So in reading my new book, "Radical Womanhood: Feminine Faith in a Feminist World", (which I believe every girl should read. There, that is my shameless plug for the day), I came to this passage that the author (Carolyn McCulley) is using to display arguments used that are pro-abortion:
"The fetus is the direct cause of pregnancy, and if it makes a woman pregnant without her consent, it severely violates her bodily integrity and liberty...Even in a medically normal pregnancy, the fetus massively intrudes on a woman's body and expropriates her liberty. If a woman does not consent to this transformation and use of her body, the fetus's imposition constitutes injuries sufficient to justify the use of deadly force to stop it...This book expands the concept of wrongful pregnancy to include what the fertilized ovum does to a woman when it makes her pregnant without her consent. It is the only entity that can make a woman pregnant..." (Taken from a 1996 book written by Eileen McDonagh)
Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no. This argument is absolutely riddled with holes and some sort of vast misunderstanding. A "fertilized ovum" does not have an independently functioning mind yet! After a few weeks or months, depending on what part we are talking of, it has much of it's bodily functions and parts that are essential to live...but a mind with it's own will as this paragraph personifies it? That won't come for a couple of years!
As for the last statement, "it is the only entity that can make a woman pregnant" it is not as though there are fertilized ovums floating around just waiting to plant themselves in unsuspecting women! If you are a woman in this day and age engaging in sexual intercouse, you had better darn well know that doing so may cause you to become pregnant (whether you are on birth control or not!). And when most pregnancies, whether "planned" or not, occur, it is usually through WILLFUL participation on the part of the female. It is not a problem with men any more than it is a problem with fertilized ovums. There are no more men hiding in the bushes waiting to rape women than there are fertilized ovums floating around just waiting for the next uterus to pass by. Though a pregnancy can happen through the cause of rape, which I am not discounting as a truly sad and traumatizing experience, the percentage of pregnancies that occur that way are extremely low.
Whether a woman does or does not desire to be pregnant, how are you supposed to get a woman's consent? A man is not going to say to her, "Oh honey, we are about to have sex, so if you get pregnant is that ok?" Or, even better, the ovum, before becoming fertilized, is not going to say, "Hey potential mommy, this sperm is looking pretty good over here and I think we might hook up and get you pregnant. Sound good to you?" The issue of "consent" seems irrelevant here. It is not as though a woman is signing a binding legal contract. To be pregnant can be something that is desired, yes, but as for consent? I am not quite sure how that comes into play here.
While I am an anomoly in the fact that I am a Christian yet I think that abortion should be legal (though I disagree with the morality of it), I will leave that for another post. Suffice to say that this viewpoint seems to come from some sort of fantasy world, and riled me up enough to have to create a post about it.
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