The beginning of life is not a switch that is flipped. It is a process, a continuum. It is an intensely personal experience that is unique to every woman and every pregnancy. She is a FULL PARTICIPANT. Every emotion, every body substance, is shared. If she is happy to be pregnant, the fetus feels that, and she will endure discomfort because the love is there.
If she does not want to be pregnant, the fetus is bathed with stress hormones, and the process is painful. If you try to remove the WOMAN part (with all her emotions and experiences) out of the pregnancy, you may as well gestate the child in tupperware.
(good luck with that.)
[This was my reply in comments to someone who, responding to the I Am Disposable front-page post, stated that he believed abortion was wrong even in the case of rape or incest. But much time had passed, so I thought I'd diary it. Continued...]
If you want to be pregnant, as I did, it is a wonderful experience but one that certainly does take a physical toll on the body. My child had to be induced at 7 months because of my health. I wanted to bear him for 2 more months, and I still ache that I could not, but my body was not able to do it. My baby, whom I wanted only to hold at my breast, was hospitalized for four months, four long and painful months of separation, during which my husband and I had financial trouble and emotional trauma and stress, and many people among my family, friends and job who were less than supportive.
But my son, though underweight, is healthy at 8 and it was worth it.
I never had an unwanted pregnancy. When I was in my 20s, I did have a pregnancy scare, and the terror and panic I felt were extreme. I literally felt as though I had an alien invading my body that I did not want. But my period came, and it was apparently a false alarm. I got a taste then of how desperate a woman feels when she does not have the maturity and choice about what happens to her body. I also experienced, briefly, condemnation and judgment because I asked a health provider for information.
Go ahead and think abortion is murder. You will never know what it's like to be pregnant with a wanted or unwanted child. You will never know what a woman feels every month, when nature entrusts her -- or fails to entrust her -- with the power of life and death within her own body. (Most fertilized eggs are shed by the body naturally before the woman ever knows she's pregnant.) It is personal. It is intrinsic to a woman's sense of herself. It is not something that can be judged or imposed by someone who is not directly affected by the outcome.
You've been pilloried enough in this space, but I think rightly so. Anyone who says "how you feel is less important than the life in your womb" comes across as impossibly cold and/or clueless about womanhood. Personally, I trust women to decide for themselves. A woman will always "choose life" in the broadest sense, to her utmost ability, time and again, but in doing so, she will make that decision of life in full awareness of the consequences, the rational impacts on her own life and body, and no one can take (or should take) that right from her.
I believe every child has the right to be wanted, to have a shot at a happy, healthy, loving life. I believe that humanity is more than a heartbeat. I believe a certain quality of life is preferrable to life sustained at any cost.
I also believe that life -- nature -- is harsh. Life isn't black and white, right or wrong. Life is complicated, things go wrong (yes, even with wanted babies) and sometimes you have to do what you have to do. Men always seem to find justifications to go to war and have (oops) collateral damage. Women have been entrusted with life and death within their bodies since the beginning of time. An embryo or fetus is not "real" to a man as it is to a woman, it is hypothetical, it is an ethics question. To a woman, it is herself, her body, her love, her life, her child, all weighed into the balance. The decision must be hers alone.