I have a confession to make: well, maybe less a confession and more a statement, depends who's reading. I considered myself pro-choice until I had a baby.
I don't know what changed, really. My politics (moderate to liberal, depending on the issue) didn't especially. Although I believe in the separation of church and state, I also believe that as citizens, our religious beliefs or lack thereof have a fundamental influence on our personal and societal values, and these values have a lot to do with the Constitution, particularly with amending it. Being religious, I have always believed that "the worth of souls is great in the sight of God" (D&C 18:10) while I have also believed that men and women "are free to choose" and accept the consequences of all of their choices (2 Nephi 2:27). Who am I as a perfect stranger to make the choice for another woman just because I vote and pay taxes? Then again, by not speaking out against abortion, am I indirectly supporting it as a practice?
Even conception, pregnancy, and birth did not give me any kind of epiphany. It took actually a few months of taking care of my baby before I started thinking more seriously about what "pro-choice" and "pro-life" really mean and which flag, if either, I wanted to wave over my head. What kind of choices are we talking about? Lots of choices are involved in pregnancy and birth, the very first (and arguably most important) of which is the choice to have sex. Then again, if I decide to be "pro-choice," it doesn't make me "pro-abortion." It also doesn't make me "anti-life," just as "pro-life" doesn't especially make me "anti-choice." But isn't that splitting hairs? Do I need to take a moral stance, as a religious woman, a mother, and a feminist about the sanctity of life versus the sanctity of human rights? Am I weak if I don't? I believe in both, so how can they be reconciled? How did raising a baby raise all these doubts and questions too?
Let's make this a list of questions.
- What does (or should) experiencing pregnancy or motherhood have to do with whether a woman is pro-choice or pro-life?
- Does someone who has not experienced pregnancy or motherhood have the right to insist on legality or illegality of abortion for others? What if they most likely will either experience motherhood or choose to abstain from it?
- What about prospective adoptive parents?
- What about men, who never will have that opportunity?
- Does fatherhood count?
- Does experience with, love for, or belief in the importance of families (to society and fundamentally) count?
- How are "pro-choice" and "pro-life" diametrically opposed? How are they similar?
- Can you be pro-choice and pro-life at the same time?
- As a political stance, is either choosing choice over life or remaining neutral tantamount to supporting abortion as a practice?
- When does life begin: when the baby breathes on his own? When you can feel the baby move inside you? When you can hear his heartbeat through a stethoscope? When you can see his heartbeat on an ultrasound? When sperm and egg join together? When you decide you want a baby? When, regardless of desire for a baby, a woman is about to ovulate and, being at her most fertile, is physically helped along in the choice to have sex (still, obviously, very much her very own choice)?
- Might education on fertility, menstrual cycles, abstinence, birth control, adoption help prevent abortion, whether indirectly by preventing unwanted pregnancies or directly by preventing abortions? How, specifically? What about availability of hormonal contraceptives? What about access to prenatal care and education for women and girls facing 9 months of an abusive or otherwise unsupportive environment?
- Might tighter restrictions on abortion help prevent abortion? What about illegality of abortion?
- What effect do either of these approaches have on constitutional rights?
- How important is the abortion issue to you as a voter, compared to other issues such as the economy, the war, immigration?
As a final note, I don't think many people will read this but if you do, please, refrain from name-calling or finger-pointing (or at least be subtle about it) and try to think about your own answers to the questions, regardless of your overall stance, if you decide to comment! Thank you! I am very interested in hearing from both sides as well as from fence-sitters.
