To Kill or Not to Kill

I was watching on the news the other night about how my state seems to have a growing need for foster parents and I confess that while I did not suddenly feel the desire to rush right out and adopt someone else's progeny, I did however, pause to consider the value of abortion.

Abortion is one of the most heated topics in our nation today. And while abortion is currently legal, the debate over the "Right to Life" never ends and while our living children go hungry in the streets and our orphanages continue to swell with parent-less children waiting eagerly to be adopted by strangers. It seems to me that the very people screaming for the right of that child to be born, to exist, never stop to think of what will happen to that child after its first breath. They are content in the knowledge that they won the right to force their morals on our society's women, and after that, they wash their hands of it.

Some children are born only to starve to death. Would it not be fair then to allow women who can't take care of the child to abort the pregnancy, thereby saving the child from starvation, lack of education, abuse, etc.; as well as alleviate a future tax burden on society?

Let it be known here, however, that I do agree with regulations for abortion, as I think partial birth abortions are as much murder as killing an infant in it's crib. If the mother has prevaricated well into the third trimester before deciding to abort, tough shit. But while I may think this, it's not my right to decide that the eight month pregnant lady down the street can't abort the child on a whim. It's her body, her responsibility and of course, her conscience, let her deal with it; don't call me unless I was the last one to sleep with her before she started growing sideways. Which of course brings me to another point about which I have heard little or nothing about. The father's rights to have an input.

As long as the woman became pregnant as a result of consensual sex, then the father of that child should have a right to influence the decision about the abortion of said child. The child is after all, half his, regardless of its residing in the mother for the first nine months of its life.

Optimally, people would discuss their opinions on possible abortion should the woman come up pregnant, but again, that would be optimum. However in today's world of one night stands and short term relationships, (God I love this century!) people are barely together long enough to learn each other's names, much less discuss the politics and morality of abortion. But then, if people did discuss such things when they met, I am quite certain that there would be significantly fewer one night stands and the pregnancies resulting from them.

Here's another bit of "food for thought" to get stuck between your teeth: our nation's job market is constantly shrinking. Companies are laying off more and more people, they are outsourcing to other countries or moving outside of the U.S. completely. And yet, we continue to breed like jack rabbits on ecstasy. In 2005 there were just over 4,000,000 babies born in this country, (according to the National Vital Statistics Report), and only about 63% of our nation is currently employed, about 144 million. Analysts say that 63% is pretty good, but I'm not enthusiastic about our nation's future if we keep making more babies than our economy will likely be able to sustain over the long term. Maybe it's just me, but when I think of this on a global scale, I'm even less optimistic.

And I'm aware of those out there who say, abortion could cause us to lose the next, Einstein or Beethoven; but abortion will also relieve us of future Ted Bundys or Adolf Hitlers. It's a crap-shoot, we can only guess what we're killing by studying what we let live.