If you haven't already seen it, Breaking
Bad is a show about a high school
chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with
terminal cancer and in a desperate bid
to secure his family's financial future
he starts cooking and selling crystal
meth. He convinces himself that he'll be
able to manage the consequences of this
decision, enough, so that the positive
side effects will outweigh the negative.
Unfortunately this initial bad decision
forces him to confront even more
moral dilemmas than he expected and
things quickly spiral out of control as
he makes one immoral decision after
another to try to avoid the consequences
of the first bad decision.
The only remedy to his predicament is to
interrupt the cycle of bad decisions by
refusing to continue avoiding the
unavoidable consequences of his first
bad decision. That kind of responsibility
and willingness to accept the
consequences of our decisions and
actions is what it means to be a free agent.
If we aren't willing to be accountable
for our decisions then we don't deserve
the right to make them. That's why most
parents limit the freedom of
their children until they've learned to
be responsible enough for their choices.
Like you wouldn't give a nine-year-old a
credit card and say, "You want something
go get it," because they aren't ready for
the responsibility that is required for
that kind of freedom.
It's like democracy. When movements for
democracy were gaining momentum in
Western countries, a common argument
against them was that the mass populace
was too uneducated and uninformed to
make responsible decisions about who
should govern them. Based on recent
events some of you might be inclined to
agree with that line of argumentation.
There is a point to be made there. For
democracy to work; that is, the right to
choose who should represent your
interests in government, the people making
those decisions have to take
responsibility for them by making sure
that they are educating themselves about
the candidates and the issues. If people
aren't willing to assume that
responsibility then they don't deserve
that freedom. Being pro-choice or pro-
freedom means a willingness to make
responsible decisions and to face
whatever consequences might come from
bad decisions. That is the cost of
freedom. Having freedom to make choices
necessitates the possibility of making
bad choices but if we insist on avoiding
the consequences of those bad choices
then we're not really asking for freedom.
Freedom introduces risk and if you're
not willing to face that risk then
you're not willing to be free. Instead
what the pro-choice moniker has come to
mean is that we want easy access to
abortion. But here's the thing
abortion exists to avoid the undesired
consequences of our decisions;
specifically pregnancy and parenthood.
It promises the alleviation of the
responsibility that we should be willing
to embrace if we expect to be given the
freedom to govern ourselves. Now you'd be
right to point out that not all
pregnancies are the result of free
choices. Some people are victims of
sexual assault and can't be held
culpable if pregnancy occurs. But
considering the most credible estimate
for the percentage of abortions due to
rape is about half a percent, we really
can't justify using this extremely rare
occasion to continue reinforcing this
self-contradictory view of choice and
freedom. As someone who strongly believes
in personal freedom and liberty,  I take exception to the
pro-choice movements use of language to
assert that easy access to abortion is
about exercising liberty when freedom of
choice brings with it responsibility for
those choices not the evasion of them.
So, if we want to promote choice as
something that is tied to liberty and
freedom we should also be promoting
responsibility for the choices we've
already made and demonstrate a
willingness to face the consequences of
our choices whether we like them or not.
