The Right to Choose...

Do you think people have the right to choose?

You know, as they tell us, the right to decide for yourselves between polar extreme issues?  Often unpopular ones?  Often ones that much of our population finds egregious?  A binary choice? 

Good.  Then we've set the stage for an interesting little discussion here.  The "right to choose" meme is usually presented in the context of a woman's decision between aborting her unborn fetus and carrying it to full term.  Or some portion thereof.  And those in favor of women having such a right can look for support to "Roe v. Wade," a 1973 decision by the Supreme Court arising out of its having somehow ferreted out a well-disguised right of "privacy" between the lines on the hallowed pages of the Constitution.

However well meaning - or flawed - that decision was, it has fostered a never-ending debate over that self-same "right to choose."  And it's been inculcated and ingrained into our societal consciousness ever since.  And I'm comfortable it shall never be overturned.

Okay?  Got that?  Now then, if you support a woman's "right to choose," do you also support that woman's "right to choose" how she should defend herself?  Whether she should be able to choose to buy, own, use, keep and bear a firearm?  A firearm that that self-same Supreme Court has decided we each have an inherent "individual Right," apart from any militia, to keep and bear (Heller v. District of Columbia)?  A Right that has been codified for the ages as the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution?  Not just a Supreme Court decision, a Constitutional Amendment?

(NOTE:  As I'm sure you're aware, the word "abortion" does not appear anywhere in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence or the "Federalist Papers" or "Common Sense" or any other document from the era.  Nor was there any discussion or reference to anything even remotely concerned with that topic by our Founding Fathers.) 

You simply cannot have it both ways.  If you wish the right to choose to end a prospective life at will, which more than 60% of our population abhors, you must also accord others their Rights to make equally polarizing decisions, even though you may find them similarly abhorrent.  Even if their "right" was magically conjured up while attempting to discern what our Founding Fathers were actually thinking when they wrote the Constitution, and that other "Right" was clearly and simply stated as an Amendment in the Bill of Rights, according it the force of law?    

Here's a thought:  I'd guess those who champion gun rights wouldn't interfere with others' "right to choose" if those others would simply choose not to infringe on their "Right" to keep and bear arms.  And if you're one of those who refuses to accede to this request, I'm pretty sure far fewer people will die while they exercise their Rights than will while you exercise yours...