STOP ABORTING REASON

There is a lone, elderly, but physically healthy woman who stands with a stop sign that reads: STOP ABORTION/DEFEND LIFE.

There is a little blurb about Jesus too, but my eyesight is poor and I can’t quite make it out.

She stands there all afternoon, praying and swaying with her sign. She believes this will make a difference to her afterlife. She is a woman of faith.

She was there last week, standing on the corner, and again this week. When I see her I have this tremendous urge to do a drive-by screaming:

STOP BLIND FAITH! DEFEND REASON!

But of course I don’t.

She looks absurd standing there by herself pleading with an Invisible Man in the Sky to save unborn zygotes from not being born. Meanwhile millions of babies and children who ALREADY exist in the world writhe in pain and suffering, often dying of curable and preventable diseases. And it isn't just AIDS and malaria ending these innocent lives - they are also dying from what would be minor, easy to treat health problems in the developed world, such as diarrhea and dehydration. Do you hear anything from the likes of the lone zealot in question advocating for THOSE lives, lives which are being tortured into an infantile grave in THIS reality? Educating women and allowing them to make informed decisions about their reproduction actually LESSENS infant and childhood suffering in the world and lowers mortality rates, as well as lessens the incidence of abortion itself. 

In other words, allowing safe surgical terminations of pregnancy in addition to easy accessed contraceptives, education and most importantly the freedom of choice DOES defend life. But of course fanatics are fanatics - it's all about their fanaticism and has very little to do with reason or even the actual belief they are being fanatical about. They are a crazy bunch of wackos.

And because this protester does look rather crazy, I briefly wonder if in addition to her religiosity she has wandered off from the psychiatric residential facility up the street. But no. She is a believer and that's all; although how does one really differentiate between religious fundamentalism and insanity? I think it's the same thing.

It is impossible to know just by glancing at her and her sign whether she is Catholic, Pentecostal, Anglican, Lutheran or some other protestant, maybe a Mennonite or a Baptist, but she is clearly a Christian of some sort, since the sign does mention Jesus. She has that severe, unsmiling, judgmental look of conservative Christianity, in any event.

I am familiar with this look. It is the same look that helped to instill a fear of eternal damnation in my own brain at a very young age. I fight against this irrational fear constantly, but in a vague, in the back of my mind kind of way – like a little fruit fly buzzing around in my head that I am not quite quick enough to catch and squash. I can’t actually see it, but I can hear it, so I know it lives on.

So I don’t scream at this religiously driven anti-choicer. I also don’t throw anything at her. I do not like the use of violence or excessive aggression to combat hatred, ignorance, inhumanity, false beliefs or offensive opinions because it seems illogical, like the pro-lifers who kill in the name of life. It does not make sense.

It also seems a tad dissonant to create your morality around a biblical definition and base your anti-choice stance on that definition, when considering what scripture says about slavery, rape, genocide, torture, sexism, bigotry and racism. It is horrifying what you find when you read religious texts with what Ayaan Hirsi Ali refers to in her memoir Infidel "the shutter" opened. 

The shutter is constructed in your brain by religion and is kept shut by religion. Only your own mind can open it and it is a very difficult thing to do. For many, as with our lonesome abortion protester, that shutter is never pried open.

With regards to pro-choice, those hypocrites with their "morals" and sanctimonious bullshit do not have some inherent right to dictate what a perfect stranger decides to do with her OWN body - it is HER life, not theirs. Redirect all that activism and outrage towards the lives that DO need help and public outcry as they exist, but barely so, in the world now. Stay out of the uterus that does not belong to you. Your opinions are not welcome there. The religious bigots and the deluded self-righteous have been trespassing in women's reproductive organs for far too long and it is not their place. A woman can make her own decisions about her own life including her own fertility, which in many ways in and of itself IS her life, or at least a huge part of life in that it can significantly change the direction and course of HER existence.

So besides believing women should be left alone to make their own "ethical" choices about their lives and bodies, I also believe this: The protester who stands in the name of Hypocrisy and Make Believe on the corner of a women’s centre is the straggler of  a disease I hope one day is eradicated.