For this issue of The Daily Toreador, we compiled stories about the Health Sciences Center. With that, I found myself inclined to write the column my persuasion and social movements class inspired earlier this week.

As our class began to discuss how the right to privacy came about, we paralleled that conversation with one about abortion. For many who know the true meaning of Roe v. Wade, this pair makes sense. When Roe v. Wade was decided, the ruling made it clear that we have a right to decide what goes on in our homes and in our relationships, privately.

No one needs to dictate the intimate details of my private relationships. That makes sense, right?

However, with this ruling, Roe v. Wade also became the champion for a woman’s right to use abortifacients. Now, I personally am vehemently opposed to abortion. In all cases, in every circumstance, I believe it is absolutely not OK. That’s my opinion, and I will be upfront about it with you.

If you try to argue sometimes abortion is OK, if the woman’s baby has a health risk or the woman herself has a health risk, I will respond with the fact that statistics show those two reasons are the least cited motivations for abortion.

Furthermore, if you try to argue it is not fair to make a woman raise the child she conceived through rape, I would argue adoption is a perfectly viable option. Why respond to one injustice with another?

Returning to my point, however, I struggled through this class conversation about abortion.

Not because I found it upsetting — I’m used to this debate being a graphic one — but because I felt frustrated with the casual way women in my class talked about destroying their bodies.

We used words like “stabbed” and “prohibited.” We mentioned the use of prongs and discussed infections from inserted metal contraceptives.

We nonchalantly talked about the altering of our bodies, our hormones, our vaginas, our uterine linings, our reproductive systems, our blood streams, our mental health and so on.

It was as if we were discussing the negative effects of smoking tobacco.

Smoking tobacco could give you cancer and having sex could give you a baby. That’s the mentality, right? Get rid of those side effects.

Let’s just smoke and have sex and be frustrated at the result. Let’s fight to eliminate that undesired consequence, right?

So, we can abuse our bodies in the name of protecting women’s health. We can kill our babies so that we can freely do the very thing which makes more of them. And I think one of the most frustrating parts of this whole 50-minute class was how clueless the men in my class were.

They hardly even knew what menstruation meant, let alone what preventing pregnancy entails for a woman.

However, they’re the ones — in many cases — who expect a child will not be made during the casual hook-up they secured at a bar or with their girlfriends or with that one friend who sometimes gets lonely.

They chuckled uncomfortably as we discussed how an intrauterine device works and how it is even able to work. They tried to suggest birth control is kind of a good deal because it also gives us clear skin.

That’s great because then birth control makes us not only hook-up ready, but also more attractive, right?

Now, I’m not sure when it became healthy for a woman to insert an instrument which consistently irritates her uterine wall in order to prevent pregnancy. And I’m not sure when it started mattering whether or not a baby was technically conceived in order to decide whether or not to kill it. But I think all of this is beside the point.

Let’s stop worrying about whether the baby is a baby and worry about why we’re actively working to prevent the creation of life.

I mean, doesn’t countering reproduction just seem counterproductive?

Maybe these opinions are only my own, but I’ve already been born, so my life is not really the one on the line.