I've been wanting to write this diary for awhile, and perhaps now's the time.
I want to tell my story of conversion from anti-abortion/pro-life to pro-life/pro-choice, in the hope that it will help bring people on both sides together in a way that defeats the old frame and instead gives us a mutual agreement that can be considered Pro-Woman and Pro-Child.
I'll ask both sides to make a leap, but remember: this works out well in the end.
Raised Catholic and Democratic, my pro-life belief was always the sore spot in high school when it came to social justice, because even though it was a Jesuit school, the social-justice types were liberal down the line. I embraced the Seamless Garment concept of pro-ALL life, including an opposition to capital punishment and war that was just as strong as opposition to abortion.
Our pro-life club picketed the nearby Planned Parenthood on more than one occasion. We had friends on the PP side, so we were able to keep things genial as we spoke our minds on morality. Our opposition was never fierce or confrontational, always a call to choose life. Practially speaking, my opposition manifested mostly in discussion on morality rather than any real world examples among friends. Pro-choice advocates would accuse me of wanting to legislate my morality; I'd counter that I'd rather legislate mine than theirs which I found lacking (yeah, fundamental misunderstanding there).
When you are a young pro-lifer, all that matters is that innocent children are being killed, and how could that be legal? "How could this choice be allowed? It wasn't so long ago that I was a fetus..." It was an empathic focus on the fetus superceding empathy for the woman, because death is clearly worse. It's the heart of this "convenience" argument, and what Mother Teresa meant when she said, "It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you might live as you wish."
(Note that Mother Teresa did not say that it was a crime. She was speaking about the interior life; a woman's conscience.)
I constructed a strong moral case against abortion, without resorting to God or religion because I knew I had to make the case to secular law. I said that Science tells us that upon conception, we have a genetically unique human life distinct from the mother. It has no possible destiny but to become a person, so it should have all rights a person has then.
The first part about the genetic distinctness of the embryo is true. But where pro-lifers say that is the most important part of the story, we say it is not. What it took was meeting women who'd had an abortion to realize they were the real people in this equation. An embryo is human, but it's not a person. It's absolutely not fair to grant it rights equal to or above those of its mother. It shouldn't be recognized by law, because the law is concerned with persons, aka social actors, and the enwombed are social actors only if the mom-to-be says so. It's her... Choice. That's how I got it.
Women react to pregnancy and abortion in myriad ways, but it's safe to say that generally abortion is a tough decision, even if it's made quickly and firmly. There's a sense of loss, and some women feel afterward, in later months or years, as if they are accompanied by a "child" they can't explain except as the one they chose not to have. For some women, abortion is relief; for some, tragedy; for others, both. But the choice is never made lightly. That is something that only a woman who's had an abortion can teach a pro-lifer in the way they can take to heart. The pro-lifer just needs to know that she loved that fetus even if she chose not to bring it into the world. As today's installment in the series of touching diaries on abortion tells us, it's not our business to judge a woman for aborting, because it's so unfair to assume that abortion means she didn't care about her potential child. It's impossible NOT to care, regardless of the decision.
What I ask of those who call themselves pro-life: go out of your way to love and appreciate women. Grant women the respect they deserve as morally capable decision makers regarding reproduction, and then heap extra respect and support on top of that. Choice IS Freedom for them; removing their capability to choose denies their moral agency. God gives us ALL free will, not just men. See their circumstances as major elements of their decision-making process. Accept that we maintain many institutions for social order, and that abortion is a necessary part of that, even if it hurts to consider it. The alternative is a reproductive police state that would do immense damage to this nation.
What I ask of those who are pro-choice: go out of your way to love the fetus. Empathize with any pro-lifer with whom you can have a calm discussion and express a desire to reduce unwanted pregnancies and thus the need for abortion, which opens the door to every progressive policy. Be brave and willing to accept that most pro-life people are not consciously or deliberately against a woman in any way: they just see a massive tragedy and wish it weren't so. There should be options available to women--Choices--even if they seem like anti-choice backdoor options in our current political climate. In particular, women should have access to a neutral counselor if they wish, and a fetal anesthetic should be offered to any woman at no extra cost for late term abortion. Options should be that: optional, not required aka obstacles.
If we take these empathetic steps toward each other, we can have a nation where the abortion war is over, in which we value women, giving them the security to value themselves and their chosen families. Abortion remains legal but is rarely used, because women and their men have access to birth control, the knowledge to use it effectively, and the social permission to enjoy sex without judgment, and when necessary to resort to abortion without judgment either.
There are a few million pro-lifers out there who are where I used to be. They can be reached. They have otherwise liberal leanings and are taking their first tentative steps out of single-issue Republicanism into voting for the pro-choice candidate. We can express our outrage at times like this, but these people need our softer and understanding sides. IF we can give them that gift, we can bring them along. They will see.
It doesn't have to be like this. They can change, and I hope we will help them.