We don't do that with the small meaningless decisions, like which sofa to buy, we don't limit our options to just a black sofa or a white sofa, we look at loads of sofa's of every size, colour and material imaginable before committing our arses to a seat!
So why don't we do the same with the really big, important questions?
For example; vaccines, are you pro-vaccine or are you anti-vaccine? What kind of a question is that? That's like asking me if I'm pro-fire or anti-fire! Fire can be very useful, it's been known to save lives, but it's dangerous when it gets out of control...
I'm pro warming by a nice log fire but I'm anti being burned alive!
A hot topic at the moment, abortion. Are you pro-life or pro-choice?
How the hell can that even be a question?? I'm not anti-life and I'm certainly not anti-choice! I mean, come on! The root of the issue is whether a persons right to choice, trumps another persons right to life, but apparently we're too busy choosing extreme opposites from which to hurl insults to look at things more closely or rationally. [sigh]
I had an abortion, as so many of us do. Do I regret it? I don't regret the choice I made, no. But I do regret not being more aware of the choice I was making. (only informed choice is true choice) You see, I didn't think of it as ending a life, and neither did anybody really bring it to my attention. It felt as though the life was a future concept that I was intercepting; like, if you do nothing, a life will come into existence, but if you have an abortion, you will prevent that life from coming into existence.
It was just a medical procedure, for convenience, I didn't give a great deal of thought to the moral implications of it (and I think about morality a lot!).
I wasn't ready to be a mother, I knew that it wasn't meant to be. That may sound selfish, but that's because it is, and that's acceptable, for a woman.
A few years later, I was ready, as it happened, and this time, I knew with every ounce of my being that it was meant to be. I had always been terrified of childbirth, but now an inexplicable calm came over me. Everything was going to be fine, because I felt it. It was right.
But with the abortion debate raging, I've been inclined to give it deeper thought...
I finally accepted the truth; I didn't prevent an existence, I halted one.
It's interesting, how we use language to make things more comfortable for ourselves, isn't it? All the things we justify, which if we were to really look at, would horrify us. We don't want to have to confront the consequences of our choices.We make selfish choices, and we get creative in finding ways to divert the attention of our conscience...
Lest we wake it.
We 'abort' a 'foetus', we 'terminate' a pregnancy, we dispose of 'tissues', but in a different scenario, we would use entirely different words, like 'kill' and 'baby'.
I know it may sound as if I'm firmly anti-abortion at this point, the truth is I'm really shocked about a lot of things.
Things I didn't know before. But mostly I'm shocked at the attitude of people, who seem completely unwilling to look at anything that doesn't fit well with their already established extreme stance on the issue.
It seems, many refuse to see anything beyond women's rights, which seems to pretty much take priority over everything else today.
I'm not against women having rights, I am a woman, I definitely want rights. But I'm a woman who believes in equality as well as rights. I don't believe any one person or groups rights should be elevated above the rights of others.
I also am shocked by some of things I've learned recently with regards to abortion law in the UK.
The disparities between law and practice, the overwhelming enormity of our current statistics, and the if I can't see it, it doesn't exist attitude we seem to be taking. I'm not suggesting we step back into the dark ages, forcing desperate women into dangerous situations but I do think we should perhaps take a less blasé approach to something which if looked at closely, resembles some of the most terrifying futuristic horror films I've ever seen.
We live in a country where you could theoretically see medical professionals working hard to preserve the life of a prematurely born human, while in another room, a human of the same age and size is destroyed on demand. The only difference between the two; a woman's choice!
Such a fine line for morality to hold, certainly, we wouldn't accept such a choice in any other scenario.
The truth is, this is a big, important moral decision. It's not a sofa. If you're taking one extreme view or the other on such serious issues, you are probably wrong, even if you're in the majority.
Because Very Few Things Are Really Black Or White!
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