Shock and "eew"

I was pretty happy to read in today's Observer that a step has been made towards fixing the Bogue intersection. Work should be completed within a year and the contractor says that he plans to do a lot of the work at night, which should help to minimize the disruption.

On another note, the issue of abortion has kind of been a hot topic these days, with pro-lifers playing shock-and-"eew" videos in a bid to convince parlimentarians not to legalize abortion.

Personally, I don't understand why pro-lifers want to dictate to the rest of the country what a woman should do with an unwanted pregnancy. Okay, so they believe that life begins at conception and that it's murder to abort a fetus, even within the first trimester. I get that. What I don't get is why they think that everyone else should subscribe to their belief. If you think abortion is immoral, then don't have one. Don't donate money to or support abortion rights groups. Why should the thousands of other women who don't share your belief be forced to carry a pregnancy to term, regardless of whether or not the mother and/or father are emotionally or financially able to provide a decent quality of life for the resultant child or if the pregnancy was a result of rape, incest or molestation?

That decision should rest with the mother, since she's likely going to be responsible for that child for the better part of the next 20 years, and not with some lobbyist who feels like a bunch of 10 cells is a human life.

Now I'm not supporting abortion as a preferred method of birth control, I think it should be a last resort, but the option shouldn't be taken off of the table because of the beliefs of a group of citizens. Banning abortions tramples on woman's reproductive rights and is just as bad as forcing women to have an abortion.

Legalizing abortion, with some measure of oversight, lets both sides have their way. Those who think it's wrong can feel free to not have one, and those who want or need that option are free to go down that road.