Abortion

Such word is deemed taboo especially in the country where I live in, because the common misconception of the meaning of the word itself is filled with negative connotations, implying that this procedure is done by women who are irresponsible for their actions; having premarital sex and left with growing fetuses that will become babies that they can’t afford to have, whether it would be physically, emotionally or financially.

I have seen one too many biased news on local television programs of women who kill their own new born babies because the men who fathered the babies had done a runner and simply abandon their responsibilities. I say biased because most people respond to such cases by shaking their heads and murmuring words like ‘how could they?’ or condemning those women as ‘murderers’ and offhandedly say ‘so many people are having problems to have babies and yet these women are killing their own’.

But the media rarely blames let alone mentions the role of the males who plant the seeds to form those fetuses in the first place. The spotlights only focus on the women who cover their faces with their hands, heads down to their chest as if their crime is miles worse than those suicide bombers who kill thousands of innocent people. No one bothers to find out the missing fathers. No one cares, to be exact. It’s just too easy to put the spot on the ones who did the obvious crimes, no matter what reasons might go behind them.

Few people seem to realize that when a tiny living creature is formed inside a woman’s womb, there are basically two mature beings involved; the father and the mother. Both carry the same amount of responsibilities and in the case above, the same amount of guilt.

Funny too, how the media rarely focuses on women who got pregnant through rape or incest. No one ever seems to want to know how these women feel.

Having their rights and liberty taken off from them, and in most cases, their youths too.

Carrying something inside their wombs that is a part of the evil-doers who had done the unthinkable to them, knowing that it is growing inside them.

In war with their own selves because of the hatred they feel towards the unknown creature inside of them, yet the realization that this creature is living and most of all, innocent.

Knowing that either way, there is no getting out of it. Keeping the baby equals to having shame and guilt thrust upon their faces, and from the day the babies were born, they will be fighting the urges to hate the innocent yet unwanted child who have turned their lives completely upside down.

Terminating the unborn baby will leave the rest of their lives haunted by the images of the child they never kept, knowing and doubting about whether or not they have done the right thing, finding justifications through many other justifications made by other women who had done the same.

Again, it is about women not having a choice.

So men, look into your own hearts and try to put yourselves in these women’s positions. If you were them, what would you do? Would you have done the same or would you risk the accusing judgmental world we’re living in and put your chin up and brave yourself to keep the child? Would you loathe the person who has taken away your rights so cruelly, forcing you to carry on with another living being inside you, raising it and bracing up for the ignorant society who seem to think it’s much easier to derogate you and your child, mocking you for not having the other half and mocking your child for not having a father?

Or is it easier to abort?