting babies who are old enough to breathe. 98.7% of abortions are performed before 21 weeks, and the majority before 13 weeks.

It seems that, more and more, exaggerations and flat-out lies are being spread about how developed an embryo is in its early stages, how early it can feel pain, etc. What could possibly be the purpose of spreading such lies?

Then there is also the myth of late-term abortion. "Late-term" abortions really just don't happen, unless it's out of dire medical necessity. Anybody who waited that long was not planning to have an abortion; they wanted the baby, had probably already chosen a name or started buying baby clothes, and now find themselves having to make the difficult and emotionally traumatic decision to terminate the pregnancy because it's no longer viable. This is a heartbreaking and tragic situation and the parents don't need to be traumatized any further by you calling them murderers.

Both of these "alternative facts" are meant to make you feel more sympathy for the poor, defenseless unborn, which serves to sway more people to the so-called "pro-life" side.

Perhaps if more people had more knowledge about early pregnancy, they wouldn't be as opposed to abortion in those early stages, but there are so many exaggerations out there, and it can be hard for some people, who really do mean well, to accept that what they've been taught might not be true. Especially when it came from a religious source.

But the strange thing about many modern religious "rules" is that, despite being widely accepted, they did not actually come from that religion's holy text. A lot of times, these rules are the most misogynistic ones, too -- imagine that. It's almost as if men sometimes make things up that they feel will advance their station, and then claim they come from the religion so that women will follow them.

And when you're a politician, abortion is such an easy topic to utilize in order to take advantage of voters, because it comes with such an emotional element. People feel passionately about it because they've been conditioned to have such sympathy for the unborn, which, when they've been fed lies about an embryo having a heartbeat at 16 days, is a natural way for them to feel. Now it's easy to frame other candidates as evil baby-killers and claim to be pro-life to rally support for your own campaign.

Politicians rely on single-issue voters, whose single issue is always abortion. They know that as long as they claim to be against abortion, those people will always vote for them, no matter what their position is on anything else, or how problematic they are in any other way.

I know of several people who supported Donald Trump simply because he claimed to be against abortion. And for them, the racism, sexism, ableism, sexual assault, Islamophobia, etc. etc. were not enough to sway their vote away from him.

But notice how I say that he "claimed" to be against abortion.

Do you think any of these politicians actually care that much about abortion? I don't. I think they are using it because they know they can count on you to vote for them as long as they hold that position. The rest of their policies can be absolutely vile, but as long as they promote themselves as anti-abortion, they'll have your support -- and they know it. Meanwhile, many of them who claim to be against abortion have probably paid for their mistresses to have one. You're being taken advantage of and don't even realize it. Politicians are using this one issue to advance their own careers at everyone else's expense.

If they really cared that much about being pro-life, they wouldn't stop caring about babies as soon as they're born. They would be more willing to provide support for poor parents struggling to provide for their children. They would want to make sure that the babies are taken care of even after their birth. They would care about immigrant children, and children who are in foster care. They would advocate for better maternity and paternity leave.

Additionally, the best way to prevent abortion is to prevent unwanted pregnancies. So why don't these pro-life politicians support and advocate for things that do that? Like comprehensive sex education for young people, free birth control, actual consequences for rapists? These things would lead to fewer abortions (and less emotional trauma in women) and yet they want to take them away from us as well.

And how about letting adult women of all ages get their tubes tied?

The fact that doctors can deny a patient the right to a tubal ligation based on their age, marital status, whether their spouse "consents," or the number of kids they have is absolutely insane. I've never heard of anyone wanting a vasectomy having to undergo all this scrutiny. It is not a doctor's place to tell a woman that she has to wait until she's had two kids (what if she doesn't want any kids? She'll never reach that magical number), that she'll change her mind later, or that she needs her husband to consent to it, as if she's a minor asking her parents' permission. If she's over 18 and wants her tubes tied, tie them. She is an adult and can make decisions about her own body.

Honestly, the fact that this is even an argument I have to make is proof that the issue with abortion is not just about the unborn. Because whenever someone says that a woman should be able to make that choice about her own body, there's always somebody there to chime in with "It isn't just her body anymore. There's another living being inside her." And yet here I am having to remind you that a woman's body is her own even before a pregnancy.

Whether or not she'll change her mind later and regret having her tubes tied is honestly just none of your business. Do tattoo artists or plastic surgeons tell people they're going to change their minds later? No.

Stop assuming women are going to want children at some point. I've known since I was around 16 that I didn't want any. It is not some biological instinct that everyone with a uterus has, and it's not your place to tell someone they're going to want them later.

The fact that this is even allowed is rooted in misogyny, and the belief that women only exist to bear children. It is meant to keep women at their husbands' mercy by requiring his "permission," and keep them chained to a life of raising children, even if that's a life they never wanted. It's all intended to hold women back in life.

I can guarantee you the number of abortions would go down if anyone over the age of 18 was allowed to have their tubes tied, but of course, anything that gives women control over their own lives is frowned upon. And that's what this is all about, isn't it? It isn't about "saving babies."

Remember that even corpses have more bodily autonomy than a living person with a uterus does -- it's illegal to remove organs from a dead person's body unless they gave their consent prior to death, even if it will save the life of someone else. And yet a woman doesn't need to give consent for her uterus to be used to save the life of a fetus -- even in the case of rape? And then, in some places, a rapist can actually sue his victim for visitation rights of "his" child? And you're trying to convince us that these laws are not misogynistic?

And before I move on completely from the topic of sterilization, remember that vasectomy is always an option as well. Somehow people tend to forget that a pregnancy takes two people to make it happen. People who get vasectomies don't undergo the same scrutiny that someone seeking a tubal ligation does. They don't have to ask their spouse's permission or have to prove they have a magical number of children. For some reason I just can't put my finger on, doctors trust them to make their own decisions.

And then -- going back to the politicians who come up with these laws -- you can make abortion illegal past the 6-week mark, which is actually only 4 weeks after conception, when very few people actually even know they're pregnant so that very small window of opportunity will be missed almost every time. You can make anyone who even attempts to get an abortion -- or in some cases, even has a miscarriage (a.k.a. spontaneous abortion) -- a felon, and felons aren't allowed to vote, which leads to fewer women voting. How ideal for you as a conservative politician.

As I said before, I definitely don't think that all pro-life people are bad people. I think a lot of them are coming from a place of compassion and really do want to save what they consider babies.

But I do think that they are being misled and taken advantage of by bad people. Bad people who have a selfish and/or misogynistic agenda. And whether or not a pro-life individual agrees with that agenda, they are furthering it by supporting these politicians.

I understand that there are few political candidates with whom someone might agree on every single issue. There are often candidates you'll disagree with on one thing, but it isn't enough to outweigh the good things, the things you agree with them on. So I would urge anyone who's planning to vote for someone just because they're supposedly pro-life to look at their other platforms, and truly contemplate if this one issue is worth voting for them. Enough with the mindset of "He's openly racist and has been accused of sexual assault by thirteen women... but he's pro-life." Why is that enough for you to discount the safety of everybody else?

It isn't wrong to care about the unborn, but when are you going to start caring about women, girls, and living children just as much? When are the lives of actual, living people going to be as important?

I, too, would like to live in a world where fewer abortions need to occur. And the way we can reach that goal is by making sure everyone has quality sex education, access to contraceptives, the ability to sterilize themselves if they never want kids, etc. Prevent unwanted pregnancies and you're preventing abortions. So why don't we start working toward that goal?

tags: abortion, politics, women's rights