Last night I stumbled into the living room to find f00 watching the first episode of a cheesy Chinese romantic comedy. For whatever reason I ended up watching most of it with him, understanding only about 50% of it and asking him to explain the rest. The episode (as far as I understood it) involved a man whose drink was drugged by some pranksters, and a woman who took too much cold medicine and stumbled into the wrong room. And they ended sleeping together, each thinking the other was his or her significant other.
Well, I don’t intend to watch the rest of it, especially because I wouldn’t understand any of it, but I did want to know what happened (no matter how crappy a tv show or movie, I often really want to know how the story ends if I’ve begun watching it). So I looked it up on wikipedia. Without giving too much away, the girl finds out she’s pregnant, and the show is about the guy and the girl dealing with the pregnancy.
Now that’s all I’ll say about the plot. The reason I brought it up is because it made me think of an interesting scenario. Those of you who know me really well might know that I’m moderately pro-choice with respect to abortion rights. A lot of people I know are moderately pro-life, willing to make exceptions for events beyond the woman’s control, such as rape. I myself am not a hardcore pro-choicer; I only support abortion as an option for women who do not want to deal with pregnancy/children (assuming the fetus isn’t developed past a certain point). I want to point out that I generally do not think of abortion as a good idea. In most cases I would prefer the woman keep the baby. And I do not condone consciously keeping abortion as a “bail-out” strategy and substitute for unprotected sex. But I do approve of it as an option “after the fact”. For example, if a teenage girl gets pregnant accidentally, the mistake is already made. Nothing can be done about that. Forcing the girl to keep an unwanted child is, in my opinion, not necessarily a great choice, especially if she’s not ready to be a parent. Yes I know there sometimes are options such as safe haven, but barring that I would accept abortion as a viable solution to an undesirable problem.
I’ve already gone more than I intended to about my own views on abortion; this post was actually meant to address the views of pro-lifers. Other than in cases of rape/abuse/incest/etc., I think these people generally wish to disallow abortion. I apologize in advance if I misinterpret their (or your if you’re one of them) view in anyway, but as I understand it they believe that the unborn child should not have to be punished for the mistake of the mother. We may have differing views of what constitutes a life, but I can at least understand where they are coming from.
When I watched f00’s drama though, it made me think. Would a pro-lifer support abortion in the case of the man and woman? The pregnancy was the consequence of events completely beyond their control. It’s one thing if two people get drunk and one gets pregnant as a result; you can argue (and I could be convinced) that they are responsible for their actions while intoxicated because they knowingly and consensually drank alcohol. However, if you sleep with the wrong woman/man by accident (despite how ridiculous that sounds), due to other people’s deliberate scheming and interference, should you be held responsible for their transgressions? I think that even if I leaned pro-life a little more, I would still accept abortion for this scenario as acceptable. Even if an unborn child deserves to live regardless of the parents’ mistakes, what if the mistake was not their fault? I wonder how real pro-lifers would think about this.
Just to generalize it a little more, I am inclined to agree that if people knowingly drink alcohol or take drugs, they should be held responsible for whatever actions they take while intoxicated or high or whatever. But what if it’s not intentional? What if I (for those of you who don’t know, I don’t drink alcohol) had my drink spiked, thereby losing my inhibition, and ended up getting a girl pregnant? Oh if I were so lucky. All jokes aside, should I be held liable for the paternity? Should I be responsible for a child whose existence is the sole result of me getting drunk against my will (assuming that is true)?
Just some weird thoughts I have sometimes…