Goals are deceptive. The unaimed arrow never misses.

Most of us live in a world of comfort and expectation. We expect our needs to be met, our rights to be respected, a certain degree of quality of life, more or less. They haven't quite got it down pat, yet. Sometimes people still get hurt, or catch a disease, or is attacked, or robbed, or is screwed over, or have unwanted pregnancies.

Now, I think that our needs should be met, our rights should be respected, and it is never a good thing when it is not, I am thankful of those things and I would never want to lose them, and will fight to keep them if I feel I need to. But with all our feelings of entitlement, we might sometimes forget that a large portion of the world doesn't have those same entitlements - not because of any lack of right to them, but because of lack of ability to meet those rights.

Anyway, I went off on a tangent, there. The point is, life happens. With all our safety procedures in place to avoid the nastier bits of life, it is still unavoidable. Now what if it wasn't unavoidable? What if we reach that utopia, where not only is nothing ever unjust, but nothing is ever inconvenient. If something undesirable comes up, never fear! We have something to take care of it for you, and you'll never have to think of it again. Can you imagine such a world? Sounds nice.

We already have a lot more of that than our ancestors did. Feeling bored? Let's watch TV! Got a headache? We've pills for that! Don't want to get pregnant? Use contraception!

Truth is, even though sometimes it seems like we've escaped the consequences of our actions, sometimes we've merely side-stepped the obvious ones only to get entangled in a much more subtle but just as deadly web.

I'm not talking about TV, panadol, or condoms, though. For myself, nine times out of ten I'd probably choose what's convenient over what's not. It's just common sense; if the choice is there, why not take it? The exception, of course, is when meeting my convenience interferes with someone else's basic rights. For example: I have no money, I need money, I see an opportunity to steal money from someone and get away with it. It would be very easy to do. How convenient for me. But I'd rather work for it, or go without.

Anyway, you've probably already guessed where I'm going with this. I believe in taking responsibility for your own actions and your own life. If you decide to have sex without using contraception, you hold some responsiblity; you took the gamble, you are responsible for the choice, and so you are responsible for the outcome of the choice. If you decide to have sex using contraception and the contraception fails; you still made the choice to have sex. Yes, you may have tried to be responsible, but it's like I said before, sometimes life is unavoidable. Sometimes people get sick. Sometimes people get mugged. Sometimes people get scammed. Sometimes people have unplanned pregnancies. Deal with it. You still had a choice, you might have thought it was a safer gamble, but you still made the gamble, and you have to take responsibility.

Now, if you don't want to be a parent, or don't have the ability to be a parent for whatever reason, I don't suggest making a child endure having a resentful parent, or having a parent unable to take care of them. But with the waiting list for people who want to adopt, you really don't have an excuse.

Yes, you'll have to endure nine months of pregnancy and a few hours of labour. Yes, you might have to endure a few uncomfortable conversations with parents. Yes, there might be some heartbreak if you decide to give up your child, or an extra financial strain if you don't, but do you know what all of those things are? Inconvenient.* A child can get away with crying over having to do something they don't want to do. As an adult, inconvenience is a part of life. Grow up.

Do I think abortion should be illegal? I don't know. Maybe it's for the better that it's not. For me, abortion is a moral choice, not a legal one, and if someone makes that choice, then I suppose they have the right to the best care, which wouldn't be available if they had to do it illegally. And if a woman does get an abortion, then I think she should have support from her friends, for herself at least, if not for her decision; nor do I think she should be judged for it for the rest of her life. I would not turn away a friend for making such a decision. So I'm not arguing why abortion should be illegal; I'm expressing why I think it's wrong, and encouraging people, on an individual basis, to have the courage to take responsibility.

The other thing I want to talk about with this topic is something I alluded to before: Sometimes, there is a penalty for avoiding responsibility by side-stepping the obvious consequences of our actions. When a woman has a miscarriage, she can mourn. It's not so easy when that woman chose to miscarriage. And many woman, even ones who were very confident in their decision to have an abortion, have suffered from depression as a result. So no matter what choice the woman makes, she will not escape the consequences; she can only escape the most visible ones.

I won't argue too much about whether a foetus has any rights, because I'm sure you've heard all the arguments, anyway, and if you're not convinced by them, I probably won't convince you. But to say that a child under a certain age is not a person seems to me a form of discrimination. This isn't about being a potential human, (a sperm or an egg is a potential human) it's about a human being that is not yet developed; but since a person does not finish maturing until their twenties, how can we draw a line?

*I am aware that sometimes, complicated pregnancies can result in a life-or-death struggle for the mother and depending on certain issues, there can be more at stake then mere convenience. I am not talking about those cases, however.

One last thing, I would encourage people who feel strongly about this, one way or another, to watch Citizen Ruth. For me it is a movie demonstrating how ridiculous this war has become and how it's become more about the issue itself than the actual human beings involved. Whatever your stance on this issue is, I believe our motivations should be out of love for people, not politics.