Abortions.

This is the first time I've been on the computer in about 4 days, so I apologise for the post being late. That said, the time away from the squawking mess of tubes has been nice... gotten in touch with some hobbies that I hadn't been doing in a while. May make a habit of staying net-free every so often.

So, because it has come up, will always come up and is just one of those topics that seems to rile people; abortions and why they're awesome. Yep, that's my stance. It's not even about choice here, no shit everyone should have the choice whether to have an abortion or not. Taking that choice away from people is totally retarded in the first place.

Abortions are 100%, irrevocably, a good thing. The less people having kids that they don't want, the better. If you wanted to keep the kid, I mean really wanted to, would you even be in the clinic? Of course you fucking wouldn't, but the fact it even passed through your mind is probably a pretty good indication that you aren't ready for kids yet. I'm not saying you never will be, but at this point in time, it's probably for the best to have the procedure. I understand there's some mitigating circumstances sometimes, maybe you wanted to take it to term but you were pressured not to by a partner or family or whatever, but it still ends up begging the same question. There are forces that really, really don't want that little clump of cells to become a life, and having parties wishing the kid didn't exist is not a good environment for a child to grow up in.

I hope you latched on to the phrasing in that previous paragraph. That "little clump of cells" is no more or less a new human being than a fucking scab at that point. I like how PZ Myers frames it, he uses "colonic cyst" rather than "scab." The point is; until about 3 months in, it's not alive, it doesn't have feelings, it's literally just chemistry at that point. Now, my biology understanding isn't too crash hot, but I believe around the 2nd trimester, there's enough by way of neurons to posit that the thing is probably aware of it's existence, but (and don't quote me on this) even then it's not quite aware that it's alive or anything like that. Seriously, you don't have a "baby" inside you until about 5-6 months in.

And like the crowing of the rooster, the old Christian screed of "potential life" comes up. To that I say; get fucked. Potential life is a meaningless phrase. I don't see you weeping over a used sanitary pad or the pages of a nudey mag that won't come apart any more. If you want to talk about the sanctity of potential life, your demand is pretty much that every woman must get pregnant with every ovulation, not even counting the millions and millions of sperm that die due to the egg not being fertilised or just not making the cut. Even if you extend it to say that "potential life starts when the ovum and sperm come together," that's still not taking into account the number of natural, spontaneous abortions that happen as a result of the fertilised egg not attaching itself to the uterine wall. This is more common than you think. That and spontaneous natural miscarriages... potential life gets snuffed out on a very regular basis for no reason.

Then it becomes a case of "people will use abortions as a form of contraception, it cheapens the miracle of life." I'm not kidding, I've heard this one before. I'm not going to lie, a big "so what" to this argument. If you'd rather use a medical procedure than a condom or the pill or any other variation of birth control that doesn't involve a time consuming, expensive and invasive procedure, be my guest, but frankly, it's a bit silly. We have easier ways to prevent pregnancy (if anyone suggests abstinence as a contraception method they're getting my foot up their arse), so unless it's true, honest to goodness laziness that you don't want to use a condom or the pill etc, why even bother? I suppose my point is, there are easier ways not to conceive, but again, if people want to use abortions as their favoured mode of contraception, I'm not gonna stop you.

The last thing you should ever do is bring a child into a world that doesn't want it. You're fucking that kid up from second number one. If you should accidentally fall pregnant and you don't want to keep the clump of cells that will eventually become a human being, do the right thing; get an abortion. Fuck, even if you aren't sure, err on the side of caution and get one anyway; it's really, really easy to make another. It's literally what penises are made to do. Don't listen to those pro-life shitheads, they have no idea what they're talking about, no perspective on reality and no understanding of what the science is.