Tuesday, March 13, 2012

abortion = irresponsibility

Last week, I spoke to a young man outside Dr. Emily's who had an "ex" girlfriend inside.


He said he was 20 and his girlfriend was 17. (That's illegal.) He was supposedly not dating her anymore, but was there with her and her mother "to be supportive." He said he knew abortion was bad and he'd done his research, so he was aware of the consequences and what it looked like, but the girl wanted the abortion and he didn't want to rock the boat by anymore by trying to change her mind. (This was after first saying that the girl didn't want it and was being pressured by her mother.) He said he could have gotten a 2-year jail sentence because the relationship was legally statutory rape, and he knew that, so he wasn't pushing his luck.


This guy had apparently gotten a different girl pregnant when he was 15 and now had a 5-year-old son, so he knew what it meant to have a baby young. Speaking with him was very strange because at the same time he was admitting abortion was bad, he was saying "it's her choice" and "I warned her that she'd have to get up in the middle of the night to change diapers...she's just a kid...having a baby robs you of your childhood."


As he talked in circles and changed the topic to birth control and "protection," he told us that he didn't believe in birth control but that he had used a condom and said "it's not my fault if the condom didn't work." I told him that responsibility starts with the decision to have sex, because you can't trust birth control or condoms. I said "Do you have any idea how many people I talk to who have gotten pregnant while using birth control or condoms? What are you going to do if this happens again with somebody else?" He gave a "not my fault" shrug.


Then one of the girls standing with me told him, "a real man has self control." How true that statement is! Yet he just brushed it aside saying, "But I have needs, too." He was referring to that age-old lie that because men want sex, they need sex- regardless of the circumstances or consequences for the woman.


Needless to say, by the end of the conversation we were pretty convinced that he was an irresponsible sleazeball who was going to continue to get girls pregnant and bring them to abortion clinics. Nothing new there.


So after this guy had engaged in an illegal sexual relationship with a girl inside the clinic whom he clearly didn't even have respect for, much less concern for (based on the way he talked about her), she was inside getting rid of the evidence. I wondered, did she lie about her boyfriend's age, or did the clinic just ignore it? (That's protocol for abortion clinics- check out liveaction.org.)



How sad that this guy didn't learn his lesson the first time, at age 15. He was still being promiscuous, but he only had to "pay" for it with cash. The girl will have to pay for it with emotional and physical consequences that might affect her for the rest of her life.

No comments: