I'll probably end up with trollers, but I wanted to repost this rant I wrote in a comment on one of my Flickr contacts pictures. It is slightly edited for clarity. The contact is pro-choice, and so am I, though I started out pro-life as a kid, until I realized all of the factors involved in reproductive health and choice, and was finally turned when I learned that my own Grandmother had been repeatedly raped by her husband in front of her children. Women are still the underdogs in society, yet are the glue that binds it together. Women deserve to have control over their own reproductive capabilties. Anyway, the rant in the comment:

I was pretty offended when McCain smirked and put the phrase 'woman's health' in air quotes during one of the debates. He implied that it was better to let both mother and child die rather than let the mother live just to fulfill the principle of having absolutely no abortions. With all apologies to the mentally disabled, that's just retarded logic.

Obama also had one of the best comebacks in that same debate, "no one is anti-life". I think that must have made some of the neanderthals sit up and think. Somehow people who are pro-choice get painted as wild-eyed rampant babykillers when that cannot be further from the truth.

When society gives women reproductive choice (which includes access to contraceptives, adoption, AND sex education in addition to abortion) it empowers a woman to be more financially independent, potentially more fulfilled, to live a healthier life, and to be a better mother by concentrating higher quality resources into fewer, healthier children, at a time in her life of her choosing. There will still be moms out there who will choose to have 16 kids and do a decent job raising them, but it is their choice, and the vast majority of women will choose to have fewer children than if they just let nature take its course.

Yes, abortion is awful, but I do think that it is a necessary medical procedure that ought to be available to all women. I might be a naive optimist, but I think that every child should be healthy with a decent standard of living (i.e. able to make it past birth), wanted, and loved.

The root problem here is not "loose morals" but rather poverty. For better or for worse, women are the primary caregivers for children, and often the sole financial provider. Criminalizing abortion and forcing women to carry every pregnancy to term is just another way to hobble women (who already earn less than men to begin with) and their children (and seriously, you would think that it is 1850 the way this debate rages on).

Want to curb abortions? Provide free healthcare for pregnant women and mothers of newborns - 5 years. Improve the adoption process (and make it less expensive for adopters). Provide comprehensive sex education to children as young as nine (because girls can go through puberty that young these days); they can handle it -- it's not exactly rocket science. Increase funding for research into rare genetic diseases. Increase sentencing for molesters, rapists, and people who commit incest (incestors?) Provide free counseling, housing (if necessary), and other resources for anyone reporting molestation, rape, or incest, so the victim can safely be removed from the influence of the perpetrator. Provide universal access without a prescription to morning-after contraception (which technically isn't an abortion since the fertilized egg, if there is one, has not yet implanted). Teach young boys to respect women and girls, and to treat them with equanimity in society; teach them about family planning and parenting, and what they are expected to do should they become a father, and teach them in school because you can't trust parents to do it.

Moreover, lets stop letting people who refer to a mangled 2000+ year-old document (from the bronze age, written by men who hadn't a clue about even the medicine of the time) as the absolute truth in every matter have so much influence over our modern laws, governance, culture, and society. A system of morals in complete absence of pragmatism is destined to fail (i.e. Marxism -- sounds like a great idea on paper, but really horrid in practice. And yes, I just compared fundamental Christianity to Marxism), and will fail fastest when it is forced on an unwilling populace.