There is today a great deal of discussion on the need to repeal the 8th Amendment, and to grant further access to abortion within Ireland. Folks on both sides raise their voices to make their point, and our leaders frown, silently, on this worrying demand that will not remove itself. These women are sent abroad, are removed from society, are cut off from dialogue, and still they insist on having their demands heard, even fulfilled. How much easier it was when these women were physically and mentally silenced in laundries, their labour used to make the nuns wealthy, their babies sent away to foreign lands to remove even the hint of decision being their right.
Women. Bloody, whiny, demanding, insisting women, with their agenda and their support and their lack of silence. They don’t earn enough money, or garner enough respect, for them to be mainstream, but they won’t make the bed or clean up our messes unless we tend, in some way, to their complaints. Well, I’ve been thinking, and I believe that I may have a proposal for those who despair of my sisters’ demanding ways. I think I may have come up with a simple, god-fearing, religion-preserving method where these annoying women are finally made happy. It creates no sin against a god, any god, but will make those folk who fear annoying their god, or fear even more the granting of agency to women, all happy and relieved. And here it is.
Let those who insist women should not have the right to choose, be the ones to continue the pregnancies themselves. Should they insist on the right to life of the unborn, let their uterus be the allotment they take ultimate control of. This right to life overcomes all other considerations, such as the wishes of the woman, her physical health, her mental health, her intention and her will. Therefore, if this right to life overrules all other considerations, let the pro-life folks’ own bodies be given over to unwanted fecundity. They themselves seek to remove abortion, and state that it causes the greatest harm to the mother. Therefore, in their surrogacy, they will do the greatest good. Let they give their own internal organs, their time, money, mental and physical health and future in their pursuit of this ‘greatest good’.
And as for those men, who insist that women should not have the right to decide what should happen, then let their own wives, sisters, and daughters be utilised in the great cause to preserve life over autonomy. Thankfully, no permission need to be looked for, be it legal or personal, for as we know no woman has the right to decide what her body does or does not do. Instead, her body must not be used for her own good, but for the greater good, a good decided in metaphysical terms rather than in real ones.
And once the child is born, in a hospital system that considers the comfort or dignity of a woman in labour as a secondary consideration, the child can be deposited into the foster care system of our country. As we know, the ‘pro-life’ group have worked tirelessly to ensure that it is the best system of care in the world, where no child is ignored, neglected or suffers.* No doubt that they will have nothing to worry about.
So there you have it. A simple, straightforward solution that confirms that every sperm is sacred, and which will allow full and complete righteousness to rule over rationality and the rights of citizens to preserve their physical dignity. I am sure those who read this blog will agree that it is the best solution; it certainly improves upon the idea that a woman might decide her own fate. May our betters keep us from such a conclusion.
*I make no insult against those who work in our state child care system; they appear to me to be tireless and optimistic, in a system that is anything but.
Cora Sherlock: potential surrogate?