Yes, I used to be one when I was in college and hugely Catholic. My conversion to being at first reluctantly, and then emphatically, pro-choice took place long many years before, and independently of, my going through a religious epiphany of sorts and later became a nontheist. I've already related the latter experience in a diary a few years ago, so I won't belabor that latter part of my life here.
More at the flip.
I must admit that I was pretty tame for an anti-choice "activist." I probably wouldn't even pass muster with the Lila Roses and the Cheryl Sullengers of today. I supported and in fact encouraged contraception as a healthy, important, and effective means to reducing the number of abortions by preventing pregnancy. In the early Nineties, AIDS was a hot-button issue and one of which I was deeply concerned, having had a friend whose father had died of AIDS. So condoms did double-duty in preventing unintended pregnancy as well as a life-threatening disease. I can just imagine Lila Rose's young mind exploding as she wraps her head around the prospect of a good Christian girl her age, twenty years ago, being opposed to abortion yet endorsing and promoting birth control.
Also, even as a young college student, I was no "single-issue" voter (to this day, the notion of electing leaders to run the country based on only one issue frustrates the hell out of me), and tended to vote Democratic or progressive third-party every time I could. My first vote for President was for Michael Dukakis in 1988, and I was roundly made fun of from my conservative friends and relatives for doing so. I felt, however, that supporting the middle class and poor of America was, in the long run, a much larger and looming political issue than abortion.
My activities with Students for Life were limited to writing awful poetry from the perspective of an unborn fetus, posting leaflets of places to get free condoms on and around campus, and writing letters to state legislators asking them to restrict abortion rights. Even back in the early Nineties, I “got it” that contraception was the most effective way to prevent abortion (by DUH, preventing pregnancy!), and I was also disgusted by the more "hard-core" activists who'd picket abortion clinics and harass women going there, and even more horrified and angered at the lunatics who bombed clinics and murdered doctors in what I felt at the time was the good name of the pro-life movement as a whole. So you could say that, by today's standards, I was pretty "moderate" for an anti-choice activist.
Yet, my beliefs in the protection of the "unborn" were strident, and even virulent. When arguing my points about "the right to life" with others, I sometimes treated other people horribly if I learned they were pro-choice. I am embarrassed to admit that I could be a spiteful little asshole about abortion issues during that time. It took me a long time to gradually change my beliefs and start acknowledging that neither I nor anyone else--not the church, not the government--had any place in deciding what was ultimately a very private, and often painful, decision for a woman to face.
My conversion from being opposed to being supportive of a woman's right to choose an abortion was not an immediate revelatory experience for me--it didn't happen overnight. Nor did I become pro-choice as a result of anything personal I endured. I had never become pregnant and had never had to face the difficult decision of terminating a pregnancy. My feelings were more gradual--from being totally against abortion to being against abortion but supportive of Roe V. Wade from a sadly pragmatic standpoint (I didn't want to see women hurt and even kill themselves to terminate a pregnancy in a back alley somewhere), to ultimately supporting a woman's right to choose and even volunteering for that evil bastion of debauchery and sex, the very organization whose name made every good Catholic think of "abortion," Planned Parenthood.
For me to change my attitudes and viewpoint of this very difficult issue, I did something in the Nineties that might be considered groundbreaking, now, for an American anti-choice advocate in the 21st Century. I started to listen.
More specifically, I started to pay attention to the young women around me who themselves had to make the very difficult decision of terminating their pregnancies. Through their eyes, I saw worlds of worry—heartbreak, sadness, pain, and uncertainty (ahh, there's that corporate buzzword again; but if only the Koch brothers and moguls who throw around that word so injudiciously could look into the hearts of human beings who weren't as fortunate to amass their wealth and political prowess—if only the One Percenters had that kind of empathy). I saw the potential for their futures to be damaged and their own lives to be shackled by an irreversible decision—and that is why, now, finally, I cannot understand why anyone could ever believe that a woman could ever make the decision to have an abortion lightly.
I can't understand why I ever believed that, at one time.
Well, perhaps that's not entirely true. As a young child—shit, as an elementary school student as young as eight or nine—I'd gone to a strict Catholic school, and had been indoctrinated into believing that even first-trimester fetuses were as living, breathing, and sentient as the women who carried them. I had nuns, priests, and other elementary-school students who were my age convincing me that abortion was evil and that all women who had one were condemned to hell as surely as a murderer was, and those who supported abortion rights were also going to burn in hell as accessories to those murders.
It was indoctrination of the cruelest kind—telling children that, after they die, their God will cast their immortal souls aside to eternal loneliness, suffering, and turmoil if they even support a sister, mother, aunt, or friend who has ever made, or will some day have to make, that choice (and of course, this is predicated on said children being taught that there is an afterlife of heaven for “us” and hell for “those people” to begin with).
If anyone has ever seen the movie, Jesus Camp, there is a scene with which I identify intimately. It is the one in which a trusted adult “camp counselor” is wearing a red LIFE T-shirt, teaching a large group of youngsters about the evil of the years since 1973, and bringing in tiny plastic baby figurines to illustrate what Roe V. Wade had wrought upon our “good Christian nation.” In this scene, the kids look terrified, anguished, and driven to tears by the propaganda that the counselor is drilling into their minds:
My reaction was similar to those of the Jesus Camp kids twenty years later. As I've much earlier written in quite exhausting detail, I've always been a pretty intense dweeb, even as a kid, and took a LOT of things more seriously than I should have. It was really no small wonder, then, that I would go to wrenching lengths to convince myself and others that abortion was wrong, and later go through an equally wrenching conversion upon opening my eyes to the plight of women who actually have had to face such a private decision.
And that's what I concluded, and still conclude, that abortion is, ultimately—a private decision. I made peace with not only the procedure itself, but the moral implications around it. It's none of my damn business, plain and simple. Although I detest the anti-choice movement's tactics (especially when they resort to violence), I can respect people for being personally opposed to abortion, because I have to admit I am still uncomfortable with abortion. It's a tough issue for me, and probably will remain that way. However, whether or not I feel “comfortable” with someone else's decision to have an abortion is totally beside the point.
It's like the old bumpersticker says—if I'm personally against abortion, then I won't have one. It's a private matter, between a woman, her doctor, and (if she believes in one), her God. It's none of my, or anyone else's, damn business what goes on in a woman's body, heart, mind, or soul. The evangelical right loves to talk about the sanctity of life. Where does the woman's life come into the picture? And what about her husband's or boyfriend's life? And furthermore, how is it my place to force another woman to bring a child into the world when she is ill-equipped for whatever reason to do so?
As my husband (also pro-choice) says wearily, these arguments have been made before and have been beaten into the ground, so I won't belabor the same old arguments anymore in this diary. Suffice it to say that, when I started to listen, I opened my eyes; and when I opened my eyes, I started to become active. This time, however, it wasn't for Students for Life, but for Planned Parenthood. Last week, a large group of fellow Floridians and I went to our state capitol in Tallahassee to protest and lobby against the measures making the rounds through the Florida legislature (I'm standing with the group in the back, holding a Prevention First sign); and I'm also teaming up with other volunteers to update comprehensive sex-ed materials for teens. If Prevention First never sees the light of day, then I want to do what I can to help educate the next generation of young women (and men!) of ways to prevent pregnancy via the use of responsible birth control and responsible attitudes toward sexuality and relationships.
People who are anti-choice can change their attitudes and actions; I'm one of them. Being strong advocates for choice, being willing to educate, and being patient and persistent are big parts of what it takes to have an impact on the anti-choice movement. Ultimately, though, the onus is on the anti-choice movement to do the daunting task of simply listening. I did.