Pro-Life Conditioning Within the Sociocultural Landscape of America

Let's talk about the "Miracle of Life" for a second.

I can already hear some of you sharpening your pitchforks and soaking your torches in gasoline.

Most times I read a status update or hear from one of my friends that they're just SO excited to be newly and unexpectedly pregnant, I cringe and facepalm. Not because I think any of them will be bad parents, but because of the underlying sociocultural brainwashing so obviously in effect.

It's been a great victory for the Pro-Life movement that even though they've been unable to overturn Roe v. Wade thus far, they've still managed to insert a cultural mentality that somehow, the biological process of conception is somehow wonderful and special and (without actually using the word in most cases) sacred. But here's the thing: it's really not. It's a biological process that pretty much anyone (with the obvious medical exceptions) can achieve with gratuitous amounts of unprotected sex throughout a woman's period of fertility.

Put down the tar and feathers and let me finish, please.

This is an area of the ideological war that the Pro-Choice movement has mostly lost, in my opinion. While abortion remains legal, the mainstream mentality on unexpected pregnancy remains that it's somehow special and miraculous and should be carried to term if at all possible.

Regardless of the mother's economic status and financial stability. Regardless of the fact that a woman who has children unexpectedly at a young age is much less likely to finish school or be able to pursue her own goals and dreams for the next 18 years. Nevermind that raising a child without doing something to inadvertently screw them up seriously is damn near impossible unless you have a massive fuckton of planning, at least a passing knowledge of child development education, and a sturdy support network of people with enough love and patience for you and your kid to see you through the rough times.

I find it extremely disgusting that the same people who have cultivated this "Miracle of Life" mentality are the same people who advocate abandoning the child and mother to the harsh forces of the Free Market after birth, and who will even slam her and degrade her for using government programs for assistance. The same people who would have literally spit on her for getting an abortion will now rage against her and talk shit because now that she's been talked into having the damn kid, she has to rely on WIC, TANIF, and Food Stamps to support it.

Therein lies the problem (or at least, MY problem) with the "Miracle of Life" mentality; after the birth of an unwanted child, that could have been safely aborted early on if the mother hadn't faced so much social pressure to carry it to term, suddenly the concern shifts from "Miracle of Life, Carry The Kid To Term If Possible" to a almost complete about-face, into "If You Can't Raise Your Kid Right, You Shouldn't Have Bred in the First Place". Mainstream society implicitly expects a woman to carry a pregnancy but then abandons her and the kid once it's born and persecutes them for being poor, or unready, or for any other number of sociopolitical/economic factors that should have been good reasons to consider abortion in the first place!

Therein lies the ultimate problem, with the entire Pro-Life/Pro-Choice conflict, that often gets lost in all the screaming rhetoric: As it currently stands, the very nature of the sociocultural landscape stacks the deck against women who enjoy sex but don't want kids. Anyone who argues that women who don't want kids should be abstinent is completely fucking ignoring, willfully no less, the biological realities of being a post-pubescent human. Humans have and will ALWAYS engage in sex for recreational purposes, for the enjoyment and pleasure that lies therein, and/or for the emotional bond with another person. The "Only For Procreation" philosophy stems directly from Religious and Theological mandates specifically designed to oppress and marginalize females of the species by relegating them to the status of Baby-Makers. It's the same damn mentality that advocates the philosophy that men should "bang a slut, marry a virgin", but that women who don't want kids need to just "keep their legs shut".

These are not unique revelations; they're basic tenants of any advanced civil rights and feminist theories/philosophies you might study. Maternal oppression is largely invisible because it's so tightly woven into the very fabric of modern society (at least in America and most European-based societies; I can't speak for other cultures that I haven't studied as thoroughly).

But it's a very real issue, and one that actually affects real, live humans in ways that make any "shoulda-coulda-woulda" theorizing about what a potential person *might* accomplish or become entirely irrelevant. You're comparing the very REMOTE possibility that your kid is going to have the exact right combination of genetics, environmental factors, and life interests/opportunities to be the next Einstein (or Brett Farve, if you prefer) against the statistical REALITY that most kids born into less-than-stable circumstances are much more likely to be caught up in cycles of trauma and poverty.

I sense that there are still some of you ready to call for my head on a pike for daring to suggest that perhaps ensuring the stable upbringing of a child should be a bigger priority than maintaining a viable pregnancy, so let me put it this way:

Next time you go to WalMart and see some middle-aged woman with half a dozen screaming crotchlings that she can't control, recall that she and most of the people around her likely considered every single one of those snot-nosed, shit-stained, rowdy, obnoxious, uncontrolled, maladjusted, future-rednecks to be a "Miracle of Life". Then imagine what she and her kin must be like on an airplane.