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(Ready, Cate? 1. Open can of worms. 2. Dump on head.)
NPR recently reported that in some Planned Parenthood clinics, the abortion rate is up.
We’ve seen some people who said that they didn’t really think that they would ever be making this decision, but recognize that this is a time when they have to think about taking care of the families that they have.
I’ve mentioned my mama before around here. She’s the home-birthin’, articulate and soft-spoken, intelligent and wonderful mother of 6 girls. Six vocal girls.
She raised me and my sisters to be pro-life feminists. Then, when I was pregnant with my first child, I became pro-choice.
Here’s why.
Birth is natural. Our bodies were meant to do this.
Don’t let the men of the world tell you or show you that what your body was made to do is wrong. You’re just feeding in to their chauvinism.
Men have somehow convinced women to avoid what their body naturally does. That is, carry babies and give birth. Now women are even standing up for abortion and turning away from themselves.
Ever wonder if “pro-life feminism” is an oxymoron? The way my mom taught us, it is most certainly not. She’s a religious woman, but [thankfully] never forced us into church pews any more than she forced us to agree with her beliefs. She also didn’t believe that “God punishes all women for what Eve did with the pains of childbirth.” Because frankly, natural childbirth wasn’t all that bad. (And in my experience, it’s the worst pain you’ll ever forget…quickly.) Women’s bodies were, instead, wonderfully designed to do this amazing thing: grow and provide for a baby, and then give birth.
Don’t let them take that away from you! Don’t let society tell you that it’s wrong! Don’t let them make you feel that children are an “inconvenience.”
I very much believed that, once even going so far as to write a letter to Ms. Magazine asking them to examine “Pro-Life Feminism” (they refused).
But I still agree with that. As the mother of two boys and stepmother to two girls, I believe in birth and life. But it’s just not that simple.
When I was pregnant with Little L, my older son, I left his father. After catching him with another woman (on my birthday, no less) and discovering an increasingly horrible drug problem, I called off our engagement and moved out. And once I realized that the drugs were creating violence in him, I completely cut off contact with him, even though that meant losing out on a relationship with his then-3-year-old son, who I’d cared for 4-5 days a week for two years. It was a hard choice, but my priority was keeping myself and my unborn child safe.
During my transition from engaged woman to single mama, I had a handful of awesome women to support me. When I left Little L’s father, I moved in with a dear friend, who happens to be a bit younger than my mom. Two of my sisters lived here in Virginia (the rest of my family is in the Chicago ‘burbs) and were always around. I had my natural midwife, who very holistically asked me about my mental state and how I was adjusting every time I visited her. When I started to have “cramps” from the stress of the changes, I began to see a therapist, also a woman. I rented a house and moved in with another single mother and her young daughter. I became friends with the Pastry Chef at the resort hotel where I worked, who admired my supposed “strength” and was endlessly encouraging. Every time I needed someone to talk to, there was someone there. To help, to listen. I could pick up the phone and vent to any sister, and when I didn’t, they’d call me.
I was going to be a mother. Alone, which I had not planned. But everywhere I turned, I had support.
I know it sounds contradictory: “keeping my unborn child safe”, while becoming pro-choice. It happened out of nowhere, and was a surprise to even me.
At some point, I realized that most women don’t have to be thrown against a wall during pregnancy. Most don’t have a table thrown at them and duck while covering the belly. Of course, as a feisty feminist, I knew this was not “normal” and got out before it became regular behavior.
But I also knew that most women do not have the support network that I had at hand. Most women overall, not just pregnant women in bad situations. If another woman were in my situation, pregnant, how could I ask her to carry the child? That was my choice, yes. But would my choice be different if I had no one?
I felt Little L move very early for a first pregnancy (12 weeks). I am thankful for him every day. I was thankful for him every day that I was a single mom, too. No matter how I struggled at times. But Little L and I had incredible people in our lives. People who babysat for free so I could work. People who bought us loads of clothes or sent us Whole Foods gift cards. People who thought about what we needed and gave and gave and gave, without us ever asking.
Most women—most poor families—do not have that.
How can we ask women to stay safe, protect the children they have, and leave a bad relationship without support? How can policymakers simultaneously rail against abortion while cutting funding for food stamps or TANF or proposing “welfare reform”?
I don’t think we as a society can. Look critically at your beliefs, especially if you don’t agree with me. Work hard to provide for the life around you. Work to help those with less. Especially in this economy.
If you are against abortion, ensure that the multitudes of poor women have other choices. Until there is justice and support for them, abortion must be one of those choices.
Image: Steve Rhodes on Flickr under a Creative Commons License.
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It is impossible to reconcile that a financial basis is used to justify the taking of a life. I joined feminists for life because yes, women deserve better.
I used to not care to make a judgement on this. I think if they show us in biology class information such as
http://www.abortionfacts.com/literature/literature_9438MS.asp
there will be more people making an informed decision instead of letting the media depict one view or the other as extremist verging on terrorist.
