This back and forth bickering about abortion is tiresome. Here’s some common sense as I see it.

Without meaning to generalize, I can say that most women who become pregnant chose to engage in activity that results in pregnancy. They choose to fore go birth control or allow a man to do his thing without protection. Making that choice, which they are perfectly free to do, can have very big consequences. If you can’t prevent an unwanted pregnancy by taking personal responsibility for your body how can you then expect others to respect what you choose to do with your body. Especially when in some cases you’re expecting us to pay the bill.

I, for one, understand perfectly a woman’s argument that it’s her body and her choice. No free people have a natural ability to arbitrarily accept the position of others when it concerns something so personal. However, I also understand the argument of others who take it upon themselves to “protect” the life of the unborn. They feel obligated, for various reasons, to interject themselves and confront the forces they feel are allied against them, and the unborn.

First, let me say that life is life regardless of how developed it is. If the Curiosity rover on Mars were to find a single cell amoeba under some rock on the planets surface the whole world would call it life including the pro-choice advocates. So, now that that’s settled lets move on.

As it stands now, a women’s right to choose abortion over childbirth is guaranteed and I’m okay with that. But what shouldn’t be lost in the discussion is that there is a life that will be lost forever. And for what reason, really? As I said, without meaning to generalize, I find acceptable excuses to abort a life lacking. After all, giving the child up for adoption is always an option so that can answer the financial argument.  Convenience? Somehow it’s more acceptable to abort a life than carry it to full term? How about the pink elephant in the room? Shame. Human nature says there is a degree of shame in carrying a baby to full term and them not coming home from the hospital with him or her because he or she was given up for adoption. Abortion which is most often a heavy physiological burden for a woman can somehow be tolerated but adoption can’t? I know that there are other reasons and some of them are specific to individuals but I still haven’t heard any that justify the volume of abortions done in this country.

The pro-choice proponents seem to me to dwell on the selfish side of the argument. I guess that’s easier to do if unlike me you don’t see conception as the beginning of life. If it’s not a life as far as they’re concerned then there’s nothing being killed, and I accept their right to see it as they do. But I keep coming back to the same place in my mind. Conservatives are called “extreme” for their views on abortion and all they’re asking for is that the life be allowed to grow and experience the one world any of us will ever know. The pro-choice advocates want to end life, for the most part, at will, and sometimes under horrific circumstances including late term or partial birth abortions.

So ask yourself, as I have. Who’s extreme?