An excerpt from one of Chris Rock’s stand ups:

“The whole country’s got a fucked up mentality. We all got a gang mentality. Republicans are fucking idiots. Democrats are fucking idiots. Conservatives are idiots and liberals are idiots.

Anyone who makes up their mind before they hear the issue is a fucking fool. Everybody, nah, nah, nah, everybody is so busy wanting to be down with a gang! I’m a conservative! I’m a liberal! I’m a conservative! It’s bullshit!

Be a fucking person. Listen. Let it swirl around your head. Then form your opinion.

No normal decent person is one thing. OK!?! I got some shit I’m conservative about, I got some shit I’m liberal about. Crime – I’m conservative. Prostitution – I’m liberal.”

Rarely are my views on any one topic completely black and white, especially if I don’t know much about the topic at hand or it’s a hot button issue.

Say abortion.

Pro-choice? Pro-life? How about both?

Overall – I’d say I’m pro-life. But not for the reason you think. Besides the matter of infanticide (not uncommonly practiced in more ancient times), I think that abortion has serious consequences on the girl. I already know that it can mess up the mind of a woman to have a miscarriage, and each consecutive one makes it worse. There are varying levels of damage of course, but that’s not the point. A woman will mourn the death of her child, whether or not it manages to take its first breath. With abortion, I believe it’s even worse, because the death of the baby is a choice. That takes a simple death (bad enough) and turns it into a kill. Maybe even a murder depending on how you look at it. Regardless, the effect on the psyche of a woman who chooses it can’t be good.

Not everyone has the same reason. Sometimes a woman just plain can’t afford to raise the child. I’d certainly understand as I believe that raising a child when you’ve not the means to do so is akin to child abuse.

But what about the woman who possibly could afford to raise it but chooses to have an abortion anyway? I don’t believe that she walks away from that unscathed. And if it looks like she’s relatively unscathed, then I’m liable to think the damage is even worse. Who would want to be with a woman who does not mourn the death of her own flesh and blood?

Not me.

So on one hand, I’d do everything in my power to avoid having any women I care about have an abortion.

Yet – on the other hand – there’s no way I can afford to raise a child right now. I’m not ready to get married and settle down with one woman. I’m neither financially stable enough nor mentally prepared to put aside my wants and needs at this point in time to take care of someone other than myself, let alone a baby! So if I accidentally got a girl pregnant, and she chose to get an abortion, I wouldn’t stop her. In fact, I’d probably encourage it. I’d pay for half of it. If necessary, all of it. But I wouldn’t like it.

Giving said child up for adoption would be preferable, but I don’t have much time to set that up. Handing them over to be a ward of the state in foster care is playing a rigged lottery in which winning could either be a great life or a life of abuse and misery.

Even better, of course, is never getting a girl pregnant.

And because I’d never wish for the “Qual der Wahl” [agony of choice] between the lesser of two evils, I fastidiously adhere to the use of an ounce of prevention…

…that I may never need a pound of cure.

~Wald

H/T: Karl for helping me find the correct excerpt (Google search, his post came up).