Dude: Okay yeah but the woman shouldn’t have 100% of the decision power when it comes to abortion. I mean, it’s the guy’s kid, too.
Me: True, but it’s still the woman’s body. What if I got pregnant and didn’t want it, but the person I banged did? Does my body belong to them, now? Like, I’m not somebody’s incubator, I’m a person
This guy: I get that, I’m just saying that if my girlfriend found out she was pregnant and got an abortion without telling me, I’d be devastated. Like, that’s my kid too, right?
Me: Yeah, and I’m not saying that would’t suck ass for you, but I’m just saying. Like, you’ve got a lot less at stake, here? Like, when a woman gets pregnant, she has nine months of her life with a person growing in her body. There’s foods she can’t eat, she can’t have alcohol or smoke, she might have to kick an addiction, she might lose her job, she could even die, you know? And then if the dude changes his mind and fucks off, or denies that he’s the dad, she’s a single parent for the rest of her life. The guy in this scenario doesn’t have any more at stake than if he’d jerked off into a sock and called it a day, so why is his opinion the deal breaker, here?
Him: Yeah, but she could at least tell him.
Me: Yeah, that would be decent, but really, why does he even need to know? Like, say I went off and had a one night stand with a total stranger, and popped a morning after pill the next day. Do I have to track him down, first? What I lose it before I even notice? It’s just a zygote, like just one cell. I lose a billion cells every day, and I’m supposed to let him know that I’m about to dust a few more that are smaller than a hangnail? If it’s not like a fully formed baby that I intended to keep from the get-go, does he really *need* to know that?
Him: I’m just saying, pregnancy is a possibility every time you have sex. You go into it knowing that it’s a possibility, you should be prepared for that.
Me: Is that how you’d feel if you woke up pregnant one day? Like, if not some bizarre twist of nature and chaos magic you as a dude got out of bed two months along and had to deal with it. Would your first reaction be, “well, I guess this is my life now”, or “Holy fuck, this isn’t supposed to happen, holy shit, holy shit”?
Dude: I just think it needs to be regulated. I agree that abortion is okay as a medical emergency, but what about a lady who goes out and gets knocked up every other week and just figured, ‘oh, no big deal, I’ll just get another abortion’?
Me: So we’re going to say it’s not allowed at all based on the actions of the smallest possible minority?
Him: At that point, it’s murder. People like that would be better off in the ground
Me: Can I ask your opinion on the death penalty?
Guy: I think rapists and murderers should get the death penalty, flat out.
Me: Murder punishable by death- what about self defense?
He: That’s different.
Me: Can you prove that? What if I shot a guy who owed me money point blank in the face and said it was because he said he’d kill me and I feared for my life?
Dudio: That’s obviously bullshit, though.
Me: Can you prove it isn’t? I’m innocent until proven guilty. So long as the story holds up in court, the truth doesn’t matter. And if you’re going to put someone to death, you need to know 100% beyond a shadow of a doubt that you’re right. Would you be able to say I’m a liar if you were risking the death of an innocent person? How long do you continue to investigate? How much money do you pour down that hole? How much is a human life worth, at the end of the day? Or would it end up being easier just to keep them incarcerated?
Him: Some people are better off dead.
Me: I agree, but I don’t want to be the one who decides which ones don’t make the cut. Do you?
Him: So people like Ted Bundy. You don’t think the world would be better off without him?
Me: Not at the expense of innocent people, no. I’d rather have a soulless mass murderer alive behind bars than see one innocent person with a bad case be put in the ground by mistake.
Me: And on that note, if a woman who has multiple abortions is a murderer, then to prevent murder, we should limit the number of abortions a woman is allowed to have. So if her punch card is full and she gets pregnant again, then ‘falls down the stairs’ and loses the kid, is she on death row, now? Is there any way to prove that the loss of pregnancy was on purpose? We’d have to investigate every single miscarriage in the country. Then, inevitably, some poor woman with difficult health who’s been desperately trying for a kid and has just had the worst goddamn luck would end up on death row.
Me: So in the end we have more innocent people dead, less access to a medical procedure people need in order to survive, and even fewer resources in our legal system to handle it all.
Me: Or, maybe the .000005% of people actually abusing the system we have is not an issue worthy of the media shitstorm, and we should untwist our panties over it.
A world without abortion would need universal healthcare, free 100% effective reversible birth control with no side effects, no rape, no reproductive coercion, free childcare, free education, zero poverty, no health complications or fetal abnormalities incompatible with life (and probably a few more I missed!)
Otherwise it would just be a world where people with unwanted pregnancies, unaffordable pregnancies, deadly pregnancies and pregnancies with dead/dying fetuses are forced to continue them against their will by people with zero regard or compassion for their health and well-being.
And who the hell could possibly want that?
A world without (legal) abortion would be a miserable one.
-More kids who are missing a parent because said parent was forced to carry a dangerous pregnancy to term. -Even more kids in the foster care system because people who don’t want to parent have to carry out any accidental pregnancies. -A lot of dead loved ones, who either killed themselves, had to stop taking vital medications, tried to abort on their own, or straight up died from one of the many complications that can arise from pregnancy. -More people dealing with painful and/or permanent medical conditions caused by pregnancy, against their will. -More people dealing with dysphoria caused by pregnancy. -More kids growing up in abusive households where the abusive partner uses children as a method of control. -More minors having to deal with being pregnant at a young age, and having to cope with all the problems that entails.
Those are just the ones I can come up with off the top of my head. There’s many more reasons that a person would want to abort a pregnancy, but the biggest thing is that no one should ever have to go through it against their will. Ever.
And note that I specify legal abortion. Because you could never truly get rid of it, people have been trying to terminate pregnancies since pregnancies have existed. All you’d actually take is the ability to do it safely.
