This post is about the evolution of my views on abortion. So here is your content warning.
I grew up in a moderately conservative household. We went to church, and my parents complained about environmentalists, but we recycled and my dad proudly belonged to a union for his work. My parents had pretty moderate, centrist views on things like cannabis, guns, and abortion. I learned what abortion was when I was about 10 years old, watching Dirty Dancing and trying to make sense of the story. I had no idea what being "in trouble" or "knocked up" meant, so I asked my mom. She explained it pretty well I think, considering the age I was. She also told me that she knew a few people who had had them, and while she didn't agree with it because of religious reasons, she was ok with it being legal.
She also remembered her parents telling her about situations like the one depicted in the movie. Desperate women with no other options, entrusting their lives and reproductive health to a sketchy, underground, black market system. Women who lost their lives or their future ability to have children to a botched, unregulated and unsafe procedure. That stuck with me.
A decade later, I was in Chicago trying to get birth control pills while I was in between jobs and had no insurance. My prior experience in Seattle was just to pop in at Planned Parenthood and get 3 months of pills for free. In Chicago, they had a law that limited how many pills you could get, and they cost a lot. A big chunk of my non-existent paycheck (I was subbing, and we ended up selling my truck a few months later to pay our rent). That was the first time I realized that the state you live in makes a difference to your access to these things. Or the consequences of not having insurance in a country with a for-profit system.
About 6 years after that, and after moving back to Washington, I became pregnant with my first child (who is now pushing 13 and in FULL MIDDLE SCHOOL mode). I was also in a summer masters degree program in Chicago, so I spent most of my 2nd trimester on the "L" and in the Deering library. While waiting on the train platform one day after class, I saw one of my former HS students, "C," at that time in her early 20s. We hugged and started catching up, and she noticed my belly. After discussing for a bit, I learned that she too was pregnant, about 12 weeks. I started excitedly chittering away about how great that was and she dropped this on me, "Well, actually, I've decided to get an abortion."
I regret the next part and I hope wherever she is, C forgave me for it. My response was to say "no, don't do that! If you need help, let me adopt your baby. I'm sure my husband would agree."
She then explained her reasoning. Boyfriend was in jail. Estranged from her parents, no help there. She had pre-eclampsia already (VERY early and life threatening). To carry the pregnancy to term, she would have to quit her job to be on bed rest. Losing her job meant losing insurance. That meant to get health care, she would have to live on food stamps, section 8 or project housing, and Medicaid. Her next words still haunt me: "and I will be damned if I raise a baby in poverty like I was."
And I stopped arguing.
A few years later, debating this issue with a church friend, I relayed C's story and his response was "well what did she think was going to happen? Don't want the consequences, don't have sex!"
(btw, if you think that, you're a horrible person, full stop. A child is not a punishment. And if you really believe in the sanctity of life and that a child has a soul at conception, it's even an even more horrific viewpoint. Nevermind the fact that you can't legislate sex in a secular, pluralistic society based on the interpretation of one sect of one religion though it's clear they really want to try---ask yourself. Who does that benefit?).
And I asked why he had a problem with it. "It doesn't affect you in any way shape or form, even financially through taxes---since it's illegal for PP or anyone else to use federal funds for abortions. But a forced birth DOES affect you. Your taxes and insurance premiums. Your overcrowded schools and overworked teachers." And I also asked him why he didn't support free and widely available birth control. He didn't have a good answer for any of that, just tried to talk around it but always came back to the child-as-punishment-for-the-woman-for-having-sex.
(We are no longer friends. I tried to salvage the friendship for a long time but he did the devil's advocate/false equivalency for the Nazis in Charlottesville and that was my line. 20 years of friendship down the drain because a supposed follower of Jesus can't accurately identify evil).
I guess all of this is to say, if you think you are pro-life, examine your feelings about the following things with the understanding that it is not possible to make having sex illegal so just let go of that Puritan sh*t right now:
1. How do you feel about widely available and required comprehensive sexual education, that teaches people how their bodies and pregnancy actually work?
2. How do you feel about widely available and free birth control?
3. How do you feel about providing free pre-natal care including and up to 50% paid leave for medical distress during pregnancy?
4. How do you feel about 6-12 months of required paid maternity leave?
5. How do you feel about free school lunches for every kid?
6. How do you feel about subsidized housing? For citizens only? For immigrants?
7. How do you feel about a secular entity taking care of these things for all women in the United States? (since asking churches to do it has clearly not worked in the past, nor do they have the capacity to handle it now--it also lets every atheist off the hook for contributing to a solution).
Because if the answer to any of these questions is "they need to work harder and figure it out" you are not pro-life. If you're actually worried about saving the life of the fetus because you've decided against science (and the Bible) then you would support all of the policies above because they reduce the number of abortions. Those problems are why my student C decided to get an abortion. If she had been forced to carry the fetus to term, it would have killed her. Explain to me how that is "pro-life." Go ahead. I'll wait.
