The Mad Rants of a Raving Genius

I had an interesting thought the other day. People who are avidly pro-life claim to be acting in the best interests of the baby. But is this completely true? Sure, they’re protecting the baby from being killed, but what about after?

The majority of women who get abortions do it because they don’t feel ready for a child. They’re generally poor and uneducated, living in the bad part of town. They may be drug-users or alcoholics who fear their own destructive behavior would hurt their newborn. Or perhaps they simply don’t want the child.

Now, let’s say abortion is outlawed. These women who would be most likely to get abortions must now have their babies. These babies will now grow up in poor environments. They may be unwanted, or they may have an alcoholic or crackhead for a mother. Numerous studies have shown that kids growing up in situations like this are most likely to either follow in their parent’s footsteps (become poor, uneducated, teenage mothers) or turn to a life of crime. In short, their lives really aren’t going to be very good at all. This is not to say that some won’t rise above that kind of life, but unfortunately, those kids are among the minority.

So, if you really did care about the well being of the child, you’d recognize that forcing them to be born is as much a punishment to the child as it could be to the mother, especially if they’re unwanted. Following the legalization of abortion in the United States, infanticide rates dropped rapidly, and more than 20 years later, crime dropped even more (as a direct result of all those future criminals not being born).

While I certainly don’t condone abortion as a drastic form of birth control, I would rather it be left open for women to make the choice. Believe it or not, women know if they’ll be a good mother or not, so I’d rather they had an abortion than be forced to give birth to a child who won’t be wanted or taken good care of. That’s why I’m pro-choice. Well, that and I’m a gay God-hating liberal who runs over kittens in his girly-man Prius. (In case you missed the sarcasm, I’m actually none of those. Just FYI.)