Adoption, not Abortion!

Middle of Kansas, we saw this sign that read “Adoption, not Abortion”. All sorts of things came to mind as I continued to drive. Most of the things I thought bordered on the insanity of whomever paid to have the sign made. This is a midwestern state that on the outside you would think of as part of the bible belt. But several months ago, Kansas voted on abortion reform and low and behold, the results of that vote blocked any new law that would make abortion illegal. This midwestern state that has signs dotted across the landscape with their very conservative values. Not the state that you’d expect to vote to uphold a woman’s right to choose.

It got me to thinking about just how many kids are there in the adoption system in the United States? Googling this, I discovered that of the near 400,000 children in foster care, approximately 117,000 are awaiting to be adopted. I suspect the majority of the people calling for a no choice solution when it comes to abortion, have no idea how many kids are already in the system. I feel I could safely say that following their vote, you’d never see these people stepping up to participate in the adoption process. In fact, after voting, these mostly Republican people think its someone else’s problem to deal with and more or less will bury their head in the sand of reality when it comes to these kids’ best interest after birth.  It’s a very hypocritical logic.

If there was a bill to increase taxes to provide care for these unwanted children, they would be the same folks yelling about these increases in taxes for funding what would be some left-wing Democrat socialist program. God knows how confused these peoples’ lives must be when every step they take is a contradiction to the step they took before. God forbid any money being raised from tax revenue to build facilities because that would set these people off more than conversations about DACA. I’ve never really understood the logic surrounding one’s conscious, but justifying a total lack of conscious confuses me even more. Maybe, whatever they decide to be a good or bad, right or wrong, has to do with whether they feel that decision involves some weird bible interpretation.

In other words, these people wash their hands of their decision as well as the people actually affected by that decision and somehow believe they have met their burden of good, thus they can have passage to Heaven. I, on the other hand, believe they have now more to answer too on their judgement day in front of the Pearly Gates.

I’m going to digress a little and mention something else that seems wrong about these people. These are the same people that persecute and ridicule people of color, the LGBTQ community, mix race marriages, and even those with a handicap as Donald Trump demonstrated. They always feel they have the Bible on their side. But I always think two things about the Bible, show me where in the Bible it condones this mean action against people that mistakenly believe the Bible is in support of their actions. The other, being what I have mentioned before in other posts, the Bible was written by men inspired by God or Jesus. These men were from the Middle East, where women and LGBTQ people are often killed because of who they are. Same for mixed race relationship. Iran, after an uprising from the younger people of the country, just vanquished the Morality Police. I generally am always confused when people start pumping the Bible at me and saying it is the word of God. But is it? How do we know God came to these men, and never women, to ensure the word is written just as God or Jesus required. Can we trust these people didn’t take some liberties of embellishment to make the reader more scared or inspired to have faith that they translated what God wanted them to say? Frankly, all I really need to do is think about is the reaction these sanctimonious people would have if Jesus was reborn and God reached out to people to rewrite the Bible to accommodate modern times. I’m pretty sure they would persecute these people for their faith and persecution would guide them in the wrong direction of non-acceptance. They all know Jesus is meant to return someday, but would they recognize the moment? I seriously doubt they could recognize anything outside of their biases set in the stone of their mind.

I don’t believe any of us have the answer. I think about the right to choose as being deflecting blame. I know this will irritate my daughters and wife, but what I mean is that somehow, we can wash our hands of the abortion because weren’t involved. What if the act of having an abortion was a sin? Then the only person committing the sin would be the participants and we would be absolved in some way because we weren’t part of that process. I think for some the answers are clear cut. Many from both sides of the aisle or political ideology will share a conviction that their opinion is the true right. Then, there are people like me. I’m alright with the pro-choice side and honestly feel I could get behind their logic more than the bible thumping 2000-year-old ideology. I’m alright with the pro-life side on the grounds of the conviction they have about it, but in both cases I have limits. I generally am turned off by sanctimonious opinion. I’m equally irritated by the so-called educated elitists that look down their nose at the sheep from the right. Left or right, wrong or right, ordained or educated, I just find them all to be merely opinionated. Opinions affecting those that are the source of the discussion from the beginning of this post. Honestly, do any of us really know the right answer? I’m doubtful, so we just go with the answer that our environment has led us to believe. There is nothing wrong with that, I just don’t think it is someone else’s responsibility to try and convince me to believe the way they believe. So, my ire with the sign reading “Adoption, not Abortion”, really lies in the fact it is an opinion. I was irritated in the fact they were trying to make me believe the right way is through their belief. I don’t agree! I don’t think we should be adding to the populace of the unwanted. The impacts on these people and the feeling that they weren’t loved bothers me. The real cost to deal with the mental health of these folks is our burden and I do believe I should bear responsibility for their well being even though I don’t agree with the reason they are in the position they are. I also believe we bear the responsibility in a pro-choice situation as the mother struggles with what might be the hardest decision she ever will face. I suggest this is why the issue has never been truly resolved. It isn’t as simple as I support pro-choice or pro-life. It is the political parties that want to oversimplify that answer. It is not simple and certainly shouldn’t be political. One way to make sure the wrong decision will be made is to let politicians and supreme court justices decide for us. Let it come to a vote and live with the consequences. I will trust a couple hundred million people before supporting six hundred or less politicians.