Abortion Rights

As a man I really struggle knowing what it is I can say, or be allowed to say, when it comes to abortion rights for women, since it is not something that my body will ever have to worry about.

However, I know that denying women and girls the chance of abortion, on the basis that once an embryo has begun it deserves more rights than the person carrying it, is wrong.

There are so many reasons why safe, legal abortions are good. From controlling population growth, to the physical and mental health of women, to reducing the burden that is unwanted children, both on families and on a society.

And it simply comes from elements of the population wanting to have complete control over others, to have power over them for the simple reason that it scares them to be without it.

Men and patriarchies have controlled the world for so long, that now they are beginning to see a hint of a swing against them (for let’s be honest, for all the emancipation, women’s lib and #metoo, barely anything has changed), they are acting to reverse even the most minor changes.

I read that we all have bodily autonomy over whether we would want to provide a blood transfusion to someone, in order to save their life. Our dead bodies have bodily autonomy, when it comes to organ transplants, again in order to save another life. However, women will not have that bodily autonomy when they are pregnant, just in order to save a small bunch of cells.

This perfectly describes the double standards at work, without even going into the ability to own a gun and how many lives are destroyed by that weapon on a daily basis.

My hope is that these recent episodes of curtailing abortion rights become nothing more than an outlier, when we look back upon the history of equality. However, my fear is that it is the embryo of something far more sinister.

As such I have been inspired to two poems for this post:

Poem #1

Barely a foetus

Unknowing; unaware 

Potential in a bunch of cells

Thousands of women

Desperate; in fear

Living their own personal hell

Twenty five men

In full control

Keeping control for themselves

Poem #2

Beginning to grow

But not yet formed

Still in an embryo

Nourished and warmed

By right wing powers

And the patricarchy

Gaining new life

By mother's misery

For those who will suffer

And that reason alone

It should be aborted

And never condoned