I saw this on Facebook today…

And it made me wonder — How can we, as Americans, expect to decrease or end the instances of abortion if we refuse to provide women’s health services to begin with?

We, as a society, refuse to educate all women and men on the functionality of their own reproductive systems. Parents can opt their children out of sex education classes because they don’t want them to hear certain messages that may go against their own personal or religious values.  As a result, sex education tends to be inconsistent at best, whether it’s watered down at the school level in the hope of satisfying all parents, or because parents are not providing or supplementing enough information at home because it’s an embarrassing subject or out of fear that by providing the information children will become sexually active.

We, as a society, fight against healthcare being a basic human right. It took an act of the Supreme Court to get the Affordable Care Act approved to ensure that all Americans have access to healthcare. And still, people and corporations are fighting against providing services, such as birth control. Women should have the right to decide whether or not birth control is an appropriate option for themselves based on their own personal and religious values.

We, as a society, become outraged at women who have children and are also on welfare.

We, as a society, shame our young women (yet not our men) for becoming pregnant out of wedlock. While this is not as great a stigma as it used to be, it is still enough of a stigma to ensure that many women would rather seek an abortion than confess to their Daddies that they are pregnant.

We, as a society, tell young women that having a child out of wedlock will ruin their lives, thus ensuring a no-win situation that impacts two generations or more.

We, as a society, would rather rescue pets than rescue children. I’m a dog person, and I love my pets, but what if we put as many photos of abandoned and adoptable children on the news, on Facebook, on billboards as we do dogs?  What if we played a sad song while showing lonely children needing a home? Add to that the battle against allowing white parents to raise black children, or gay couples to adopt at all, we don’t go far enough to make sure that all children are loved and ready to love in return.

We, as a society, don’t value the lives of black men, white men, brown men, police officers, drug addicts, people in prison, enough to keep them from dying at each other’s hands. In fact, we don’t value the lives of children who have already been born enough to ensure that they are safe going to school, in their own homes, or at movie theaters. How can we possibly expect people to value the lives of people who haven’t been born yet?

We, as a society, refuse to ensure that once a child has been born it has enough to eat, clothing, a roof over its head, and a quality education. Suggest it, and you’ll hear screams about Socialism, Communism, Fascism, and probably even a reference or two to Hitler.

We, as a society, vote for politicians who think that all we need to do is “work more hours” to afford to feed and shelter our families.

Until and unless we, as a society, address the reasons that women seek to have abortions, nothing will change.

Until and unless we, as a society, value “life after birth”, nothing will change.