My secret

I have a secret, one I rarely tell people and avoid talking about. I am anti-abortion. People just tend to assume that if you're a liberal woman, you aren't, so I nod and let them assume that, but I secretly don't approve of abortion.

Politically, as a matter of what legislation I favor, I'm pro-choice. But when people say things like "My body, my choice", I shake my head. And when when they say it's not a person yet, it's a woman's right to decide when to have a baby, women denied abortions are forced to become incubators, I hum to drown them out. Because I really am anti-abortion.

I believe that the reproductive systems of two homo sapiens are incapable of producing anything but another homo sapien, and that therefore any embryo or fetus is a person. I believe sperm and eggs are potential people, but the creatures they combine to produce are people.

I believe that a fetus is not a body part. A parasite, perhaps, but not a tumor or organ, or other body part of the mother. For that reason, I do not believe it's merely a matter of allowing women to do what they want to their own bodies. But even if it were, a transgendered person has to jump through a thousand loopholes just to remove an unwanted penis, which is inarguably one person doing what they want, surgically, to their own body. So it's easier when there's an argument to be made that it could end another life than when there isn't?

I believe that it is very simplistic and short-sided to make it a woman's right when it involves another person. If a pair of conjoined twins exists where one depends on the other for some vital function, does the one capable of living independently have the right to kill the other? No, being physically dependent does not equal being un-alive.

I believe that a woman has a right to choose when to become an incubator, and that choice (like the choice to become a father or not) happens pre-implantation. Birth control, condoms, (or better yet, both), and even the morning after pill, all exist to make it possible to avoid both pregnancy and abortion.

But I believe that I could, under extreme circumstances, seek an abortion. If I were raped, or if I had a reasonable fear that there would be something terribly wrong with the baby, or if some other horrible, drastic, tragic thing happened, I might want to go terminate a pregnancy. It would be ending a life. It would be killing a person (remember, I think fetuses are people, and they don't survive abortions). It would be doing what was best for me, not for anyone else. In fact, it would very much be doing something very bad for someone else (the fetus). It would be selfish. But I believe that I could make that selfish choice, if I felt I had no other option. And as long as I could see myself doing it then I don't believe it's right to declare that no one else should be able to. But I thin they should be honest enough to say that it is a killing (not murder, perhaps, but somewhere up the ladder from killing a bug, which people freely admit is killing), that it is selfish, and that it is drastic. I don't believe it is a right, but I believe I should be allowed to do it if I so choose. There are lots of things I want to be allowed to do that I never plan to do and do not consider a right. Learning to fly, taxidermy, clown college. Not necessarily human rights, but things I don't want to be banned from doing. This is just a little more serious than those.