For as long as I can remember, I have always been pro-choice. Even at an early age, it seemed to me that impregnation had for centuries been an effective means of controlling women, putting (and keeping) them in their “place,” restricting their potential and limiting their existential options.
Motherhood is a wonderful thing, a noble venture and perhaps the most important task a human being can perform; but it’s not the only wonderful, noble or important achievement that women are capable of.
Birth control was a revolution and the resulting, newfound reproductive sovereignty gave women more freedom and yes, more choices. That is why I have always been pro-choice.
Regardless of how much religious zealots, pro-lifers or chauvinists of the old patriarchal order try to make abortion the central issue of the day or the next presidential election, it’s simply neither and, to be honest, it’s not even the most immoral or destructive abortive process that affects our daily lives.
A thought is a living thing. It begins as an infinitesimally small electrical impulse. Coordinating synapses. Connective neurons.
If it’s allowed to thrive, it can become a way of seeing, a path to knowledge or a means of survival. If it’s allowed to live and breathe in the life of the mind, it can become an idea or an ideal and perhaps even evolve into a revelation.
Today, unfortunately, too many critical thoughts are willfully terminated before they are begotten. Our minds are pregnant with perceptions and understanding, but too many of our conceptions don’t survive to fruition. Too many of our intellectual offspring never see the light of day.
They say an abortion of the reproductive variety is performed every 30 seconds in America. I suggest to you that an abortion of the intellectual variety is perpetrated a million times every 30 seconds.
I know what you’re thinking—you’re thinking I’m not going to pull this metaphor off. But at least you’re thinking. An intellectual concept is in play.
You and I are consummating a thought process, but you want to make sure the cerebration is healthy or acceptable to you before you allow it into your world. So be it.
Most opponents of reproductive abortion are religious. They believe reproductive abortion takes a life, prevents a life or generally interferes with God’s original commandment (the first instructions He ever gave us): “Be fruitful and multiply.”
Their claims may be correct or at least exhibit correctness, but their reasoning is stunted and hypocritical. Through conditioned naivete or mandated ignorance, the thought processes relative to this issue were aborted, lest progenitors be stuck with unwanted notions or demanding insights that they were not prepared to nurture.
Reproductive abortion does block and prevent a life and interfere with God’s first commandment. But anyone whose thought processes are not institutionally or piously aborted knows that birth control pills and condoms also block or prevent lives and interfere with God’s first instruction.
So if you’re on the pill or using condoms, sponges, diaphragms, etc., you can’t condemn abortion. All birth control measures are part and parcel of the same perceived sin. And, if we’re being honest, we shouldn’t be waiting till we’ve finished high school or college or until we’ve put a mortgage down on our first house either. God didn’t command us to just be fruitful when it was convenient.
The cognitive impulse you and I have pursued is now a growing thought process. Is it kicking yet?
If we can stave off our conditioned, critical thought-aborting tendencies towards ignorance, we can agree that birth control isn’t a bad thing. It can obviously be unpleasant and it may often be abused, but thought control is arguably worse.
We’ve been reproductively fruitful. The shape of our planet is a testament to that.
It’s time to be intellectually fruitful and multiply our critical thought processes, embrace independent cognition and nurture practicable, mortal insights instead of deferring to antiquated, default supernatural commandments.
Congratulations! We may just have created a new consciousness.