An "Easy" Change

Yesterday, I was watching TV with my mom and we ended up watching some of Sarah Palin's appearance on Oprah. At one point, Palin made a comment related to abortion being "easy" and I said that I disliked people characterizing abortion as "easy" because it gives the impression that it's something that women just choose to do on a whim, that it's not a difficult decision that people struggle with.

While my mom did agree with that, she said she still feels that abortion is easy compared to dealing with the consequences of getting pregnant, either by keeping the baby or giving it up for adoption. She said she felt that as a society we don't want to deal with the consequences of our actions anymore; if there's something about our life that we don't like, we want to just change it instead of dealing with the things that happen to us. If something interferes with our life or the way we think our life should go, we want to just change it.

I do think women should be told all of their options when they get pregnant but I also believe that safe, legal abortions should be available to women who choose to have them. Getting rid or abortions or making them illegal isn't going to stop them from happening, it's just going to make them more dangerous and potentially deadly for the women who choose to have them, as they were before Roe v. Wade.

On a more personal note, my mom's comments got me to thinking about how they would apply to me. I can easily see her arguing that wanting to dress and live as a woman is me seeking an easy change because I can't handle being a man who's a little different. I'm not happy being a man so I'll just change and be a woman. Staying a man would be me dealing with my situation and becoming a womann would be me avoiding the situation by looking for an easy answer. While I don't agree that living as or becoming a woman is "easy," my mom's comments helped me understand her feelings better.