Unrealistic Aims

I was listening to BBC Radio Five Live yesterday morning when Victoria Derbyshire was in an abortion clinic. The show was really good and I have to admit I was in tears when one of the women was talking about an abortion that she had.

Then a ProLife woman came on. Now, don't get me wrong, I do not think that abortions are good things, I think it's terribly sad when a woman has to make that decision but I really believe that every woman should have that choice. In other words, I'm pro choice.

I don't want to go into the wrongs and rights of abortion though, it's just that the show got me thinking about the aims of the Pro Life people. They want abortion to be illegal, campaigning for the repeal of the Abortion Act 1967. To me, this seems like a total unrealistic aim to have - it will never happen. It's just too extreme and there are too many women out there who believe that they should have the right to choose. They just won't get the supporter base that they need to have such a massive impact that the Abortion Act gets repealed. Maybe I'm just being pessimistic (or optimistic I suppose). Maybe they should have more realistic aims - reduce the number of weeks (currently it's 24 I believe). Reduce the number of legal 'reasons'. Change the views of woman so that there are less likely to choose abortion. You won't ever be able to convince the majority of the female population that abortion is always wrong (in the sense that they will never choose it) but you could make women less likely to choose it. Be realistic and you will have more of an impact.

Another topic that there seems to be people with completely unrealistic aims - vegetarianism. I'm not a vegetarian as I believe that it's unnatural and that by not eating meat we are further removing ourselves from nature. But anyway, I hate it when seem to have made it their personal mission to make every single person they know a vegetarian. It's not going to happen - simple as that. There are too many people who (sadly) simply don't care, those with similar views to myself and those who need meat to stay healthy. Why not be realistic and work towards the reduction of meat people eat and improve the conditions of animals that are bred for meat? You will have a much bigger impact by improving the practices of the meat industry instead of having a totally unrealistic aim of destroying the meat industry.

I'm a member of a large hamster forum and a lot of people on there, including myself, are against the sale of pets in pet stores. I've said it time and time again - hamsters (or any animal) aren't packets of crisps and shouldn't be sold like packets of crisps. But I think a more realistic way to have a impact would be to improve things - improve the conditions of the animals in the stores, improve the way that they are bred, provide more information to potential owners and regulate the sale of animals more strictly. For me the big thing is education - a lot of people pop into a pet store to get some dog food, see the cute little hamsters and buy one without knowing anything about their care. Most pet stores don't have a clue when they talk about the care of the animals they sell which makes things even worse. If they provided the correct care information with the sale they would improve the lives of so many of these pets. I hope that one day animals won't be sold in a supermarket fashion but I think we need to make the smaller steps before we get to that point.

By no means am I saying that every prolifer or vegetarian has these aims, these 'missions', I'm purely talking about the ones who do. I'm saying that if people had more realistic aims they would make a bigger impact, would make a bigger difference, by making small steps at a time which could then lead to the, currently, unrealistic aim.

Phew. Well, that was a bit of a rant. Apologies if I don't make too much sense in places, just wanted to get that off my chest lol.