Pregnancy is Like Rape. Except it isn't.

Just wanted to highlight a comment I read recently that really spoke to me (emphasis my own). Here, the commenter is responding to the idea that unwanted pregnancies are akin to rape:

"To compare an innocent unborn baby to a rapist is disgusting and abhorrent. Pregnancy is not a perversion of one's right, and an innocent unborn child should never be looked at in the same moral terms as a criminal with its own agency.

Like it or not, pregnancy is a completely natural consequence of sexual activity. [...] To treat the unwanted result as a perversion of the natural order that should never be allowed to exist is what's really abhorrent here.

If one really thinks that unborn babies and the process that generates them (pregnancy) belongs on the same moral status as a rapist, I don't think there's really anything we can do to stop [their abortions] [...] One can't fight such a hostile belief system that immediately rejects anything that disrupts their desires as a grave threat that needs to be expunged with malice."

- Anonymous, who responded to the post "'Gnawing at my belly, chewing through my organs.'" by Secular Pro-life

 I made a comment on the article as well where I explained that having children and teenagers work with newborns and expectant mums would help get rid of the irrational fear of pregnancy that many young women seem to have (after all, what's rational about comparing your own baby that you and your partner put there to an alien invader?). I disagree with Anonymous' last point about not being able to fight this kind of belief system - we can. We might not reach the people who already think this way, but by educating young people we can help ensure that the next generations stop looking at pregnancy as something that is completely terrifying. Life-changing? Yes. Joyful? Yes. Sad? Sometimes. Scary? Often. Something that should be compared to aliens, cannibals, and rapists? Definitely not.