With regard to the freedom of the individual for choice with regard to abortion, there is one individual who is not being considered at all, and that is the one who is being aborted. And I have noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born.
I won't use abortion as a litmus test with a pro-choice individual. Someone that is an activist on the abortion issue, I think, goes outside the pale, and I cannot support an activist on the abortion issue.
I wont use abortion as a litmus test with a pro-choice individual. Someone that is an activist on the abortion issue, I think, goes outside the pale, and I cannot support an activist on the abortion issue.
In nature, creatures never ended the lives of others except to survive. To women, abortion was self-defense and preservation of the species. Abortion was not a fancy borne out of the female mind. Abortion was instinct beyond ideas. Abortion was fear (the cat that devours its litter when a predator nears).
I have met thousands and thousands of pro-choice men and women. I have never met anyone who is pro-abortion. Being pro-choice is not being pro-abortion. Being pro-choice is trusting the individual to make the right decision for herself and her family, and not entrusting that decision to anyone wearing the authority of government in any regard.
Pro-choice and pro-life activists live in different worlds, and the scope of their lives, as both adults and children, fortifies them in their belief that their own views on abortion are the more correct, the more moral, and more reasonable. When added to this is the fact that should 'the other side' win, one group of women will see the very real devaluation of their lives and life resources, it is not surprising that the abortion debate has generated so much heat and so little light.
I implore my Democratic colleagues to disregard the extreme voices of the abortion industry and radical pro-choice activists in favor of the loud, clear voice of the American people: Late-term abortion is a step too far, and post-birth abortion is horrifying.
Too many people in America believe that if you are pro-choice that means pro-abortion. It doesn't. I don't want abortion. Abortion should be the rarest thing in the world. I am actually personally opposed to abortion. But I don't believe that I have a right to take what is an article of faith to me and legislate it to other people. That's not how it works in America.
Abortion destroys self-worth and dignity. I bought into the idea that abortion was simply a matter of choice. I used abortion as birth control until after my fourth abortion. I felt inside that this action has to be wrong. I wish I had given more thought to the abortions I had. If just one person had said, 'Star, what you're doing is wrong,' it might have changed the destiny of my life.
I heard Zen teacher one time talking about abortion, and he was saying the way that abortion makes bad karma is any time the person involved pretends that there's not a cost to the choice, one way or the other; whether you get it or don't get it, there's a cost. That's just basic responsibility, to admit that there's a cost. And the bad karma is when you pretend that the thing is free.
When you take out individual initiative, individual responsibility, and the hope that every individual is born with, to better their lives, to climb the economic ladder, to pursue happiness, that is, in fact, a neoslavery.
My view is regardless of whether you think prohibiting abortion is good or whether you think prohibiting abortion is bad, regardless of how you come out on that, my only point is the Constitution does not say anything about it. It leaves it up to democratic choice.
It's really nice to see that, looking at all sides of the abortion issue - from the person who doesn't want to have kids so they're going to have an abortion and that's not traumatic for them, to somebody who loses a wanted pregnancy, to somebody who has complicated feelings because of their religion. We can talk about all of those complicated and individual stories and not feel like there's any one abortion story that's right or wrong.
Why is it controversial that I chose to talk about my abortion? And the fact that I got an abortion when I was in a marriage and could have financially supported a child, why did I feel so much shame for that?
Since 'Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights' came out, I've done a fair amount of public speaking, and the two statistics that always make the audience sit up are that nearly one in three women will have had at least one abortion by menopause and 61 percent of women who have abortions are already mothers.
Abortion and racism are both symptoms of a fundamental human error. The error is thinking that when someone stands in the way of our wants, we can justify getting that person out of our lives. Abortion and racism stem from the same poisonous root, selfishness.