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We are a society that cannot take care of it people. We have enough homeless
people (the majority of them women with children) to populate a small city; our
teen-agers face unbearable pressure to perform sexually while having to combat
drugs and alcohol abuse among their peers and in their homes. The children of
the next generation look forward to a world that is overpopulated and
ecologically in danger. Our elderly sit in nursing homes or in cold water flats
watching Oral Roberts because many of us are too busy to visit with them. This
evidence alone shows we can not take care of the people who are already in
existence; thus, how can we rant and rave about those yet born?
Who cares about them after birth when they are no longer babies, especially
the ones addicted to crack or alcohol, the ones who will never have a chance to
learn? Sure some of them will be adopted by supposed loving parents, but look at
child abuse statistics on adopted children -- it happens though we wish it
didn't. The real question, however, is how many of the right-to-life advocates
(RLAs) are willing to give time, not money, not one week-end a month, but day
after day, year after year, care to some of the problem children who exist right
here, right now. How many RLAs check on the placement, then progress of
these children? From I see they want to shout in the limelight, not work in the
dim hallways of the crippled and infirm.
I cannot make a decision if abortion is right or wrong; I don't think anyone
can. However, I know a couple of facts.
- A person is considered dead as soon as the brain waves cease; brain
waves do not begin in a fetus until the second trimester.
- Most women who have abortions have them because their lives and their
sanity are in jeopardy, as we are not a society that supports women with
children, especially unwed women. (Welfare is not support; it is another means
of keeping women subjugated, but that is another essay.)
A fitting end to my soapbox is a poem that took me seventeen years to write,
depicting the plight of both women and men in our society. It's tribute to a
young girl who chose to have her best friend kick her in the belly to end a
situation that she was neither mature enough nor intelligent enough to deal
with. When the fetus was in the toilet, it would not flush no matter how many
times she pushed the toilet lever. I will never forget the sight of her kneeling
next to the bloodied stool, weeping, begging for the toilet to flush. We were
there in that death room because abortions were illegal then. I hope women are
never forced back to self-mutilation because the RLAs shout louder than the
voices of those who should not be born.
Custodian, This Toilet Does Not Flush
This one hasn't any toilet paper,
yesterday when I went to pick up
the mail, it was stuck together
with purplish-red gunk much like my girlfriend's
unwanted fetus when we were seventeen,
and she chose to have someone kick her
in the belly so she wouldn't come to term
with the results of a night hot
with sticky fingers and wandering tongues.
Last night, when I was slicing tomatoes,
once again my sister's ex-husband was breaking
into her home -- a blade held in his fist.
His intention, the blade, the words
she used to deflect the knife at her neck.
Baby, you don't want to do this, as the red
dribble edged its way down her throat,
clashing with the blue blouse she wore.
Making him notice her, causing him
to lick his lips, his breath whiskey hot.
The thud of the knife, her body as they fell
synchronized with the slammed door. This morning
when we looked for my daughter's favorite
blue coat, a cup dropped and once again my next
door neighbor was visiting; she of the rust-colored
house with gardenias and daffodils abounding
began listing her wealth of betrayals
...his anger, the way just before
he took her, he would hurt her enough
to bring tears, and how she could not leave.
She had no job, no money, no family.
The coffee cup in her hands, stained
by the red lipstick she slashed on her lips
each day, crashed to my floor when she
startled at my child's playful shriek.
I turned away while picking up pieces,
began talking of the flowers, the rain
that was to fall that day. Later
when the moon sliced through clouds,
sirens burst my sleep. Through gauzed
curtains I saw them take her away.
Blood splashes on the sidewalk her testimony
to blue silence as they drove off,
blue as a peacock's trill.
Abortion is an act of desperation at times and logic at others. Our business,
then, is not to condemn nor condone, but to change the society which forces its
women to have abortions because we do not offer quality of life recompense for
the unwed nor the single parent. When we begin taking on society's ills in a
humane manner, then I might join the RLAs in picketing clinics that offer
abortion because someone's pleasure denied life. Maybe not though because
who am I to say whether a woman is capable of taking care of a child. Only she
knows that, and I have to believe that abortion is such an unpleasant experience
that a woman would not choose one lightly. I think the RLAs forget that
fact in their demonstrations of righteousness. Not one of the women I know
who had an abortion did so without grave consideration. Moreover, each of them
still suffer from the circumstance. One wonders, then, if the RLAs
demonstrations are ways to hide their own indiscretions. Moreover, how would
they measure up if their lives were held up to the public's brutal stare.
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