This week, not for the first time, I read an article that equated being Pro-Life with being Anti-Woman. Let me say clearly and unequivocally that if you believe these to be synonymous, you are wrong. You can be Pro Life and also Pro Woman. I am going to try my utmost not to say anything inflammatory or do any name-calling in this post and I would appreciate if you could honor that sentiment in comments, etc. I do believe that people who are "Pro Choice" also have valid reasons for their position, and probably interesting perspective and life experience that has molded their beliefs. I mostly just want the chance to explain mine.
I am an attorney. I am a writer. I am a mother of four. I am a daughter, a sister, a friend. I have been a woman in many of the ways you can be a woman--career woman, stay at home mom, part time mom, student, friend, sibling, mother, and on and on. I could keep spouting labels indefinitely. The fact is, woman includes a LOT of women, a lot of lifestyles and a lot of circumstances and all of them are special. In fact, as Latter-day Saints (aka, Mormons), we believe that each person on earth has a spark of the divine. We believe that we are God's offspring and that we all carry within us the potential to become more, to become better, to become in our own way, divine. In that regard, men and women are completely equal. We don't believe men are more, are better or have greater worth.
Equal Doesn't Mean the Same:
I don't mean to reference Brown v. Board of Education, because what an unmitigated mess. Obviously I am not saying separate but equal. In fact, quite the opposite. We are all in this together and we are all equal, but we aren't clones. Let me give you an imperfect analogy. My kids are all very different. One likes playing outside, one likes playing inside. One always wants boots on, and one loves to be barefoot. One loves bananas and one loves apples. If I am packing their school lunches, and I put a banana in one lunch and an apple in the other, their lunches are not the same, but they are equal. I have given them each fruit. Similarly, in life, we can all have different things that make us who we are, and we are not the same, but we have equal value. Isn't it glorious that the world is so full of different people and things?
I think you can see where I am going here--women and men are NOT the same, not at all. Not even all men or all women are the same, but there are some things that are a little more universal than others. Most women are able to (biologically speaking) have children. Some women choose to pass up on having them, for whatever reason, and some decide to have children. There are also women who are not able to have children. My heart hurts for those women who want to experience this and cannot, so I say the following with every bit of respect and honor that I can, and I do not in any way wish to offend.
Physically growing a child, giving birth to that baby and then nursing a newborn is absolutely awful.
It is also an incomprehensible miracle.
Men will never experience those things. Never, ever, ever. Parts of me pity them and parts of me envy them. That is life. Things in life are interesting, but rarely fair, rarely just.
My Position:
I believe that women have a choice, many choices in fact, but that the point at which a child has been conceived, they have made a choice (to have sexual relations) and therefore I am opposed to abortion of any kind, in all but two circumstances: if the fetus poses a risk to the life of the mother, or if the baby was the result of rape.*
Conception as my Bright Line:
So why draw the line at conception? Believe me, my husband is an ER doctor, so I am familiar with the scientific discussion of the common rate of miscarriage in the first 12 weeks or so. I am aware that not all fetuses are viable and that the body determines some are not and expels them. So be it. That may be so, but the only bright line that can really be used to determine when a fetus is viable is conception.
I believe this for a variety of reasons, but let's start with the most basic. If we plonked 100 people down in a new country and said, "You're the new world. Get going and form a government," anarchy might exist until someone said, "Hey, I don't feel safe." Government's most basic purpose is to protect the weak from the strong. Could anyone be more weak or underrepresented than an unborn fetus? Now, when one person's safety begins to impact another, you have to make a difficult call and that is why I would leave it in the mother's decision making wheelhouse to determine whether to abort a fetus if its continued existence could pose a risk to her life.
Let me be clear: preventative birth control is acceptable to me. Sperm alone, and eggs alone? They cannot create a baby. Mixed together, but without fertilization? No baby. Once the sperm has fertilized the egg and it has implanted in the uterus, there is a baby and it is likely to become a fetus.
