© Blaine Howard
614 words

I believe that the extraordinary and disproportionate burdens women face in the reproductive process make it imperative that they have complete authority and control over whether they become pregnant.

To this end, I think that every effective means of contraception should be freely available to them, and at negligible cost. Anyone who opposes contraception on religious grounds is admitting such a phobia of sex as to suggest it is only warranted when the woman is willing to submit to the Russian roulette of possible pregnancy.

There may still be people who hold that every act of sexual intercourse, to be acceptable, should be entered in the baby sweepstakes. These people would do well to wean themselves from LSD, or whatever other hallucinogen is keeping reality so remote from them.

I also believe that women should have the option of terminating a pregnancy, if possible, during its first month, and at any time before viability when it poses a significant health risk to them.

As to the matter of "unwanted" or "unintended"
pregnancies, however, there must be a painful adjustment to the fact that a humanoid with a brain and a heart is alive. A corollary is that this life should not be taken unless its mother is in danger of losing hers.

Why this colossal, and from all appearances unfair onus has been laid at the feet of women is a mystery. Women’s reproductive portion has been, is, and ever will be the cause of inequitable and undue suffering. The legitimately shed tears over this would fill a legion of bathtubs. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.

Millions of people suffer myriad disabilities but we don’t give them dispensation to break our laws or breech our most deeply held moral values. Millions have suffered blistering social inequities for hundreds of years yet they are granted no indulgences in basic matters of morality.

To underscore a point previously made, when a doctor sees no evidence of heart or brain function in a patient, the patient is pronounced dead. The reverse, then, is just as logical. A four to five week old fetus has a heart and a brain. It is alive. Our law and moral code forbid the taking of life except in self-defense.

It is resoundingly true and inequitable that men don’t have to experience pregnancy and all of its life disrupting, uncomfortable, even painful manifestations. It is also true that, on average, women live approximately 2555 days longer than do men. No one, I hope, would suggest that we kill women 7 years ahead of their projected life spans in order to even things out.

Biology certainly is not destiny with regard to becoming a physicist, an astronaut, a sheriff, a soldier, a plumber, a welder or the leader of one’s country.

Yet so far at least, it is women who have the capacity for and the experience of pregnancy. Our adoption system should make it possible for any woman to end her association with a newborn at birth. Morning after to three-week-after pills should be fabricated and universally available. To repeat a point previously made, reliable contraceptives should be as accessible as candy bars. Generous assistance, including the kind with arms and legs should be automatically available to poor women who decide to rear their babies. Employers and the outside world in general, should accommodate the needs of pregnant women and new mothers.

In summation, women have the right to view
pregnancy as a heavy, inequitable burden. Our society should marshal its good will to lessen that burden. The irreducible fact, nevertheless, is that a four-week-old fetus is a human life, that, so long as it doesn’t endanger the physical life of the mother, should command as much respect as any other.