I was up half the night last night pondering some more, and these things kept coming to mind. It just wouldn't leave. It seemed so strong. A burden of mind, so to speak. That kind of thing is not accidental. It's time to speak up.
If you have a 4-year-old son, you have told him that he is not allowed to jump off the kitchen counter. You've told him why it's against the rules, that it's for his best, that he could get hurt badly. If he does it, he will get in trouble, because that is how you teach him to obey the rules and to listen to you, the authority. Have you removed his ability to choose to do so? Of course not. He can still climb up there, stand up tall, and leap off the counter. Maybe he will not hurt himself. Maybe he will land on his little sister who is watching this all from below on the floor. Maybe he won't get hurt *this* time. Nothing about you setting the guidelines has removed his human ability to make that choice. Now you will discipline him in the way you have previously laid out. You will remind him that what he has done is not allowed in your house. He is expected to comply with the house and family rules. But nothing strips him of his ability to choose to do it again.
If you have attended a slam-bang good party, imbibed in quite a bit of tasty spiked beverage, enjoyed a few glasses of wine, you are feeling really good, and are now ready to head home, you head to your car. You know that driving while intoxicated is against the law. You even know why, and you could tell others all the reasons, but does that mean you don't have the choice to get in the car and take off? No, the law making this practice illegal does not prohibit you from choosing to get behind the wheel. That is your innate human ability. You may have an accident, you may harm or kill another person or an entire family. You may make it home safely. If you are arrested, you will suffer consequences that were clear and understood prior to your making that choice. No matter what the outcome, what you did was illegal. But it did not take away your ability to choose to do it.
If a young woman is struggling to make ends meet, and she wants better food options than what she has available on her meager budget, she goes to the nice grocery store across town. She knows she does not have money to pay for what she wants. She knows it is against the rules of the store and the laws of her state to take items from the store without paying for them. But she chooses to go ahead and stash several items in her coat, heading for the door quickly. The signs stating the rules and promises of prosecution are very clear, but have they robbed her of her ability to choose to take things? No, she has the will and ability to make any choice, right or wrong. She may make it out undetected, or she may be caught. If she is caught, she will be arrested. Will the store manager listen to her story of living on mac and cheese for the last week and wanting something better, feel that it is valid, and give her the items willingly? Will the police who come to arrest her feel that she's been treated unfairly because she was not allowed to walk in and take whatever she wanted? No, she made her choice, she will have to then abide by the assigned punishment. But none of that took away her choice.
If your spouse spends all your money on gambling and frivilous spending, bankrupting your family and causing you emotional and possibly physical harm as well as traumatizing your children, you may be very angry and want to kill him. You know that is not acceptable according to the laws of our land. But he has humiliated you, caused sadness and pain to your kids, and been a general jerk, by all accounts. There are other options you have, but is taking his life still one of them? You have the ability to choose to do any number of things to end his life. All of them are illegal, not allowed, against the law. What he did was wrong, it was hurtful, it was horrible and unthinkable, but you are still not allowed by law to kill him. As a human, you have the ability to choose to do it anyway, disregarding the consequences. You're aware of them, you know it's called murder and will mean breaking the law. But do you have the choice to do it? Of course. Would we say that we shouldn't judge you because we don't know what you've been through? Would we say that we are improperly removing your right to choose by arresting you for murder and prosecuting you as the law states?
Guidelines, boundaries, and laws do not remove our ability to make a choice, they simply help to direct us, as a country, toward what is best for our people and right for our society as a whole. They are in place to protect all of us. Every person, man or woman, has the choice to abide by the laws or not. They have the ability to choose not to stay within the boundaries of our system of law and order, but they will suffer the consequences and be punished as the law states. That's the way order is kept, that's the way anarchy is avoided. That's the way people can live peacefully with each other. Those that choose to abandon that system will be stripped of their rights to some extent, but they still have that ability to choose to obey or not obey any given law.
If a couple has a child, takes him home, and soon finds out that they can't go out like they want, they can't sleep as much as they'd like, they are missing work more than they'd like, and they have to spend money on this child that they'd rather spend on other things, they decide they do not want this child any longer. They know that there are several options available to them. They also know that killing this child is against the law and will mean they go to jail if they are found out. Some options may be embarrassing, some may be difficult, and some may be invconvenient. Does this mean that they have no choice? Has their "right to choose" been taken from them? No, they have every option in front of them, legal and illegal. It is up to them to decide which way to go. If they choose to give the child too much medication and cause the child to stop breathing, they are humanly able to act on that choice. The laws against this act are in place to protect this child, but they cannot affect the will of the parents at their core. When they are arrested for this choice, they will possibly suffer harm in jail, they may lose freedoms that they had prior to this choice, but that does not invalidate the ability they had to make that choice. We would be outraged. We would call them selfish. We would convict them in the public instantly when the story broke. Regardless, nothing we do can will take away their "right" to choose.
So in case it hasn't been clear, let me be very forthright... This whole talk of "protecting a woman's right to choose" means absolutely nothing in my book. It has nothing at all to do with choice. Choice cannot be taken away in this sense. A woman can choose to do whatever she wants, as can your 4-year-old son, and any man or person on the planet. But every choice has repercussions and consequences, good or bad. Does that mean we should allow and, further, pay for her to kill her child? Of course not! This is so very obvious. If you're going to defend this position, call it what it is, an attempt to protect the woman's right to kill her child. And if that's what you're willing to defend, be prepared to defend Casey Anthony, Susan Smith, Andrea Yates, and all the others who have opted to do the same thing.
Will we give a spouse who may injure herself in the act of killing her husband a proper weapon and people to assist her in doing it safely? Will we provide a bag and cart and escort personnel to the shoplifter in order that she might not hurt herself carrying her stolen items out of the store? In the same way we don't provide hitman services for unhappy wives or husbands, it is unbelievable that we support an entire industry whose sole job is to assist in the killing of the weakest and most vulnerable members of our society.
