The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

So you think ending a pregnancy is baby killing. Pure and simple like most things in life, right? No room for compromise on this, I guess, too bad for the victim of rape or the mother whose life is endangered if the embryo is carried to term. Tough luck, will of God, the Bible tells you so, whatever. A doctor who performs an abortion, they’re a murderer. Someone who helps, they’re an accomplice to infanticide. A pharmaceutical company that makes and sells an abortion pill, well, they’re selling poison and they’re killers. Pure and simple.

I wish I could think like this, all blacks and whites, no greys, no ambiguities, nothing that would keep me awake at night. Just read my religious text, Christian, Moslem, Dr. Seuss and find the answers spelled out. Women need to cover their bodies and their faces, music is evil, blasphemers should be punished. Says so in the Quaran. Says so in the Bible. Says so by the cat with the hat. Even when I refuse to believe science or the news, I can believe in that. And I have a hat.

The trouble is we need to all come to some kind of accommodation on what is right and what is wrong and what falls in between. What you call murder, most people in this country – and I literally mean most – consider this a woman’s health issue, a women’s rights issue, a question of who controls her own body, you or her. We could agree to make having a child less burdensome for the poor, we could make contraceptives and sex education available to more of us, we could make abortion something other than a desperate solution. But no, we aren’t really a very baby friendly nation, us Americans. Poor health care, high infant mortality rates, high mother mortality rates, poor parental leave programs, high daycare rates, do I need to go on?

If abortion is killing, what is selling handguns or semi-automatic rifles? Where’s your outrage? Where’s your consistency? Guns don’t kill, outlaws do? I will tell you, as warning, you may think you can tell women what to do but those days are long gone with Ozzie and Harriet and the Beaver. They’re not going to wear the burqa and they’re not going to turn back the clock to the Eisenhower Era. You may think this is making America great again, but you will reap the whirlwind of women’s rage. Be careful what you wish for….

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