A Look at Conservativeness and a Very Controversial Subject

I am a firm believer that being either entirely conservative or entirely liberal is the wrong way to go. I also believe that holding on to beliefs both conservative and liberal without being able to consider the other side of the merits of the other side and considering everything that the other side does is inherently wrong is also the wrong way to go. Somewhere in the middle, I believe, is the true answer, but too few are willing to go there.

It seems to me, however, is that true conservatives seem to react to things without truly planning for them. I believe this is what happened in Iraq. We need to attack! We need to attack! There are terrorists there! Ok, but what do we do after we invade? It doesn't matter! We need to attack and attack now and the rest will just sort it out! OK, but what about a strategy for rebuilding the country after? No, we must attack now!!!

Or, we need to deregulate! We need to make things easier for big business! Ok, but what plans are in place to make sure they do the right things with that freedom? It doesn't matter! The market will sort itself out! Just deregulate!

The one area where it really bothers me, though, is on the one issue I hate discussing. That issue would be abortion. I hate thinking about it because I do believe I have no right to really have much of an opinion on the matter. I am a male. I cannot give birth. I have no wife or, at the time of this writing, a girlfriend. I have no daughter. I have no grand-daughter. It seems the epitome of hubris for me to have an opinion about what as woman can do with her body.

I am also willing to concede the fact that you don't necessarily have to be a conservative to be pro-life. You may be all for many liberal ideas and ideals but be four-square against abortion. But it seems to me that mostly it is conservatives who are against abortion.

At the same time conservatives are, in general, against social programs. They cringe and fume at the idea of their tax money going to social programs to help those in need. They seem to think that this just leads to abuse of the programs and laziness on the part of those being helped. They don't want welfare and they don't want programs in that same ilk. This is where I see a short-sightedness in those who are pro-life. It comes in a simple question that I would honestly like to ask a those who are pro-life and conservative.

Let us imagine that you manage to get the right support, the right people in office and the right people on the Supreme Court. Let us imagine that you manage to get something passed that does outlaw abortion in the United States. You have protested and showed the photos of aborted fetuses and you have chanted and shouted at women coming and going from clinics. You have now won. Here is my question:

What's your plan now?

What are you going to do once you've won? How are you going to help the young soon-to-be mothers? Or are you going to sit smugly in your suburban homes, smiling to yourself that you have done the right thing and hope that the world just sorts itself out?

See, the statistics seem to show that the people who get the most abortions are young women, mostly teenagers, who come from impoverished homes. These homes tend to be in mostly minority neighborhoods. They are not people in mostly white suburban neighborhoods across the country. What are you going to do now to help that 14-year-old girl who is now going to be a mother because she made a mistake?

Are you going to support social welfare programs that will give her money to raise this child? Let's imagine that she is from a big family who is barely scraping by as it is. At the thought of another mouth to feed let us assume she is kicked out of her home. What do you say then? Will you stand there personally and bring her into your home? Will you pay for her medical expenses? Will you provide her with a job at a reasonable wage so she can raise this child to make something with his or her life? Are you going to support higher taxes to increase social welfare programs to take care of this mother and her children? Are you going to support teaching sex education in schools and increasing access to birth control to try and prevent unwanted pregnancy? Or are you going to wave a bible and Jesus at them and hope for the best?

Most likely what will happen is that young mother will have to abandon whatever dreams she had for herself. No school. No career. She will have to take a job wherever she can. Maybe she will work for a big box store or the local fast food store or both. Will you support an increase in minimum wage? Will you protest as loudly for an act that these places provide their workers a reasonable living wage as you did against abortion? Or will you be against that as well because it is bad for business? What then? Then you have a single mother who has to work for two or three jobs to pay the bills. Let us say the father is out of the picture, what happens to that child?

Will you support an increase in taxes for a day care center? How about a community center to take these children and guide them while their parents are working all of those jobs? Or do you oppose that too and just hope the kid can manage on his own? What happens when he turns to a gang for a family or drugs to forget or both? Where will your righteous indignation be then?

And when you are standing there at knife or gun point, with your spouse or loved one having just been stabbed or shot next to you, in front of that child as teenager who is now demanding money from you what will you say? Will you explain your conservative views? Will you show him aborted fetuses? Will you explain why you were against the living wage and the social programs? When that child is dying from a drug overdose or by a lethal injection from the state, will you protest outside the prison or will you acknowledge that the child is just as dead if he is killed by the state as a teenager as he was as a fetus? If the abortion happens eighteen years later, is it not still just that?

From what I see, banning abortion does nothing but give us a huge amount of unwanted babies. There are not enough couples out there who want to adopt every unwanted baby and the mothers often don't have the resources to take advantage of the adoption programs. If you ban it, you don't stop it. Instead you create unsafe abortions and end up with dead mothers on top of dead babies.

The statistics show that minority babies do not get adopted as easily as Caucasian babies. Celebrities who want minority babies go to other countries to get as much press as possible rather than staying at home. Will you support increased taxes and programs to improve the foster care programs? Those assigned to watch over foster children are overwhelmed with work and more people are needed, are you going to volunteer? Will you be the one to check on them and make sure the children in foster care are taken care of?

Or is it not better that as a free country we realize that no matter how many bibles we throw at them or how much we try to scare them that teenagers will continue to have sex? Far too many will have unprotected sex and there will continue to be pregnancies. Those mothers will not all come from large supportive homes. Is it not better to realize that in a free country we have an obligation to help those mothers and provide them with as many choices as possible? Sure, we try to educate them and give them other options besides abortion, but if they choose it should we not, as a free country, provide it to them safely and without condemnation?

If your answer to those questions remains a resolute no, then I ask you to tell me. Tell me your plan. What do you do after you succeed and the protesters have gone home? What happens now?