2016 Postmortem

I was assigned to write a report on abortion for a sociology class in high school and argued against all abortion after reading some (one-sided) books about it at a local library. The teacher later skewered me, solely based on my opinion, and gave me a poor grade! Lol. She showed such animosity that I resented her and became more entrenched for awhile. Her main argument? It's the woman's body and her choice. That didn't work well on me because it seemed too similar to parents arguing they could do whatever they wanted to their children because they were THEIR kids.

I later imagined myself in the shoes of a woman who was raped and how it seemed barbaric to force her to carry the baby to full term, perhaps even risking her life in the process. I was previously hung up on the idea of abortion being "murder," but the well-being of the woman in that kind of uncontrolled situation was the first crack in my position.

What later flipped me over to pro-choice more than anything else? Fetuses don't even show human-like brainwaves (which still exist among sleeping adults and sometimes even among comatose adults) until about 22 weeks or so. That wrecked my previous belief that it's "murder" of a person in my mind.

There's been other influences too, such as my acceptance on practical terms. Many women will seek an abortion anyway, so why put them back in the coat hanger days?

Anyway, my main point is that people sometimes change when they're better informed.

I agree that some of the anti-abortion folks will never budge, however. One problem among religious people, I presume, is that they believe there's some invisible spirit put in a fetus at conception. Once people accept those kinds of ideas, not based on ANY evidence, they're probably lost causes.