cutting this post due to talk of sensitive topics such as abortion and fetal death.
I am all for people who are passionate about their causes. Lord knows that I am passionate about mine. Even if I disagree with what they are supporting (for example: banning abortion and gay marriage) I still believe in their right to support their cause and rally for it. What I do not support, and what drives me up the freaking wall, is when they take information and SPIN it into illogical and incorrect statements. I go through this almost every day on my drive to work.
I drive past a women's clinic on my way to the hospital where I work. It does everything related to women's health including abortions. However, abortions are a small part of the practice. There is a group of people who are out there protesting abortion almost every morning. I agree with their right to protest. I agree with their right to be passionate about their cause. But what really, really bothers me? First, they have these blown up pictures of dissected aborted fetuses all along the side of the road. You know what? I get it. Shock and surprise and make people have a violently emotional reaction to your pictures.
What I don't get? What I do NOT stand for? Is when they take pictures from second and third trimester abortions and act like it's the normal. No doctor in their right mind is going to abort a fetus past the 12/13 week mark without a SOLID medical reason. No woman is going to abort a fetus at that gestation without a serious medical reasoning. If you want to protest something, protest it. Stand up for what you believe in. But do not take a small sample of the population with extenuating circumstances and act like they're doing something without giving thought to the huge emotional toll it will take on them. These are not decisions made lightly and yet they act like they are. They act like women are are getting them because it's some new fad. It sickens me to drive by these people in the morning.
I've never been pregnant. I've never had a child or lost a child. But I do know who I am. I do know that if I was pregnant with a child who had a fatal condition and I had the choice between delivering prematurely and having a few moments with my child while they were alive and I got to hold them and tell them how much I loved them as they slipped from this earth ... that is what I would want to do. For me, for some reason, the horror of delivering a stillborn child and never getting to see them move or breathe is more of a horror than watching my child die. I don't know. Neither option is anything that any woman should ever have to experience and my heart goes out to those women who have had to deal with that utter horror.
I know a few women who have lost children. I know them in life and I know them through the internet. Every time I drive by this clinic and I see these protestors who are misusing such specific examples literally makes me sick. It doesn't make me sick in the way they wish, however. It makes me angry. It makes me think about all these sweet, beautiful women who have lost a child of their very own and it makes me want to punch these people in the face. It makes me rage. How dare they compare apples and oranges?
Please, please don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that the decision to abort is magically less emotional before that 12/13 week mark. I know it's not. I'm absolutely not saying that it is. Whenever you have to make that decision it's going to be emotional. What upsets me the most is that one of these pictures is CLEARLY a fetus around the 20/21 week mark and they have it posted along side the pictures of aborted remains from the first trimester. It's so not the same thing. And to know that some parents' terminally ill, dead child is being used by these people for reasons that don't even apply to the situation ... I'm crying just writing this. It hurts my heart to know that these people don't care about the woman behind the situation, about the couple or the family. All they want is to save babies, whether the babies can be saved or not.
Be passionate about your causes. Find something you believe in and support it with all you have. But please, please remember to be factual, to stick to the point, and don't ever embellish just to make a point. If you can't make the point without lying, then you don't belong making the point. I think if everyone just thought a little bit more about their fellow man and their fellow man's feelings that we could be on the right path to a happier world.
very good post!
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