Maggie's Farm

I don't believe in abortion, but I don't think it ought to be illegal, either. I think this is the middle ground where most of the country aligns across party boundaries.

I knew a young woman years ago who got in trouble. Her mother was, for a while, a second-order national figure. The 'testify in front of Congress' type, devoutly Christian, steeped in family values, and I knew the family well enough to know the integrity of her beliefs was no put on, it was to-the-bone. And not at all puritanical or judgemental, on the contrary, private and low-key.

Anyway the young woman had her life in front of her, opportunities abounded because of the family's position, any kind of richly-rewarding passion for a career could be indulged because of family ties. She was still in university and not in a serious relationship, if I recall correctly.

So anyway, the family wrestled with the dilemma and in the end, made the choice. I learned from watching this at the outskirts, that having to make this decision with the clock ticking is soul-wounding, regardless of the outcome. I don't know how either one of them feels about it, today.

It's the human condition. The idea of late term abortion, or even certain Democrat politicians going on about post-birth abortions, make me heartsick to know that we have such grotesque ideas being expressed by societal leaders as if it should be a commonplace event. It is nothing short of barbarity, brutality. But the other end of this - a morning-after pill, early term procedures - I feel this is going to be where most states land. Your religious and spiritual beliefs are yours to tend to, as is your soul. Choosing to be Godless is you business, as well. Being legal and rare, is an achievable target - easily in reach if people will pick up the slack and raise their kids to know better.

I didn't say I didn't think it is wrong; I said it is the human condition. Sit down for 5 minutes and make a list of human actions that are wrong. Stealing is wrong - but stealing jewelry or clothing in San Francisco is different to stealing bread and medicine for your mom. Killing a person is wrong. But defending yourself with a resulting consequential death doesn't make it right - you're alive, sure, but you've killed someone. Your life is forever changed.

The problem is that everything about the human condition cannot be ascribed through a religious lens for the whole of society. You can choose to do that if these are your religious tenants and you want it for yourself and your loved ones, but if you start telling me I ought to abide by them too, you must accept that this could be problematic.

I wouldn't want my daughter to have an abortion. I wouldn't want her to carry this terrible burden through life, the remorse, the sadness, the doubt. I wouldn't want to see her soul thus damaged, as I have seen the damage wrought on others who arguably felt its impact more profoundly than I might.

But leaping ahead to say that it's so wrong that every person must so abide: Well, I've seen the religious police at work in Muslim countries. I don't want that here. We are a diverse society. I think widely available safe contraception is terrific. I think morning -after pills have a place. I think humans are imperfect and make mistakes. And at the extreme, I think late term abortions are murder.

So I do the best I can, by taking responsibility for my choices and teaching my daughter that she must take ownership of hers - while trying to teach her what consequences might look like. These things are my responsibility, as is my relationship with the Almighty. We can agree that something is wrong and accept that we don't know everything, and understand that the best way to administer to the wrong is not always going to be what we think.

"Opposition to abortion is simply opposition to murder"

If I understand this correctly, you are stating your fealty to your beliefs, to say it's 'murder' anytime after conception. But I don't think that serves any useful purpose in moving the problem - with respect, it's just you and your position. And right now the Law doesn't agree.

Consider: We will never solve world hunger. We will always, at least our lifetime, have people starving and dying from malnutrition. I think this is tragic and wrong. So what?

Right now activists are preparing the stage for a great national argument, and probable violence, as people become entrenched in their positions, insisting that only they or their tribe can be right, only their solution can be adopted.

I define 'moving the problem' as eliminating late term abortions, removing nearly all Federal funding, and reversing RvW, and turning administration of abortion services over to the states, where it belongs.

I would not call this neutral ground, but it's the ground that is more commonly held by other western countries - more the norm, if you will.

That is a start - reflective of most people's position on the issue, and pushing the extremists on both sides of the issue to the margins, rather than ceding the center stage to their extremist nonsense, where the problem can never move toward resolution.

And I would also, say, resolving the problem constructively is going to require dealing harshly with any extremist that attempts to hijack the issue by leveraging a commitment to polite discourse with violence and intimidation. It is time to meet in-your-face antifa-style guerilla protest bullying with 'how would you like a broken leg?' responses - on both extremist sides (but mostly Progressive).

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But in my view, the only workable path forward is to be determined to make progress toward a better set of societal conditions - to become determined to see effective change. Roe v Wade is very likely to be overturned, and high time in my view: It's been damaging to our society for years. We can see over 50 years of arguing and position-staking behind us. A small percentage of people have changed their mind after thinking hard about it. Most people don't want unfettered abortion at any elective stage of pregnancy and never did, and (maybe more precisely) believe it's to see abortions of fetuses which, with today's technology, are commonly viable outside the womb.

But where medical science and technology have advanced, ethical and spiritual learning, development, and maturity are in retrograde. We have some hard work to do, as a society, if we are to advance morally. How many of us have sat our kids down and tabled this difficult conversation and insisted on taking them through it, all the way? How many of us have explicitly conveyed our thoughts on the importance of family?

From a purely practical perspective, our viability as a country via reproduction is under threat from low birth rates. The human condition engenders societal problems. Shouldn't we be tackling the abortion issue as a component of a societal problem and be determined to change it to improve our nation / world toward a more rewarding life? Staking highly-emotionally-charged positions simply won't do that. You won't gather the stakeholders required to make progress beyond shouting matches.

But if you highly constrain abortions, and include practical life coaching and counseling, you will help change the mindset and conditions of the classes that make the most use of these services, the ones created by the nightmare Great Society. If you pass legislation that encourages and supports stable family structures, you'll get buy-in. Hungary is doing this now, with good success. The Death Cult has been doing its best to disrupt the family structure over the past 5 decades. That doesn't mean we have to put up with it.

The only time meaningful change comes to a society (it seems to me) is when groups of people become determined enough to change something we don't like, at the cost of something we wish we could have. That only happens when we decide to abandon the comfort of our perfect, imagined solutions and actually tackle the problem, getting dirty. This is how wars are won. This is how big projects are completed. And this is how progressives got Roe v Wade passed in the first place, in my opinion.