Boldy Go, Bitch

“Dude, you haven’t gone outside in a while.” “Yeah, last time I went out I got this wicked sunburn.”

“Are you still up?” “Yeah, I started bing watching this show on Netflix.”

but jfc, the amount of time it takes to constantly keep people moving and make sure they’re in the right spaces and trying to come up with wording for it is always such a shock. 

Like, fuck, I made you pick up a coffee cup, you need to put it down at some point. also I can’t remember what I dressed you in, can you push up your sleeves? I don’t remember if you even have your shirt on.

I, the writer, frantically scribble down a rough map and route. “No, obvious now, but I still have to write the part where he yells–”

“I’M BEING IGNORED,” the antagonist yells and begins to flap his arms. “LOOK I AM ALSO DYNAMIC.”

“Whoa there,” the main character says mildly and begins to do squats. They pull out a weapon. “Take a look at this escalation!”

“No!” I cry, “he took your gun, like, five minutes ago–”

“Second gun,” the main character says and cocks it. Pauses. “Was I on a low squat or a high one just now?”

“HOW LONG HAVE I BEEN BLOWING RASPBERRIES?” the antagonist wants to know, still spinning.

“When did you start spinning?” I ask in despair.

See, we have this concept called “bodily autonomy.” It’s this….cultural notion that a person’s control over their own body is above all important and must not be infringed upon. 

Like, we can’t even take LIFE SAVING organs from CORPSES unless the person whose corpse it is gave consent before their death. Even corpses get bodily autonomy. 

To tell people that they MUST sacrifice their bodily autonomy for 9 months against their will in an incredibly expensive, invasive, difficult process to save what YOU view as another human life (a debatable claim in the early stages of pregnancy when the VAST majority of abortions are performed) is desperately unethical. You can’t even ask people to sacrifice bodily autonomy to give up organs they aren’t using anymore after they have died. 

And here’s another point: When you say that “rape is the exception” you betray something FUNDAMENTALLY BROKEN about your own argument.

Because a fetus produced from sexual assault is biologically NO DIFFERENT than a fetus produced from consensual sex. No difference at all.

If one is alive, so is the other. If one is a person, so is the other. If one has a soul, then so does the other. If one is a little blessing that happened for a reason and must be protected, then so is the other. 

When you say that “Rape is the exception” what you betray is this: It isn’t about a life. This isn’t about the little soul sitting inside some person’s womb, because if it was you wouldn’t care about HOW it got there, only that it is a little life that needs protecting.

When you say “rape is the exception” what you say is this: You are treating pregnancy as a punishment. You are PUNISHING people who have had CONSENSUAL SEX but don’t want to go through a pregnancy. People who DARED to have consensual sex without the goal of procreation in mind, and this is their “consequence.“ 

Secondly, I find it really interesting that you seem to think it’s free to have a child. In the United States, a quick googling tells me that the typical hospital bill for a birth is at least $5,000+. Do you have $5,000 to shell out on a whim? No? I didn’t think so.

Thirdly, that’s not even taking into account all the irreversible changes that pregnancy makes to a woman’s body. Even the easiest, least complicated pregnancies usually involve increased fatigue and nausea. The mother usually teaches a point where they can’t work which is LOST INCOME. Again, how many people do you know that can just not work for 2-3 (or more) months?

Fourthly, there are *plenty* of children who already need adoption. The chances of your child being adopted drop drastically if they have special needs or (just a guess but I’m sure there’s data to back it up) are a visible minority.