Everybody thinks everybody should know what a 'right' to life means as defined by opinions espoused by everybody who opines.
Clarifying a 'Right' to Life
Preface
To be clear, I don't subscribe to any assumption that all opinions are 'equally right' regardless of the content of such opinions or because of the platform of such opinions or blah blathering blah.
Rather, I subscribe to a rational discourse as a participant in governed society.
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I. Existing Life
The first thing to know is: ova-bearers are born with ova. Yet to equivalize ova-bearers and ova, especially with respect to a 'right' to life, reduces ova-bearers to ova-bearers.
Such that it bears iterating: a 'right' to live is neither secondary to ova bearing nor is superseded by ova existing.
To proclaim otherwise, is to nullify the personal agency and independence of girls and women. To proclaim otherwise, is to mandate reproduction at the expense of the personhood of daughters and mothers.
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II. The 'Piety' Façade
The second thing to know is: who decides what is 'precious'. That is, what is 'sacred'.
To equivalize a right to personally define 'sanctity' and a law that institutes compulsory obedience to evangelized 'truths' - which is to say, to equivalize a personal exercise of 'faith' and a submission to theocracy prominently codified - is
to unequivocally reject democracy.
For all that loyalists to ideology define this as a freedom guaranteed by democracy, this is an infringement on girls and women and a shackle on daughters and mothers.
To wit: robbing ova-bearers of their autonomy and inviolate dignity is not an entitlement safeguarded by democracy professedly because an undemocratic principle adopts a façade of 'piety'.
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III. The 'Justice' Twofer
The third thing to know is: the 'status' of personhood is fabulated to retribute and vainglory. In other words, to exact vengeance and satisfy ego, jurisprudence has validated a 'status' for unborn cells.
Such cells, no bigger than dust and ash, lacking intentional and competent devotion to a moral belief system, upon achieving 'legal personhood', have become 'lives' lost. Such cells, no more substantial than a few centimeters or ounces, fabulated into fully formed persons, have become 'victims' that demand pounds of flesh from their accused.
Finally, adversaries have become avengers who notch the unborn among the avenged for ambition. Never mind a dictate for justice from such cells being thoroughly imaginary
fiction.
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IV. The 'Care' Charade
The fourth thing to know is: care is tangible. Words alone are not evidence of actual care.
Proof of care is free accessible medical services for ova-bearers; child care for ova-bearers' dependents; and financial assistance for food and housing for ova-bearers and their dependents. Because bona fide care is paramount, measurable, and consequential.
Such that a question begs to be asked: why is actual care, ostensibly heartfelt yet passionately denied, by speakers of wall to wall words, unambiguously abhorrent?
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V. Real Life
The fifth thing to know is: real life is neither an outlier nor hypothetical. Which is to say, real world aftermaths of calculable magnitude are neither irrelevant nor unknowable.
After all, the risk of injury and violence towards girls and women is quantifiably higher when girls and women are ova-bearing. And there are few conditions more matter of factly lethal to daughters and mothers, than ova-bearing.
To restrict a public dialogue on abortion, to villainous caricatures and fantastical improbabilities, is to conspicuously ignore:
that minimally gainful employment rarely accommodates pre-natal and post-natal ova-bearers; that parenthood materially alters lives charged with child-bearing, child-rearing, and child-supporting; that families in poverty disproportionally bear the brunt of policies that restrict, limit, and/or ban family planning; and much more.
Participants in a representative democracy who elect whether or not to ova-bear, as an entitlement part and parcel to being free, are neither deserving of condemnation nor invisibility.
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Postface
To be clear, I don't subscribe to any expectation that one's platform, be it lectern or broadcast or blog; or one's opines, be they reasoned or believed or pretended; or blah blathering blah, dictates or informs.
Rather, I subscribe to upholding real persons with real experiences, in the real world.
I don't live in a kingdom or paradise, that indwells as a feature or condition of a system of belief. Nor am I judged by an absolute deity or all-forgiving all-father, that delivers damnation or salvation, per a practice or observation of a system of belief.
Rather, I live in the real world, where I am subject to real laws divined by real persons, that impact everybody. Here, I subscribe to upholding what's real.
Addendum
Let's talk about COVID-19 for a minute.
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In the first twelve months that a novel coronavirus plagued so many, there were a sizeable many that insisted: the pandemic was 'fake' and nothing should change for a 'fake pandemic'. They declared: 'I don't care you, do you?' They bellyached: their hardships were 'indisputably extraordinary' and mitigation measures were 'irrefutably to blame'. They caviled: this alternate 'reality' was 'their truth'.
Never mind in staggering sum, bodies were interred and loved ones mourned. Fever, diarrhea, fatigue, and so on, debilitated swaths of the unwell across transport and transit hubs, residential care homes, prisons and jails, and so on. Because a novel coronavirus circulated everywhere everybody wasn't 'sheltering in place'.
To wit: intentional and competent devotion to a moral belief system, inspired a sizeable many to live by a 'truth' that was a fiction.
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You see, how COVID-19 is an object lesson...
in condemnation and invisibility?
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There are many good reasons good people seek safe health care that includes abortions. Such that 'rape and incest' are hardly the only 'legitimate conditions' for such care. Notwithstanding, such 'exceptions' stipulate evidentiary justification to safeguard the liability of care providers and their eligibility for insurance coverage 'for exceptions'. Which is to say, to state the obvious,
exceptions are never rules.
Case in point: 'exceptions' on the basis of 'conscience', for example, professed by care providers who imperiously oppose care that includes abortions, nullify 'exceptions' affirmed by care seekers, every day of the week everywhere care seekers seek care. Including 'exceptions' on the basis of saving a life.
Because maternal mortality is an acceptable outcome for a sizeable many who practice or observe a system of belief that reduces ova-bearers to ova-bearers.
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Tell me I'm wrong.
Tell me
that nullifying the personal agency and independence of girls and women and mandating reproduction at the expense of the personhood of daughters and mothers, is not
a cavalier and hostile indifference to the autonomy and inviolate dignity of ova-bearers.
M
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Author's Note
Should I speak on the topic of abortion... only to cede a 'right' to my voice
to everybody who opines? including a sizeable many whose personal exercise of 'conscience' imprisons 'we the ova-bearers'... to reproductive potential?
Should I speak on the topic of abortion... only with permission? And
not at all if I decline to beatify the florid self-induced rage that miscarriage, infertility, surrogacy, and adoption smugly self-indulges... because abortion?
Should I speak on the topic of abortion... only if, say,
I'm a mother who's endured an indescribably miserable expectancy that culminated in a life-saving C-section? Or I've suffered the issue of a secret severed by legal disposition and profiteering inhumanity? Or divested of bodily autonomy, I've performed... child-bearing?
Should I speak on the topic of abortion... if the gift of health care that includes abortion was never my portion?
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A 'right' to life is
to be a clinical resident at a hospital, waiting until the requirements of an exceptional medical education are undoubtedly past, to thoughtfully grow a family... or to be on a critical mission on foreign soil, unconcerned that an expectancy shall derail a meaningful dedication to duty... or to be a widow, plunged into unexpected single parenthood, considerately terminating an unviable future...
A 'right' to life is to be, a parent or not, per self-determined election. Thus it isn't me in the end; it isn't you or your personal exercise of 'conscience'; it isn't everybody who opines that decides the last opinion on the topic of abortion
for everybody.
M
