About: Abortion

Most of you must have followed the recently concluded historic elections in the US of A. Congratulations to those who rooted for the big O and for the McCain supporters – too bad folks, Sarah Palin did you in!

Anyway, this is not a post about politics (obvious from the title), but about one of most burning issues of the whole race – Abortion.

The issue is hotly debated and there are die-hard fans for both sides of the argument. Either you are "pro-life" or "anti-life". These terms represent the most dangerous pitfalls of partisanship and a proclivity to look at every issue in a black and white manner. If there is one thing I have learnt in my life, it is that there is always a lot of grey in between. There is hardly ever an issue where it is as simple as black and white. We were never meant to have things so easy.

The issue of abortion cannot be resolved in a neat manner, turned into a neat book and tucked away into a corner of a dust-filled cabinet of law books (apologies, computers and the digital age don't lend to imagination-sparking and eloquent descriptions). The whole issue of "Life" has to be understood at a more fundamental level. Is living by itself the end or as a civilized society we think that a life is called a life when the living standards, or quality of life is above a certain threshold. If that is the case, then we have to understand the effects on the quality of life on all the parties involved in the case of an abortion. In the case, of a rape child, the involved parties are the potential child, the mother, and maybe a horrified husband whose wife got raped. Then, it is important to measure the future effects on the quality of life of all the parties involved should the child be allowed to take birth and also, if this was not to be the case. Say the rape child makes the remainder of the life for a mother a living hell where she has to see the evidence of the horrific incidence day in and day out and is not able to bar those emotions; her life is as good as snuffed out. Do we really want that? Of course, not. We would ideally hope that the mother is able to overcome her memories and is able to raise the child in a healthy environment to lead a good life. But being human beings this is just wishful thinking. So if the life of the mother is going to be made a living hell in lieu of a new life, we have to ask ourselves if it is worth it. Wouldn't it be better to let the mother abort and try to lead a good life with atleast a chance of erasing the memories? As a civilized society I think it is vitally important that we give the already living atleast a fighting chance.

Let's say during the pregnancy stage itself, it was known that the child has some rare disease which would render it a cripple for it entire life, the quality of life for such a child would be low but importantly much lower for the parents going into the future. Wouldn't it be better to end the misery of the child and the parents by aborting the child? Here, of course we assume that these are unwilling parents. But let's not judge them too harshly if they decide to abort. It would take a lot of courage on anyone's part to live with such a situation and I greatly admire people who are able to do this.

And on the flip side, aborting for flimsy reasons is also something which is not acceptable. Informed individuals who have engaged in consensual sex have no right to abort the child just because they don't want the child. Even if we take the quality of life as a guiding parameter, the resulting loss of quality of life for these consenting individuals would be much lesser than the life which is not let to be.

Of course, extending this line of thought, I would even say that I support euthanasia, again taking the quality of life as a guiding parameter.

My overarching point here is that there is no such thing as being "pro-life" or "anti-life" just based on whether you a let a child life or not. You are "anti-life" even if you have let the child live but have caused a lifetime of misery for the mother. So based on the above you would think I am "anti-life" but if you have understand the line of my arguments correctly you would know that I am actually "pro-life".

Have a good day.