I just don't understand why this is still an issue

Last night there was a whole rampage on Tumblr/Twitter regarding abortion and woman's rights. I live in the UK and so I am not completely up to date with what is going on, I do however, have a vague idea after reading the majority of my dashboard. I'm not going to go too much into it, so that I don't get anything wrong, but if you are interested in finding out what has gone on then just search the politics, Wendy Davis or Filibuster tag on Tumblr or Twitter and you will get a pretty good idea of what is going on. What I am going to talk about is abortion, gay rights and the what I believe is the right age that we should be able to vote.

*Please note- these are my opinions and whilst you may not agree with them, that is fine, and I would like to listen to your opinion as well, however, remember everyone is entitled to believe what they want*

Abortion- To be perfectly honest, I am completely perplexed as to why this is even an issue. Some women are unfortunate enough to be victims of rape and end up getting pregnant because of this; could you really expect that woman to love the child that she had to have because of laws preventing abortion? Surely you would rather the child be loved and cherished and born into a life full of love. This is not the child's fault after all and so why should that child live a life where they were the result in what was arguably the worst time in its mother's life? I understand that government want to reduce the amount of women who use abortion as a form of birth control; so instead of using contraception methods they just abort the baby. This is wrong and I agree with that; so therefore, if there were rules about that, I could be more likely to get on board. Men, I am talking directly to you now, because for the most part it seems to be you who have the problem with this; when you get pregnant your whole body gets messed up and whilst if that baby was something that was planned you really don't mind, if the reason for that was because of someone who abused you to do something you did not give your consent to, why should our bodies be violated because of this? The main point I want you to get from this is that if a woman wants to have an abortion because she feels she cannot look and love a baby for any reason she should be allowed to get rid of it, if she does not and is lucky enough never to be put in that position, then brilliant. There should always be the option and it should not be an issue, because if abortion becomes illegal, do you honestly think that is going to stop people? No, it wont, but instead of being able to abort the baby in a clean, hygienic place with medical experts they will do it in unsanitary conditions and without medic help, which will cause more problems than it would prevent. A woman's body= a woman's choice.

Gay rights- I am not going to get to far into this as I feel Tumblr as a whole has this covered. However, I don't see why governments don't just pass a bill allowing everyone, no matter what the gender is to get married. With the society that we live in, with depression so high, surely a bit of love should be encouraged. However, if churches don't want to allow gay couples to get married in their churches, then fine, that is up to them because as I have mentioned before they may not have the same opinion as yourself, and whilst I may or may not agree with being allowed to marry in churches I don't think that the world is changing quick enough for the LGBT community to get married in them. Who know in a couple of years time we may look back on this (as we have done with racism) and laugh and be disgusted that people have been treated so badly.

Now, on to the bit that most adults will role their eyes at, if you are one of those adults: grow up. I believe that instead of the voting age being 18 it should be lowered to 16. I am speaking as a 16 year old who is very interested in politics and some day I would like to venture into political journalism. I find it ridiculous that as soon as you voice an opinion about something to do with political matters, an adult who is older than you will tell you to be quiet because you 'don't know what you're talking about'. To that I say, are you actually being serious? Most adults don't know anything about politics either but their opinion would be taken above my own despite me actually knowing what I'm talking about because of research and that is not okay. If any person of any age is taking an interest in the way in which their country is being run, I say encourage them, listen to what they say rather than telling them to shut up. We are the future and you are impacting my life and I'd like to have a say in what happens.

Ignoring stereotypes

I have realised that there is a lot of things that I do or think that does fit with the convention of being a stereotypical teenager. It frustrates me that the older generation all dub us with the same brush; For example, I am completely different from my older brother personality wise and we are blood so what makes people think that teenagers are anything like each other just because we happen to fit in the same age category? I therefore thought I would write this post to prove that actually no, not every teenager that walks past you is going to mug you, their hood could just be up because, oh look at that, its raining.

"Teenagers don't care about their education, they would just rather go out drinking and doing drugs"

I think this is the most ridiculous statement I have ever heard. I know that the majority of my school year are splitting hairs over our GCSE examinations. Obviously there are a few that don't care; but for the most part, our entire lives are taken over by the inundation of revision we are doing each night; losing sleep over exams, not eating because of stress and completely avoiding all entertainment so that we won't get distracted. So for someone to say this is absurd, the majority of us work hard and whilst the results may not always pay off that is by no means a reflection of the amount of work we have put in but a reflection of harsh marking from the exam board or simply just not knowing the answer. 

I personally wouldn't rather go out drinking and doing drugs, in fact I have never even seen a drug in real life. I'm fifteen years old and I have never seen a drug: so why should I be categorised under the 'druggy teenagers' that society has branded us with? Obviously I would rather be doing anything other than revision, but why would that mean that I would want to go out drinking? Only the other week I was offered the opportunity to go out and drink to celebrate leaving compulsory education, but I turned it down and enjoyed a night at a McFly concert along with several others in my year. I do understand that a lot of teenagers drink but not everyone gets off their faces which is what I think people honestly think that we do. Please do not offend us by saying that you never even touched a drop throughout your entire teenhood. You're just being hypocritical over something that you yourself did as a teenager. 

Yes, teenagers mess up and make mistakes, sometimes the mistakes that we make are irreversible and in that case we will accept responsibility for those actions but we are allowed to make the occasional mistake because that is all part of growing up. Adults mess up every single moment of every single day, well so do teenagers; so why do teenagers get more stick about it than your average adult? Why is there such a sigma around being a teenager in this day and age? 

This morning after my exam, I came home and as I was revising This Morning was on in the background. They were discussing lowering the consent age for sexual relations from sixteen to thirteen. These kinds of conversations really frustrate me not because of the actual topic (and for reference I don't think the consent age should be lowered because if it does it makes it easier for paedophiles to pry and if people want to have sex then they will do it, they wont care about the law.) but because of the fact that this subject affects us: teenagers. So where was the teenage person? Only adults that don't really have a clue what its like to grow up in the society that we live in today, they never will understand because time has moved on since they were teenagers and its bloody difficult. 

The same goes with the education especially, this affects us more than it will affect any adult, so why are we not asked our opinion on the matter? If you want to get teenagers more interested in politics then ask their opinion and make sure that it counts. I can guarantee that that would increase interest in politics. If it seems that actually you do care what we have to say about situations that will affect our lives then a more concious effort would be made to keep up to date with what is going on. It would also ensure that there would be less chance of the law being broken because it would have been influenced by ourselves.