Perspectives

How important is consistency (of thought and action) in one’s (your) daily life? If, for example, you are a vegetarian because the idea of eating meat (killing animals) is repugnant, do you then refrain from wearing leather belts or shoes? To be consistent?

We’ve all read Emerson’s maxim that “Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds….” There is an element of “truth” to that statement. I, for one, like consistent people. If you are irascible one day and then sweet as flowers in May the next, it is difficult for folks to know how to approach and deal with you. Better for those around you for you to be consistently one way or the other.

What prompts this discussion is the idea of abortion as a personal choice. Now there several ways to approach this conversation, but let me acknowledge that an abortion is a termination of life. To label it as murder, however, one would have to have a broad interpretation of murder and, two, be consistent in one’s own life that the murder of a human being is wrong in all instances.

It is a familiar lament of the anti-abortionists that “some” women use abortion as their preferred form of birth control and isn’t that morally indefensible? Two observations. One, as a man, I am not going to have an abortion. Ever. Arguably, I question whether any man has a legitimate say in this “particular” discussion because abortion is so strictly a female issue. That opinion expressed, I have not encountered many women who have indiscriminately, willy-nilly, had an abortion. As a matter of fact, I haven’t met any. Have you? Do they exist? Sure.

The women I have listened to explain why they had an abortion all found their situation(s) untenable and that they were not prepared to bring a life into “that” environment. And who am I (or you) to judge their decision making? Or, any woman’s for that matter. Do you know what is in any (a) woman’s heart and mind, let alone dictate the course of her life? It would make me extremely uncomfortable, as a man, to have anyone telling me what to do with my life and body. Are women different in this regard? Do they take to the metaphorical “whip” (bridle) better than men? I don’t think so.

The trajectory of the West, from Greece on, has been an inexorable push to/in recognizing the rights (freedom) of the individual man (male). In the past 200 years, women, too, have actively pursued the same freedoms as males. Only reluctantly have men acquiesced and allowed women the same prerogatives as men. Reproductive freedom (birth control), of not being burdened with bearing child after child after child until your teeth fall out, has helped level the “playing” field of life for women.

Consistency of thought would have Americans, both men and women, recognizing and applauding the inherent rights (and responsibilities) of acting freely as individuals. To suggest to 21st century American women anything else is tyranny. Why then do Republicans advocate repression of women?