The Abortion Fixation

I started out this endeavor by noting that conservatives and swing voters believe that cultural issues trump economic issues. One of the biggest trump cards is abortion. So, the question is: should democrats and liberals care about the impact that abortion has on conservatives and swing voters?

As a New Age Democrat, I think of abortion as a fixation, in much the same way as I think of immigration or flag burning as fixations. A fixation is an emotional response to a subject the ignores the reality of the world, going against global trends into order to promote the fixation. For instance, flag burning and immigration are fixations because we live in a globalized world in which global travel is increasing, more citizens are becoming global citizens (holding two, three, or more passports), and more people have access to information from all over the world thanks to information technologies. Flag burning is a fixation on the receding impact of nationalism and patriotism. It is very difficult to get excited about a national identity, or to be patriotic, when you live in multiple countries throughout the year and travel in cosmopolitan groups. Immigration is a fixation on the receding impact on uniform cultures, or traditional cultures. Many people now live around immigrants from India, China, Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and the Mediterranean. We travel easily, and we live in neighborhoods that are increasingly diverse. It is very difficult to get excited about immigration when your best friend may be from Morocco and your past girlfriend was from Egypt, your present girlfriend is from Japan, and your next girlfriend will be from Nigeria. People are sampling cultures now the way they used to sample products in the market. Indeed, so much of commerce is now standardized that the only true adventure comes from mixing and matching cultural experiences.

Thus, abortion is a fixation on the declining historical standard of women as mothers and not as professionals. In today's world, any person can become anything. When people sample different cultures, they try to be cautious and have safe sex, but they do produce unwanted pregnancies. It is much more important for people to be able to continue sampling different cultures and lifestyles, and choose to have a baby in the chosen culture, with the chosen lifestyle, instead of having a baby at the inappropriate time.

This is why the news media is starting to talk about a new kind of period in adult life in which people who are in their twenties are still living with their parents as they sample the changing cultures around them. Time Magazine called them "twixters", because they are between and betwixt childhood and adulthood. Time argued that the economic conditions for achieving financial independence are tougher, and people are more picky about what kinds of lifestyles they lead. However, the real reason many people are choosing to stay at home is because the world is starting to come to them. We no longer need to travel to see exotic cultures. Cable television, the Internet, e-mail, and the immigrant family next door bring exotic cultures right to us.

Thus, abortion is a tool to make sure the timing of adulthood is right. As a New Age society, we no longer want to pressure people to abide by the choices that their parents were forced to make - between career and family. We want our citizens to find the right careers and figure out what they should do with their lives. When they find out, they will be ready to have children. Abortion is an essential tool to delay the entrance to adulthood until a person has made that choice about their lives. Tools are neither good nor bad. They simply serve a purpose. We need to recognize the positive purpose that abortion serves in our culture instead of treating it as a vestige of a vanishing traditional culture. Thus, I would rather have kids when I can give them a high quality life, even if it means having one or more abortions while I wait for that quality life to start. I do not want to have children before my quality life starts, and be forced to abandon my idea of a quality life because parenthood is too distracting. As a human being I have the right to be selfish with my life. The last thing I want is to have children who I push to live the dream that I never had the chance to experience. I don't want my kids to be better off than me. I want to be better off to begin with so that my kids can share in the experience and help me sustain the lifestyle that we want. Abortion, and family planning, are the only tools we have to make sure we can live our dreams.