Anti-Suffering

The following is an opinion article I wrote on Medium regarding the Supreme Court's decision on Roe v. Wade:

I want to start by saying I grew up as a very religious and conservative child. To the point where I thought gay marriage was the worst of sins and I prayed literally every night on my bed.

Those days are far behind me. But one thing has remained constant — I want people, the people who exist here and now — to be safe, happy, and healthy.

After years of getting frustrated with the Republican party for its self-aware and gleeful tyranny (and it’s been more than a few decades), I’m at a point where I genuinely think they’re just doing all these things to get a rise out of liberals.

So, it’s not that I don’t care about Roe v. Wade being overturned. Because I do. But I also recognize that calling the other side “assholes” isn’t going to help. Especially because there are constituents among them who genuinely feel that by forcing women to carry a baby to term, they’re saving an innocent life. And I get that. But they’re not putting into account the quality of these lives. If one’s life is vastly overcome by agony, is it really heroic to perpetuate that life? Because ultimately, people can make laws that determine how millions of others will live, but those lawmakers have the convenient luxury of not having to live those lives.

Yes, the conservative Supreme Court justices who pushed this cruelty through, against the wishes of the vast majority of Americans, are going to greatly diminish the quality of life for millions of innocents, not to mention the inevitable homicides that will most likely occur by men who don’t want to pay child support, countless suicides by women who, justifiably, can’t fathom childbirth or are too afraid to reach out for help from such a cold society, accidental deaths caused by complications from back alley abortions, and the upcoming unwanted children who will live unloved, unfulfilled lives, wreaking havoc on their communities because they don’t feel they belong and because of the lifelong trauma they’ll almost certainly endure. Prisons in red states should brace for a lot more inmates in roughly 20 years. This is Sociology 101.

At the same time, there will be children born against their parents’ wishes, and when those kids are born, those families will have a change of heart and do their best to give those kids a decent life. But no one’s perfect. And most people are poor. And no matter how pure the parents hearts, poverty leads to suffering.

Trust me. My brothers and I grew up with poor parents. They did their best, God bless ’em. They spent all of their time trying to make ends meet.

But we were still poor, and we all paid the price.

This is not a theory I have based solely on my own life. I’ve taught at schools for both wealthy and impoverished kids. The impoverished kids have the unbearable weight of the world on their shoulders. And that won’t go away with “gumption.”

My point is this: Would you force a straight man to have a gay marriage? No, because he wants to marry his female fiancé.

Would you force a child to get a sex change operation? No, because that would be a gross violation of their human and reproductive rights.

Would you force a woman to have an abortion against her will? No, because she should have children when (and if) she wants to.

Republicans forcing a woman to have a baby is a cruel and unusual punishment for sex. But women are also raped. We all know women who were (whether they’ve told you or not). So, by no fault of their own, women are expected to be punished for the rest of their lives for… what? Having suffered already? And that’s how Republicans are able to perpetually win and warp the narrative. They can so easily fall back on the “See?? It’s not a punishment!” fallacy by claiming that what was done wasn’t so egregious after all because it’s leading to new life, which, while claiming to be empathic toward the fetus is such a heartless response to the victim, who is here with us now, and whose feelings and desires should not be cast aside. Ignoring that woman’s wishes and needs is, in my opinion, the more evil choice, if we have to pick the lesser of two evils.

But conservatives are determined. And it’s so upsetting and childish for some to demand the existence of new people as they fester inside others who don’t want them (at least, not right now). The result is not every new baby coming out as Jesus Christ, a magical musician who improves all of our lives with the power of music, a football star to unite all fans and end jingoistic rivalry, a scientist and mathematician who will fix climate change and save us all with their newfound knowledge of affordable space travel. The result is lower quality lives. Yes, lives. Everyone suffers. The families, the schools, the economy, the environment — everything. Conservatives claim to hate abortions, but it’s more than likely that most of them have wished certain people were aborted or at least dead so that life could be easier for them and others. Don’t believe me? Look at the death penalty.

Really, what is this conservative obsession with making as many people as possible? More people does not translate to a better world. Yes, there are plenty of good people, but people are also deeply flawed and they hurt each other worse than any animal can, especially when raised neglectfully. Can you imagine how much better our world would have been if every mass shooter was aborted? We would actually have more people, and our lives would have been exponentially better.

All of this, and we’re already past the realistic limits of our capacity on this planet and are very quickly dooming ourselves to extinction. Just look at housing prices, traffic on the way to and from work, or even parking lots at supermarkets. We’re running out of space and if we don’t slow down, the majority of us are going to be living in tiny apartments with a bunch of strangers for an exorbitant amount of money… wait, that already is the case.