Hi. Welcome back, everyone. I’m your host, Sarah Southwell, Founder of GroWise Be Well, a holistic and inspirational lifestyle company for families of all shapes and sizes. GroWise Be Well, empowering you.

Season 3, Episode 4

“Pro What?”

Podcast Transcript

Amidst all of this beauty, I sometimes really cringe to hear about news topics and one of them that I am going to try and approach today from a very somewhat open-minded perspective – I warn you that I will give you my opinions on this and some of you may not like them and that’s okay. 

We are all so different, genetically, emotionally, with our backgrounds and how we are raised, our beliefs. Everybody has the right to feel differently about subject matters that tend to be touchy. So, I will approach this subject gently and hope that I can find some people that are willing to possibly rethink their ideas on the subject. 

The subject today is women’s rights and human rights and how we can, honestly, get to a place where we’re not talking about anyone’s rights. We’re not having to argue or debate or even maim one another over rights; the right to have freedom, the right to own land, to vote, to do all kinds of things. The right to live freely. 

There had been so many rights throughout the history of humanity that have been infringed and, frankly, I think, my opinion is that it all really boils back to religion and control. Those are two separate things by the way in my mind. I mean, I think that they can overlap but I am speaking of them separately. 

So, there is this faction of people that tend to want to control others because they don’t feel safe unless the world is the way that they view it. They don’t care if they step on other people’s rights to make the world safe for their own personal person. Those are the people that are wanting control. Then, there’s religion and all different forms. There is not one in particular that I am thinking of today. There is a couple of factions in my mind that come into play and have since the beginning of civilization, what we call civilization. 

This is a whole other podcast but I don’t believe we actually became civilized when we started living in cities and enacting laws and, frankly, creating cast systems, which I think started the whole rights infringement problem to begin with. Maybe it’s not religion or those who want control. Maybe it’s the creation of civilization. I don’t know, but we’re in it now, so how do we maneuver through this?

The thing that’s on the top of my mind recently that’s really been very hot in the news is women’s rights and their rights to their own bodies and the Supreme Court decisions and all of the conversation that’s been going on about this. Some may call it a right to life and some may call it a right to your body. Some may call it pro-life, others may say it’s pro-abortion. I don’t know.

Whatever you call it, in my mind it comes down to really is it the right thing to restrict a woman from determining whether or not she wants to carry a child to full-term and have the child, give birth to the child?

I have to say a couple of things coming to my mind when I think of this. One of them that pops up immediately is, believe it or not, David Attenborough. In his last documentary, he states very clearly that the human population in terms of species has grown exponentially in the past hundred years. 

It has grown faster than any other population of species on this planet and, because of that, we are using up the resources of this planet and the planet is not able to continue to produce enough resources in the time that we need them to provide for all of these extra human animals on the planet. 

His recommendation in his last documentary was, we really need to start controlling our population growth. There doesn’t seem to be any predator out there that’s big enough to control our population growth for us. We need to put our minds together and make a decision as to whether or not it’s important to continue living the way we do now and ruining it for future generations or do we put these restrictions on our species ourselves, and say, “Gosh. Yeah, we should stop having more than two children”? 

It’s funny, I tell my friends. I’m like, “Yeah, I watched that documentary about a year ago and I have three children.” I can’t imagine not having one of those children but I did say to my husband that, if I would have watched that documentary before we conceived the third child, I don’t know that I would have. 

I really do believe that population growth containment is important for our planet and I really think I would have made a different choice years ago. That is heartbreaking today because, of course, I know my child now. I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I could never imagine not having you around,” but I can imagine making a decision before I ever even conceived that child to choose not to have that child because I recognize the stress that we are placing on our planet by continuing to overpopulate it.

There is part of me that, when I hear this debate about taking away the rights of the female part of our species, taking away their rights to decide not to bring a pregnancy to fruition, to term, and I hear these people say, “Oh that’s not right. That child has a right to live.” Yeah, I don’t know that I agree with that. I mean, it has nothing to do with religion. I really don’t care which side of the religion coin you’re on. I don’t care. There’s multiple sides, right? It is this decagon, but I just think that, for our planet, I would argue with David Attenborough that the last thing this planet needs is to force the female part of our species to produce children that they don’t want, just for the sake of producing children.

Then, on the other side of this topic comes in, why would we want to force anyone to do anything? First of all, to me that’s slavery, why we would force anyone to do something they don’t want to do for themselves. Why would we do that? Why would we? First of all, let’s just talk about human rights. Period. I mean, I don’t care if it’s a pregnant woman or if it’s a child in a sweatshop or if it’s whatever. 

The idea of forcing another human to do something they don’t want to do seems really counterintuitive from where we need to be going in terms of evolution of our species. It seems a bit of a backpedal. It seems like we’re kind of going backwards a little bit there and not recognizing the hypocrisy that we create by putting these restrictions on a fellow portion of our species. 

On the third note, why would we want these children in the world that are brought in in a situation where the mother doesn’t want them? Frankly, I got to tell you, I don’t think the men are willing to step up and raise the children. I mean, no offense, men. I am sure some of you would. I am not talking to all of you. 

I think you know the portion of the society I’m talking to. The ones that just want to have fun and then, when it comes time to actually being responsible and taking care of that child, they run away and then they create other children with other people that they also run away from. I just think again, we would be in a situation where we could, okay, we could come to an agreement here. Alright, the women is forced to give birth to this baby. Alright, but then, the men who created the baby, helped create the baby, they have to raise it. Well, then you’re going to have a lot of men out there saying, “Well, that’s not fair. I don’t want to raise the baby.” 

