This goes to the ‘Older and wiser’: YOU HAVE FAILED US. Please stop making us feel bad about the so-called “mess” we are. It is ALL YOUR FAULT.
When I originally started writing this post, I was so angry about a post I saw earlier on Facebook. The post in question suggested that abortion does not make one “un-pregnant”, but rather makes one ‘a mother of a dead child.’
I replied to the post (I tend to lose my self-control when am angry) , but for some reason my anger towards this post later got fueled by another story about a young pregnant girl whose parents are on the verge of disowning her.
I have engaged in several debates about abortion that I am close to being branded an Antichrist. I have tried hard to explain the benefits of its legalisation and I get the same answer all the time: “It is murder”. Save for it being “murder”, there is no any other argument against it. Honestly, this argument can’t be applied to everyone unless the courts of law prove it so or.
The second-best argument against legalizing abortion is the idea that it will allow teenagers to have more sex, which is very bad because ‘you know we are supposed to be virgins until we are married’, again because some religion dictates so, and you know we all are religious.
Oh! And when I say this is all due to religious beliefs, I get hit with the “well, it is not in our culture”.
I am trying so hard to keep my blood pressure within a certain range right now.
Anyways…
Now, back to the young pregnant girl. In this whole mess, the ‘guy’ will get away unscathed. He will go on to probably find a virgin to marry and have ‘a perfect family’.
“Old and wise” people, what are you doing about this?
I know, NOTHING … so, you will just sit and shake your head and say things like: Abana bataye umuco… (Loosely translated to as ‘the kids have lost their culture’).
In brief, my options as a woman back home are:
Abstinence
If I refuse to abstain, no one will teach me about contraception. If I am “immaturely” impregnated, I will be shamed. (Just so you now a 30-year-old with a job will still be branded immaturely impregnated if she is not married)
I can’t abort, so I have to get married to the ‘guy’. And if I refuse to get married to the ‘guy’ or if he doesn’t want to marry me, I will be a curse to my family and a shame in the society for the rest of my life.
I have a random question: do we have laws regarding child support? How does it work? If you are going to force me to keep a child that I don’t want to have the least, you can do to make sure that the man who got me pregnant is forced to be present in the child’s life. Is this the actual arrangement in real life?
All this is because you still B***S** us with the whole abstinence thing like you yourselves followed that rule. You are all going to tell us that you didn’t have some YOLO in the 70s and the 80s. REALLY???? Sounds a lot like the story you all tell us about how you all were top students back in the days.
All this could be solved with one thing: teaching children about sexuality and distributing contraception. As simple as that!
But no, you still go around pretending your teenagers are saints and when they get pregnant, you try to hush it and organise a wedding within ‘two seconds’ because what matters the most is what society thinks of you. How does that make sense? How?
Today, in our society the moment we hear a girl is getting married, our first assumption is that she is pregnant. Take a minute and think about it. What does that tell you?
All you do is sit around and tell us the young ones how we are not this or that, but who educated us in the first place? Oh! I forgot, you blame TV. You think if you actually sat down with us and talked to us we would have to go learn things from TV and the Internet?
I am probably being impolite talking to you “older and wiser” ones, but you know that we are the “mess” you created.
Yours uncomfortably with a lot of anger.
