Apparently, access to abortion is a human right and is essential to securing equal rights for women. Groups for ensuring women’s rights, human rights, and reproductive rights include access to abortion in their list of “issues.”
It is noble to fight for equal rights. Be that as it may, though, men and women are biologically different. Men may not have to think about becoming pregnant, but it doesn’t do much to protect equal rights for women by expressing frustration over the fact that women can and do become pregnant, and that it is natural and necessary to give new life and continue the species. Equal rights can be fought for without advocating abortion. Seeking to end a pregnancy and life of an unborn child, while under the guise of fighting for equal rights, denies nature and biology but does nothing to change either.
Abortion puts an end to what a woman’s body is doing naturally if sex and fertilization have occurred, which is carrying a child. Women were created with bodies to have the responsibility, joy, and sometimes pain of carrying and bearing children. Pro-abortion organizations claim to be fighting for “equal rights” and “human rights” when advocating for abortion so that women can have the same opportunities and choices as men. If pregnancy is inconvenient for a woman’s lifestyle and empowerment, than terminating the pregnancy and the life of the unborn child supposedly puts her at equal status with men. Except, the fact still remains that women can become pregnant multiple times, while men cannot at all. Seeking to change the results of a woman’s fertility in order to put her on equal status with men can never really work to empower women, but rather hide behind false promises that abortion will make everything okay.
Saying that abortion is part of “equal rights” does not work, because it says that women need to be the same as men biologically to be equal. The ability to become pregnant and pregnancy should be a difference that is embraced, not something that is sought to get rid of for the sake of “equality.”
People have sex for procreation, as well as for the sake of enjoyment. Whatever the reason to have sex, it can and does produce babies. But we live in a world that seems to neglect such a purpose and consequence of sex when there is access to birth control and abortion.
Fortunately, women’s rights have come a long way. There may still be instances of men abusing and controlling women through sex, or using women only to have their children. However, today, society sees sex as an act which both parties should enjoy and derive pleasure from. While this is a good view to have of sex, it does not change the fact that sex is still how women become pregnant.
Unfortunately, we are living in a society though that seeks to champion a culture of birth control and sex without consequences. Even though women have the (mis)fortune of getting pregnant, they are no longer regarded for their live-giving capabilities.
Besides the HHS mandate requiring that employers provide hormonal birth control to their employees, regardless of any faith or moral belief against such birth control, the Obama administration has certainly done as well as said much to perpetuate this type of lifestyle. The mandate in part comes from a recommendation from the IOM that hormonal birth control be provided as “preventive care.” This “preventive care” is preventing what a woman’s body naturally does.
President Obama is also known for his statement that “I want women to control their own health choices, just like I want my daughters to have the same opportunities as your sons. We are not turning back the clock. We are moving forward.” Someone’s son cannot become pregnant, but Barack Obama’s daughters can. It is not “turning back the clock” or a form of discrimination to say so about them, and it is not “moving forward” to try to change this fact. Obama may find it unfair that pregnancy affects his daughters more physically than it does the men who get them pregnant, and that his daughters have to take responsibility to ensure they do not get pregnant until they are ready. He is doing his daughters and other women a disservice, though, by doing away with this responsibility by advocating for abortion.
There is also a campaign from the National Women’s Law Center called “Being a Woman is Not a Pre-Existing Condition.” Of course being a woman is not to have a pre-existing condition. But taking the responsibility to acquire birth control for oneself is up to the individual if she wishes to block producing children.
Women can control when they become pregnant and who initiates that pregnancy. To be 100 percent positive that they will not become pregnant, they can practice abstinence. Also, natural family planning is a highly successful form of birth control, with a success rate of 97-99 percent, and which is also natural and helps a woman determine when she is most fertile when she does wish to have children. Or they can acquire easily accessible birth control pills and condoms. But to actually end a pregnancy does not empower women.
Abortion is described as the termination of a pregnancy, to prevent the birth of the unborn child. This description comes from bpas, a pro-abortion organization in Britain. Abortion thus terminates what a woman’s body naturally does, while killing an innocent human being.
Fighting for a woman’s access to abortion is not so much about fighting for “equal rights” or “human rights,” then, as much as it is trying to hide away from what a woman’s body naturally does. It is a fact that men and women were created differently; men cannot become pregnant, while women can. Our biological differences should be celebrated, not fought against.
