Thursday, September 14, 2006

A brief time-out from frivolity

I do my best to keep things light here. I don't like to start arguments with friends, and especially when I must conduct the arguments in online text. I have previously mentioned the lost nuance that goes along with such communication.

Be that as it may, I had to share a serious article which I found regarding Plan B contraceptive (a phrase I use rather lightly here.)

I do expect you to go read it, but allow me to summarize. Plan B is going to increase the incidence of STDs, mainly among poor women, and especially among the younger of those women.

I am totally against Plan B, as some of you may have deduced from what you know of me. Then again, I don't really think the vanilla brand contraceptive pill is good either (for various reasons I will not go into in detail at the moment). And of course, I'm entirely against the more accepted definition of abortion. However, my reasons have chiefly been based on the sanctity of human life (even embryonic), and the physical and emotional damage of chemicals and invasive procedures on the mothers who choose these. Lately I've been struck by the fact that abortion works against the ideal that "reproductive freedom" would add to the equality of the sexes.

How's that, you ask? I know proponents of Choice tell us that abortions give women freedom. And to a certain extent they are right. I'll just mention here that I think the cost of such freedom too high, but I digress. Sure, women can avoid the burden of pregnancy, but this also gives men freedom to not worry one whit about possibly becoming a father, giving them little to no reason to keep it in their pants and respect the women around them as people instead of conquests. Men should be held responsible for their actions against women and for any children they father, abortion allows them to get off scott-free. Women (and aborted fetuses, of course) pay the high price of life, health, and emotional well-being of the wide-spread availability of abortion. Grr.

Anyway, that's a tangent. Back to Plan B. This article caused a light bulb moment. Here is yet another reason to be outraged by the development and outrageous over the counter availability of this drug. How dare we subject the most unfortunate of our sex to further danger? How much are we willing to destroy at the feet of "choice"? These women will pay with their lives and flesh for the convenience of a morning-after pill. Our society owes them better.