If you have heard of Jonathan Swift, you might be familiar with a satire he wrote years and years ago. It was pretty revolutionary at the time--he suggested that starving colonists could eat babies. The arguments he made really stuck with me. If you've read Roe v. Wade (the Supreme Court Case that legalized abortion), the test of whether an abortion is okay is whether the fetus is "viable." What a terrible line! I mean, I have raised children and let me tell you--if you left my five year old alone she might not survive. I can say with no uncertainty that any newborn left alone will die. So if your line is viability, you may as well condone infanticide, and you may very well be stuck accepting toddler and young child-icide, too.
Choices for Women:
I, too, believe in choices for women. I just happen to believe in a little something called Consequences as well.
What do I mean? Well, I have worked hard to teach my children that while we are here on Earth, we can make decisions about everything under the sun, but after we have made our decisions, we do not get to choose what happens as a result. If we leave our bike out, it might be run over by our mom's car. (Yes, that happened tonight. Doh!) If we gobble up all our Halloween candy in two days, we will probably get a stomach ache. If we never water our plant, or feed our fish, they will probably die. We all have choices to make, from what to eat, to what to wear, to where and how to spend our time and money. Choices, choices, choices.
My second grader likes to say, "You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose." This is a ridiculous thing to say, but it has a decent point. You can make choices that impact you alone, but when the consequences of your choices impact another person… well, then you might not be as "free to choose."
I believe (for religious reasons) in abstinence prior to marriage. Let me save my explanation on that for another post because this one is already REEEEEAAAALLYYYY long. But if you don't believe in that, it's okay. My point is that if you choose to enter into sexual relations with someone, whether you use birth control or not, nothing is perfect. You know the risks, or you should. (I think sex education has made some progress here, but parents should be addressing this, too.) It is not fair that women can get pregnant and men can't but, have I said this enough yet? Nothing in life is fair.
It is the reality. If you make a decision that results in a pregnancy, guess what? Having to give birth to a baby is your CONSEQUENCE. Even then, you have choices! You can keep the baby, you can give it up. You can let a family member raise it. There are open adoptions, closed adoptions, and on and on. You can choose, but your smorgasbord of choices should not include the one thing that impacts that other life, the one that exists as a consequence of another decision you made. The fetus. You should not be able to choose to kill it.
Okay so there it is. I am pro-woman. I would vote for a woman president, I would encourage women to do and be anything they want, but I also believe we should hold women accountable for decisions they make. I also believe in holding men accountable, by the way. I believe they have rights and obligations that accompany this issue, from child support to knowledge that a new life exists. But that's for another post as well.
One last issue. Why am I posting this on a religious blog? Isn't it political? Well, it is and it isn't. The views I have on choice, on free agency, on accountability and on the importance of life are all shaped by my religious beliefs and who I am. I believe in the importance of each life because I believe God has a plan for us all, love for all of us. I believe there are little spirits up in heaven He lovingly created who are waiting for bodies, who are waiting to come down to earth. I just want to conclude by acknowledging that I know there are gray areas and it's confusing and it's hard. I believe in His love and His concern for us. I hope I haven't offended anyone and I hope we can all be a little more civil, a little more understanding on this topic and on others. I especially hope that we can remember that the people who hold these beliefs are still people. Not idiots, not morons, not a vast group of confused imbeciles. Every single person on Earth is precious to God and I think that's my very point.
-Bridget
*I am aware that this raises the issues of "How will you enforce those two exceptions?" Well the health of the mother is easy. If the mother's health is at risk, she needs a doctor to sign off. Done. On the secondary question, whether the baby was the result of a rape, the answer is that anyone who was truly desperate could lie. She could get an abortion for a fetus that wasn't the product of a rape. So, this also rebuts all the arguments that there will be back alley abortions with coat hangers, etc. If a woman is truly desperate enough, she could go in and lie and get an abortion, but as an attorney, I want it on the books that it's illegal except in those circumstances to that women will take it seriously.
I just got around to reading this post. Very well said.
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