So the above image is not a Meme, it's not my opinion, it's a billboard outside of the demolished Ford Factory in Brookpark, Ohio. Why are we talking about abortion today? Because this billboard is at the intersection of two major highways, Interstate 71 and Interstate 480, right between my house and my in-laws house. And every time we pass it, it pisses my wife off.
The last time we passed the sign, my wife said.....
{Editor's Note: We are not disclosing private conversations here. But suffice to say, she was not pleased.}
Where did this billboard come from? Well, according to Scene Magazine, the billboard is in direct response to small billboards popping up around the Cleveland neighborhoods promoting abortion.
Now I can spend the next 5,000 to 10,000 words prattling on about which side of the fence I fall, and I won't change your mind. You'll either pat me on the back, or curse me to hell, not based on my arguments, but based on your beliefs.
The Systematic Racism angle is offensive because the Pro-Life crowd is trying to reframe the Abortion argument. If you have to reframe the argument, you are losing.
And the Abortion Saves angle is offensive because technically Abortion doesn't save. It does the exact opposite.
There are compromise solutions to the abortion argument. No one wants to hear them, but here you go:
First of all, abortion has to be legal. That way if you're Pro-Choice, you can have an abortion. If you're Pro-Life, you can choose not to have an abortion. If abortion was illegal, one side wins.
I am a man. You should be yelling at your monitor, "you don't know what it's like to be pregnant." That is 100% true. Maybe men should recluse themselves from the abortion argument. I was looking at some statistics from 2017 and women are more likely to say abortion should be legal than men. And young women are more likely to say abortion should be legal than old women. So basically those who can ACTUALLY GET PREGNANT want abortion to be legal. Maybe we should let 18-55 year old women make the decisions. Only let women vote over who has control of their bodies.
The miscarriage rate is around 20% and the abortion rate is about 18%. Meaning about the same percentage of women consciously choose to terminate their pregnancy as a woman's body purges itself of the entity.
Let's be honest. Most Pro-Lifers don't give a crap about drug-addled minorities that may want an abortion. They want to control the ability of minors to have an abortion. If you want a compromise in the abortion debate, make abortion illegal to minors without a parent's consent. Cigarettes and alcohol are illegal to minors, go ahead and take away more minor's rights. They already have drug-sniffing dogs searching lockers at schools, might as well be consistent in your treatment of America's youth.
I think everyone agrees no late term abortions unless the mother's life is in imminent danger. What is late term? Ahhh, there's the question. You can save that 2 pound baby's life, it only costs around $450,000.
See, if I wanted to be incendiary, I could rent a billboard and accuse those who were against abortion of systemic misogyny. But it's not as simple as that.....
.....at this junction, I had put the article on the back shelf because I was starting a new job and didn't want this writing to be the first thing my employers saw in my repertoire. The Abortion Issue is a complex argument which comes down to who has more rights, the Mother or the Child.
200 years ago, you wanted that child, if the Mother died, oh well, you'd get yourself another woman. Heck, some people still think that way today.
100 years ago, you'd send that unwanted baby away to an orphanage run by Priests and Nuns. How good of an idea is that today?
Roe v Wade changed the game. It took the abortion argument and put the decision making process squarely into the hands of the Mother. Some people liked that and some people didn't. (Now people are trying to circumvent Roe v Wade by putting the decision making process in the hands of the State.)
See, in my writing you can see which way I lean, so let's get to the crux of why I picked this story back up. Earlier this week, former President Barack Obama was irked that current President Donald Trump was taking credit for the current low unemployment rate. And current President Donald Trump was peeved that former President Barack Obama was trying to steal credit for the current low unemployment rate.
When, in reality, neither man gets the credit. The real credit goes to the U.S. Supreme Court....way, way back in 1973. After Roe v Wade passed until the year 2000, about 40 million abortions occurred in the United States. We're not going to count the ones after the turn of the millennium, those kids would still be minors today. Whereas the oldest aborted fetus would be in their late forties if Roe v Wade failed its Supreme Court challenge. In hindsight, if you added 40 million people to the American Population, the staunchest Conservative would argue there would be LESS unemployment today because American Ingenuity would be 40 million brains STRONGER.
That argument would be delusional. In reality, the 6 million unemployed today would be joined by millions more. The unemployment rate would almost certainly be 10% and could feasibly be near 20%. Every policy in America has its unintended consequences. "Coincidentally," about 20 years after Roe v Wade, crime in America had begun to take a precipitous drop. Not in Chicago, but in the country as a whole.
But then again, maybe crime and unemployment wouldn't have changed, because with a high unemployment rate, either President Bush could have tricked the American populous into sending more ground troops into a Middle Eastern War, but now we're getting way off track. Alternate timelines open up all kinds of different scenarios.
You can take the abortion argument and turn it into anything you want, from a grossly immoral act betraying God to an economic catalyst.
Taking someone else's deeply personal and painful decision and turning it into your business.
