As many longtime Kossacks know, I whipsawed between both sides of the abortion divide for most of my adult life—a conflict brought in in part by becoming a charismatic/Pentecostal Christian. By 2005, I was weakly “pro-life.”
But a combination of massive legislative overkill and growing concern over a disturbing lack of respect for basic human dignity on the part of the “pro-life” movement led me to walk out in 2011. I wasn’t ready to call myself pro-choice yet.
But that decision was made for me with the Kafkaesque saga of Marlise Munoz, however, was the last straw. We had a brain-dead woman kept on life support for two months because she was pregnant. And yet, all four GOP candidates for lieutenant governor of Texas in 2014 said they would have kept her on life support, with at least two (three?) of them saying they would amend Texas law to require brain-dead pregnant women to stay on life support.
That was the last straw. If it was even remotely possible that defending the sanctity of life meant desecrating corpses, I wanted no part of it. It removed any lingering doubt for me—what passes for leadership in the pro-life movement doesn’t give a damn for the sanctity of life. At its core, it is about destroying the right to privacy through the back door. By then, I’d seen a number of Kossacks say it was more accurate to say this was a forced-birth movement. That description doesn’t sound so outlandish anymore.
As I see it, I didn’t leave the pro-life/forced-birth movement. It left me. Recently, I’ve wondered if I was ever really a part of it. They’re now openly talking about eliminating exceptions for rape and incest, and are even saying that little girls shouldn’t be allowed the option of an abortion even though they would be at risk for death or serious complications if they carried the pregnancy to full term.
But if I needed any more confirmation of why I’m pro-choice, I got it earlier this week from Texas forced-birth activist Abby Johnson. You may recall that Johnson danced a jig when a tree fell down on a street in Austin, cutting off access to an abortion clinic. But when I asked her on Twitter if it would be worth it if that tree caused other businesses to take a hit, her reply was absolutely breathtaking.
So if a neighborhood is at risk of being cut off, and if businesses are potentially taking a hit, none of that matters. All that matters is that babies are being saved. This is exactly the kind of callousness that pulled me away from that movement.
Almost as staggering is that, as of Friday night, 21 people liked this reply from Johnson. Unless I’m very wrong, that’s 21 people who are perfectly fine with neighborhoods and businesses being crippled so long as abortions can’t continue. Words fail me.
This is what passes for mainstream in the forced-birth movement. Even now, the thought I was once part of this makes me retch. But then again, I wonder if I was ever really part of it at all.