I don’t think it is possible for a woman in touch with her body and thought, to cope with the knowledge that they took a life. That should also be considered. Healing is hard.
More importantly, support every woman you know to learn and live up to their potential.
Does abortion provide women with potential?
Outlawing abortion does not stop it, History has shown that it’s dangerous to ban abortion, then it will be done in the back alleys where there is no protection for women in regards to sanitation and unscrupulous doctors. A woman should have a choice. Always.
While I believe every woman should have a personal belief about whether one believes in abortion for ONESELF, to infringe upon other woman’s right to choose because it infringes upon your own personal belief is overstepping. An abortion is a hard choice to make and for someone who’s not in that person’s shoes to judge and be self rightous isn’t really supporting, it’s cramming your personal belief down someone’s throat probably at their most vulnerable time.
Some have commented that life begins at conception. Actually no one really knows when life beings. Scientists are still trying to figure that one out. Maybe to you, life begins at conception, but to someone else, it starts at birth. To someone else, it begins at the first heartbeat, or maybe an ultrasound… again it’s all out personal belief, but that’s not a basis to ban abortion because YOU believe life starts at conception.
What would be worse is to not give a woman the option, So she’s forced to have a child that she doesn’t want or doesn’t have resource to have for one reason or another, and then the child will be in a home where he or she is not wanted or even worse resented. So what then, will be your answer?
This is one of the least-convincing, trite and stupidest pro-”choice” articles I have ever read. Nice try. “Choice” is a euphemism. We don’t have the right to “choose” to kill our own children.
I support life, and that is why I am pro-choice. The woman carrying the fetus is a life, she is alive. She feels, breaths, thinks, dreams, plans, has family, most like has other children already born to care for, has a future, has a past. Her life is valuable, her life is precious, her life is worth protecting.
I am a mother of 3, have seen the beating heart on a monitor, have felt the kicks and thumps, have caught my newborn baby in my hands. And I am pro-choice. Because I honor life.
I think “pro-life feminist” is an oxymoron of epic proportions. But then again I don’t believe there are really “pro-life” people, just anti-choice, anti-women, and pro-pregnancy-as-a-punishment-for-sex-you-dirty-slut-should-have-kept-your-legs-closed-now-shut-up-and-do-what-the-men-tell-you-to But pro-life? Nope, rarely do they even acknowledge the life right in front of them if said life has a vagina and a voice.
I am pro-choice, but I am not pro-abortion. Honestly, I wish no woman EVER had to have an abortion. I cry when I hear about babies being aborted, even when it’s just listening to a song like “Brick” by Ben Folds Five.
BUT I believe that all children should be wanted and loved. What sort of life will a child have if its parents don’t want it or love it? If he or she will be abused and neglected because the woman gave birth despite herself? I worked with abused children for two years until I burned out because my heart broke for them every day. Have you listened to a 10-year-old cry and say he wished his mama never had him? Have you heard the story of how an 11-year-old was beaten with a wrench until he was a mass of blood and bruises on the floor? Have you sat at the emergency room with an 8-year-old girl who told you she’d been sexually abused by a stranger in the woods, only to have her later confide that it may have been her father and her brother?
Aside from that, what about the life of the woman? I was fairly “lucky” that pregnancy’s lasting effects on my body were a ruined digestive tract and a pouch of extra skin on my abdomen. And the inability to deny the underlying anxiety disorder and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome that had gone ignored for several years. Many women aren’t so lucky. If a woman is forced to carry a child and decides to give it up for adoption because she can’t handle raising it, she still has to deal with the aftermath of pregnancy and birth on her body. Let’s not forget postpartum depression. I had that, too, though it went undiagnosed. A poor woman with no support system who may already have an untreated mental illness and then ends up with postpartum depression may just end up killing herself because she doesn’t even know enough to seek treatment. Hell, I have a Master’s degree in Psychology, and I didn’t recognize that I needed help until after the fact! No one even thinks about these things when trying to control what another woman does with her body.
I can’t wait for the day that no woman gets pregnant unless she wants to be pregnant and can afford to raise her child in a loving home. I can’t wait for the day when medical science has advanced to the point where no woman will die because of pregnancy complications. I can’t wait for the day when men stop raping women. I can’t wait for the day when every woman has access to birth control and has been educated about its proper use. I can’t wait for the day when all babies are wanted, loved, and can be provided for.
Until that day, abortion needs to remain a viable, legal option. And that is why I am pro-choice.
No one can be forced to donate blood or organs or anything else to save someone else’s life. To force women to donate their bodies to an unwanted baby is to grant the baby greater rights than the woman. To force women to continue unwanted pregnancies is to force them to risk their lives for someone else. It is a violation of a woman’s right to bodily integrity. You want to stop the “murders”, figure out a way to safely transfer the fetus to a woman who is willing to donate her body.
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