The Danger Of Legislating On What Ifs

This is a fairly common argument that I hear against abortion. It usually goes something like this: A girl is walking along the street/in a dark room alone with her uncle/drunk and underage at a party and is raped, and as a result she gets pregnant. Well, would you allow her to get an abortion in such circumstances? Even some pro-life people falter and say yes, in such a case I would not prohibit her from getting an abortion. Punchline: well, if that girl had gotten that abortion, I would not be here today. OH MY GOD cheers all round what a twist how fascinating what if she had really had that abortion?! 

Let me counter that with a what if of my own. I know someone whose mother not only wanted to ternimate her pregnancy while pregant with him, she actually had an (albeit illegal and makeshift) abortion, and yet he survived. She took it as a sign and had him, and did not regret it. That person is my boyfriend. The man I believe to be the love of my life, someone that I don't know how I would live without, would not be here if that abortion had been successful. I should be the first to decry it and say it should never be allowed, right? Ehm no. Wrong.

While making for good rhetoric and appealing to human emotion, there are dangers to using a "what if" mentality when passing laws. What if I had crossed the street without looking five minutes earlier when that car came tearing around the corner? It is illegal to cross the street without looking! While we're at it, no more corners on roads!

What if my boyfriend's mother and father had not had sex in that exact instant to make up the unique genetic combination that is my boyfriend? What if, at that moment, his mother decided she was too tired or just didn't feel like it, and therefore he ceased to be? OH NOES that's it, it is illegal for a woman to sexually refuse her husband, because how many other lives that am I emotionally attached to would not be here if women could choose when to have sex?

Living in the past with a what if mentality is not healthy, and using it in rhetoric to tug people's heartstrings is just plain dishonest. Life is made up of endless little decisions to make and directions to take, you can never know how many infinite number of ulterior possibile realities could have come about by taking any one of those different paths, nor can you know if any of them would have been better or worse. The smugness of hindsight is not something I want to use when restricting a person's freedom.

So if you ever hear this line of reasoning in the abortion debate call it out for what it really is, an emotional appeal to cover up the utter lack of logic it possesses as an argument