I saw this on my Metro (DC subway) ride home from work today:
Poster of a smiling, vaguely Indian-looking young woman with a small nose piercing with the following text:
Abortion is the realization that we have not given women what they need.
Women deserve better than abortion.
Not until I was getting off the train and got a closer look at it did I see:
(in small print on the bottom) Sponsored by the USCCB (United States Council of Catholic Bishops) Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities and the Knights of Columbus
I spent my ride thinking about the comment I posted on the Mosely-Braun thread Wednesday night and the subsequent discussion it prompted. The discussion was getting interesting, so I'd like to start it up again.
Here's my aforementioned comment:
Pro-choice is pro-life. Pro-choice is pro-children already here.
If a pro-lifer is not willing to subsidize birth control and instruction on how to use it, financially support unintentionally pregnant single women at a minimum of the poverty line for the first two years of the child's life and then pay for decent daycare for all her working hours, and pay for both of their health care, then they're really anti-premarital-sex and should be more honest about it. This is why I didn't mind so much Kucinich and Gephardt being "pro-life." I mind it somewhat in that the preceeding conditions will not exist in this country any time soon.
I consider myself pro-life AND pro-choice. Pro-life in that I'm willing to pay slightly higher (and it would only be slightly higher) taxes in order to subsidize family planning assistance to poor women and teenagers and am willing to subsidize decent childcare for the working poor in order to take a lot of the economics out of the decision to carry through with an unintended pregnancy. On a more personal level, I would not have an abortion unless I were raped, my health was in grave danger, or the baby was going to be severely handicapped. I'd provide emotional and some financial support to a friend who was unintentionally pregnant and advise her to consider carrying through the pregnancy and putting the child up for adoption if she didn't feel ready to be a mother.
I'm pro-choice, though, because I think abortion, morally repugnant as I find it in most cases, should be available to any woman seeking one for any reason, as my criteria for a "legitimate" one are perfectly valid only for me and my own situation, which is more privileged than that of most abortion-seekers. I have great health insurance, a good job and have finished my education, for starters.
We've allowed "pro-choice" to be framed as "pro-abortion" too long. Pro-choice, pro-birth control, pro-child, pro-making life a more feasible choice for poor women. Pro-choicers care more about children who unarguably here. Spread the word.
When I first saw the poster, I thought, "could it be a sympathetic organization, that agrees with me that supporting single mothers emotionally and financially without judging them and making sure all women of childbearing age have access to good birth control?" Given the sponsors, definitely nix on the birth control part, and the rest is questionable.
If any of you are Catholics, what is your take on the Church's position on public aid to unintentionally pregnant women? How eager are they for this aid to be directed through churches, including fundamentalist churches that hold Catholicism to not be Christianity? I know that the Church's official position on birth control is very anti.