I’ll say, “Well gosh, you forced a woman to do something she didn’t want to do. Now, we have to force the men to do things they don’t want to do.” So, when do we stop forcing people to do things they don’t want to do? It’s never led anywhere good in my life. I certainly have used manipulative powers to talk people into doing things in my past that I know that they weren’t real hip on doing but, oh, man, I call it a Venusian tongue, like from Venus. 

I can really talk a good story and I can get people to see my perspective and I can talk to them in a way because I am intuitive. I can pick up on their thoughts, I can actually use their own thoughts against them. I have in the past. I don’t anymore because I see how awful that is. I don’t want to ever force anybody to do anything they don’t want to do because it doesn’t end well. They do wake up and realize, “Wait! Yeah. I have been swindled here. I didn’t ever want to do this. How did I get talked into this?” Have you ever said that, listener? Have you ever had a moment in your life where you say, “How do get talked into this?” 

Well, at least then hopefully you have the ability to stop. Stop doing whatever it is that you realize you don’t want to do anymore. But by taking away the rights of a woman to decide what to do with her own body is archaic. It is very ugly, it’s really putting women in bondage. It really is going back in time and treating women as if they are objects. That they are just vessels and that that’s all they’re good for. They can’t make decisions for themselves, they have to think about everybody else, and they have to bring a baby into the world that they don’t want. Think about the kids, let’s get back to that.

Think about the kids that are born knowing and they come to find out, “Oh my mom didn’t want me” or “I am a child of rape” or “I am a child of incest. I wonder if I am going to grow up and rape somebody? I wonder if that’s a genetic thing? I wonder if it’s a psychological disorder and I am going to grow up and be a rapist?” I mean, how many children do we want in this world that come in and are disgusted or frightened by the conditions of their creation? 

To me, I think we’re asking for trouble and if religion thinks that they are going to be able to turn all those children into followers of theirs by taking care of them and showing them that they’re good and that they’ll be saved, I think again that’s a mistake. I think again, you have to wait for someone to come to your religion. You have to let them choose that and not have it forced upon them.

I think we need to evolve into a species that recognizes we have difficult choices to make going forward, especially if we’re going to continue to live on this planet, which I don’t know that we will. I mean, honestly, the way that we’re going, I don’t even know if it’s a good idea to be honest with you. In our history, we have not shown ourselves to be able to evolve above slavery, war, crimes against humanity, degradation, hatred, addiction. We haven’t made huge strides forward in saving our planet to save our species. 

I wonder, what all these people think they’re doing by creating more population for our planet when it is super clear that the more populated the planet gets, the less time humans will have to spend on it and we will start to have to spend time in smaller and smaller and smaller environments because the earth will eventually start to become toxic for us. Therefore, we will be forced to reduce our population at that point.

It’s not an easy topic. It’s not and there are so many ways to debate it. There are so many feelings about it. There is so many people that have never had an abortion and have never thought about it that have an opinion on it, and I really think those people should step out of the conversation, to be honest with you. 

I don’t think that they have a place at the table to discuss whether or not this should continue to be an option because we have enough population and we don’t need to put women in shackles and force them to have a baby. We don’t need to do that. No species needs to do that. That’s gross. 

That’s like – I don’t know what that is, I mean, that’s horrible. I get pictures in my mind that are just really, really ugly. I’m sure you do too at this point. Anyway, I just think that there are lots of sides to this. Should we really do this because our planet can take the added population? Should we really do this because it truly is bondage and slavery? 

I think this is a difficult topic and I certainly have had a hard time with different points of view on this topic. You may be feeling, maybe you didn’t even listen to the whole podcast because you are just turned off to begin with, I don’t know, but I hope that we can open our minds and realize that going backwards in the way that we treat an equal part of our species is not the right way to go. 

I know that there is some women out there who actually feel strongly that the rights should be taken away from the mother, the “how dare she?” There are actual women there are a part of our species that feel that it’s justifiable to take those rights away and, again, I feel like everybody should at least be able to hear someone else’s point of view without wanting to fight because it is okay that everybody has a different point of view. 

I mean, this is, in my opinion, this is also what we ran into with COVID as well. I mean, just the polar issue of to vaccinate or not to vaccinate and, you know, “How dare you don’t?” Another side saying, “How dare you do? Why would you want to do that?” right? So I feel like we couldn’t discuss things level-headedly then. 

I feel like things kind of just get pitched in our society to this place where people can’t converse about difficult things anymore and I always learn so much from having a conversation with someone who thinks differently than I do and I hope they feel the same way and that we both walk away better.

It doesn’t mean that I’d change my mind or they change theirs but maybe, I’d think twice about it. Maybe I really don’t just jump to a judgment any longer on that topic because this person has been so kind to help me see their point of view. So this isn’t one of those topics that I think we’re going to have to be able to have these conversations about. 

Again, I really hope, I have hope that the human race can make the difficult decisions it needs to make to reduce its population, save the planet, and truly get rid of slavery and bondage. Those three things would be phenomenal and to come at every decision from love and not judgment and hate. Gosh, that would be great. If love could just prevail. 

Alright everybody, well again, I’ve hit you with another difficult one. I apologize. I think you’re better for it. That’s my opinion. Anyway, alright, everybody. Have a great day. Thank you so much for tuning in. Talk to you next time. Bye. 

Thank you again for tuning in. If you’ve missed any of the previous podcasts or just want to listen to some of them over and over again, which I hope you do, please go to our website. They’re all there for you and so easy to listen to from that platform, gwbw.com, www.gwbw.com. GroWise Be Well, empowering you to live your best life.