Nobody Puts Baby In A Corner, part 2

NOTE: This is part 2 in my final election blog topic. If you haven't read part 1, I strongly suggest you do. You can find it by clicking HERE.   

Sorry it took so long to pick back up here, but, well, you know....life happens. And speaking of life, I saw a billboard once that said, "Choose life. Your mother did." It is so important to understand how incorrect this is. When discussing a woman's right to choose an abortion, the term 'pro-choice' does NOT mean anti-life in ANY respect. It means in no uncertain terms exactly that - a woman's individual right to CHOOSE what she does with her own body. Not what OTHER people think she should or shouldn't be allowed to do, but her personal and legal right to choose what she does with HER body. Period. You own a uterus, you and only you get to choose what to do with it.

Trump doesn't respect women. He doesn't see women as worthy of equal pay, worthy of politics, worthy of business, and most definitely not worthy of respect. When he looks/glares/leers at a woman, he sees one thing and one thing only: p-you-know-what-y. I find the word disgusting and reprehensible and I can't even repeat it on my own blog, even if it detracts from the serious case I'm trying to make, but please pay no attention to my puritanical inhibitions. I'll even allow his own terms to replace the icky word, so from now on, puppet will mean p---y. He wants to grab it. He wants to screw it. He wants to control it. He thinks America is his very own Vegas casino buffet, and puppet is on the menu for every man's 24/7 gorging, hedonistic pleasure. In his egomaniacal mindfuck, he is the master puppeteer and wants nothing more than his manipulating paw shoved as far up your puppet hole as he can shove it.

People like to forget that for a pregnancy to even BEGIN - whether consensual, deliberate, accidental, ineffective/failed birth control, rape, incest, child abuse - it always takes two people, yet only one is held responsible for the pregnancy, labor, and care for the baby in the end. The other person, who is equally responsible (and worse in cases of incest, rape, and child abuse), has ZERO obligations. ZERO. Yes, a woman can take a man to court for child support (at her legal expense and time and effort, and ultimately still very often completely ineffective). Shouldn't a man feel and fulfill a moral obligation to a child he helped created? Some do, but a helluva lot do not. Some men pretend these children don't exist, feeling no ethical or moral obligation in any way. Some of these men even go on to become professional athletes and celebrities with various children by different mothers scattered all around the country, and aren't they just the cutest dads when a 'cool daddy' photo op presents itself? Let a 75-year-old man father a child and he's committed no crime. Hey, he's just a really virile guy. But that woman who got pregnant with that 75-year-old guy? Her story doesn't matter. Maybe she's 40. Maybe she's 25. Maybe she's only 17. Maybe she's younger than that. Maybe it was coercion, rape, child abuse, incest. None of that changes the fact that in the minds of Trump and his followers, she GOT herself pregnant. 

The concept is almost preposterous in its absurdity until you let it settle in that it's been a widely-believed and accepted statement in our civilized society for much too long to admit. Here and now, in 2016, in the USA, when it comes to pregnancy we're still content with the ludicrous notions not only of a woman 'getting herself' pregnant, but also that an absent father gets zero of the blame, all so we can justify placing all of that blame on the one with the womb. Despite all this, despite however (and by whomever) a woman became pregnant, men like Trump want to tell us not how they will HELP us, not how they will FORCE men to shoulder at least 50% of the burden (because for fuck's sake, people, contrary to the Bible, none of us women are immaculately conceiving our own babies here!), but how they will PUNISH women for making a decision about OUR bodies and OUR futures. Roe v. Wade is there for a reason, because even today men still have no legal responsibility towards a pregnancy they created. I'll be damned if I would ever elect a horrific monster like Trump, one who would rather scare people about perfectly healthy fetuses being butchered into pieces like some Rob Zombie unrated horror movie, all the while depicting it happening at the will of bored, uncaring, and immoral women who he wants to pretend "just don't wanna be pregnant." 

The giant elephant in the room needs to be faced once and for all here, people. It's not that a woman can just discard a fetus as easily as a sneezed-on tissue. The issue is that during most of these cases, women are ALONE in their decision. We don't have anyone helping us make it. That's why it's OUR decision and we have to protect it like warriors. Imagine how many more abortions could be prevented if a pregnant woman had the physical, emotional, financial, and spiritual support of the other person involved? What hard decisions might be made just a little bit easier? What life-changing events might change lives in an entirely different direction? What if instead of one woman feeling knocked up, alone, financially unable, and emotionally unstable, it was a situation with TWO people able to draw strength from each other and make an informed decision together? 

Unfortunately, men have no legal obligation. They can cause a pregnancy by ANY means (yes, even without consent), and simply walk away. Forever. No questions asked. No legal crime. No moral shame. No feeling helpless or hopeless. No financial fears or careers dashed or education abandoned or public shaming. Any man at any time after conceiving a child by any means can simply......walk away. But instead, people want to focus on the 1.3% of abortions that occur after 21 weeks and even then they want to pretend it's done for boredom's sake instead of legitimate medical reasons. I can guarantee you this: As someone who has held the hands of other women who have made the heartrending choice to terminate a pregnancy, they suffered before, during, and their entire lives afterwards, not with shame or regret or fear of an eternity spent in hell, but because it was a choice that was not EVER taken lightly. 

I am pro-choice. I am a woman who, along with my husband, created, grew, and loved all three of our children during my pregnancies. I am also a woman who has held the hands of friends who have made the choice to terminate a pregnancy. I am a good and loving mother and I am a good and loving Christian. And, God forbid, had any of my own pregnancies resulted in a fetal demise or put my own life in danger, you can bet your ass I would have been willing to do whatever was possible to save myself, and what happened next would be NOBODY'S BUSINESS but mine, my husband's, and my doctor's. Period. We need to stop trying to change a law that is there to protect women, and instead focus on raising our sons to do just that - protect the women in their lives. We have to hold our president to that same standard, and that will never be the case with Donald Trump as president. Never. He's trying to drive a wedge between all of the females of our world and once we divide, once we give away that freedom, that's when we're truly screwed. Political parties be damned, we women have to support each other.