You can't drive for very long down the open Interstate Highway System without coming across one of the myriad billboards urging pregnant women not to get abortions. The message is usually targeted at those who have just discovered their condition and are uncertain as to what to do, usually in the very first few weeks of pregnancy. The strategy of many who put out these billboard ads is to convince the women that what they are carrying is a fully-developed human being, often by pointing out that the heart is already beating. As I drive past sign after tedious sign, it starts to bother me a bit: I dislike them as much as I dislike all those billboards proclaiming some strip joint or adult triple-X store down the road. However...
In spite of the fact that I dislike these anti-abortion signs cluttering up my drive, I actually support the fact that they are a legitimate expression of an important debate about the rights of the unborn vs. the rights of women to make their own reproductive decisions about their own bodies. The debate takes place in the context of abortions being legal nationwide due to the 1973 Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court ruling. If they weren't, there wouldn't be the need for those signs: it wouldn't be a matter of persuasion but rather a matter of reporting lawbreakers to the authorities. Unfortunately, I think that those behind these billboards would like nothing more than to end the debate by simply criminalizing any reproductive choice that they disagree with.
The pro-choice/pro-life debate will still continue in our country regardless of the law. But I would rather the debate be one of persuasion out in the fresh, open air of free speech rather than with the hard edge of coercion and the need to take the conversation "underground". Unfortunately, the political trends in the U.S. seem to be moving in the latter direction.
In a perfect world, there would be no unwelcome pregnancies and therefore no abortions done on an elective basis. Going to term with a pregnancy completely transforms the biochemistry within a woman and exposes her to numerous risks, including the possibility of death. I know: this almost happened within my own family! To make an edict FORCING a woman to undergo this from the very early stages of pregnancy seems barbaric and should have no place within a civilized society. And it becomes worse than barbaric when those behind this deny any collective social responsibility to help care for that woman and her child after birth.
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I agree with you completely. I object to billboards because I object to billboards as eyesores, regardless of what they're trying to say. But take that complaint away and I have no issue whatsoever with people urging women not to have abortions, as long as they're doing it in non-confrontational ways (I do object to standing in front of clinics and shouting at people or otherwise getting in their faces.
ReplyDeleteTake out ads, write letters to the newspaper, post blogs and tweets, make Facebook pages -- on both sides of the issue. That's what free speech, debate, and reasonable persuasion is all about.
I also agree that everyone on both sides of the issue has the common goal of reducing the need for and the number of abortions. No one is "pro abortion"; those of us on the side of the issue that I (and you, it seems) sit favour the right to have that option available, but none of us like to see it used.
I hate billboards. Besides being a distraction to drivers who should instead be paying attention to their driving, they completely ruin the surrounding scenery. I remember rounding a curve on I-75 in Tennessee and suddenly being greeted with a would-be-beautiful scenic natural panorama ahead...with giant billboards spread out in a line in front of the trees.
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