Botched... in Current Events

My teacher went around the class and asked every boy this question:
What do women want?
We all gave stupid answers and then he told us all the big secret. He told us boys what women want. Choices. Women want choices. That teacher was Mr. Stark (not Tony Stark) and he was my English lit teacher when I was in grade nine. He taught us a lesson or two about women and their rights that semester and I believed in equal rights for women ever since.

I am experiencing a little bit of cognitive dissonance right now though. In my country, women have the right to terminate a pregnancy. They have access to it and the procedure is free and I do believe that I should not be allowed to take that choice away from them. End of story? I mean, I never had to put any more thought into it. I guess that’s one of my male privileges? Today I learned something that disturbed me and it is shaking my beliefs up a bit. It is about something that I never had to think about before. I learned that babies who are aborted in their second or third trimester often survive abortion. They have no rights so they are put into a room where doctors and nurses don’t have to watch or hear it die. That’s the protocol for some states, provinces or countries and I’m not sure if that is the exact way that they do it here where I live but I can’t stop picturing a little heart trying to beat and hearing a pair of little lungs trying to breathe… It stands a fighting chance if doctors should tend to it but that is not the decision that was made for it. My cognitive dissonance right now is that I am now thinking about that baby’s rights.

I am reminded of a response that I used to have to the phrase “the early bird gets the worm.” I would always point out that the early worm gets eaten. I always said that because nobody ever thought about the poor worm. I know, I’m using such a weird euphemism but I never had to think about the babies before. Leaving the baby in that room to die alone is just a part of the business and I didn’t realize how ugly it was until now… but women losing this right feels ugly too… so I don’t know what to think. Is there a right way to think? Does this even affect me as a male? I’m so torn. Do doctors even tell the mother if it survives the procedure? How do the doctors and nurses condition themselves to let it die? “Patients orders”. I can’t imagine. I don’t want to imagine. I want to forget that I know this.