Blog for Choice

Because yesterday was the first day of school, and therefore I've been missing lots of details that it's been a good idea to remember, I missed Blog for Choice Day.  It's almost two days late now, but I figured I'd mention it here in any event, because I think that on another night where the television was full of the manufactured thoughts of a puppet leader, it's important to have and share your own, based on your own experience in these United States, and not manufactured by any opinion poll.

I struggle with the reality of abortion and my pro-choice stand because I honestly believe, as well as I can believe anything, that as a childless, liberal, single woman I would not choose this for myself, especially now when, if you imagine my "biological clock" and persistent maternal impulses, you could conjure an image of Big Ben and not be remotely close. And to me that makes the issue of choice the central factor. It doesn't really matter what I would do. I don't believe that I would choose it, although one of my most solid and long-lasting beliefs is that it's foolish to say that we'd know what we'd do in any situation in which we've never found ourselves. How in the bloody hell do you know? Especially as I age, the "nevers" and the "couldn'ts" dwindle ever more rapidly, because even a tiny bit of wisdom can tell you that on a day when you're in a mood, you'd either burn down the house or think you could hit the stage and go head to head with Beyonce. You just don't know what you'd do, or what you'd be driven to do, if you were motivated enough. Our human house of cards is built on supposition and odd genetic wiring, along with a healthy dose of what we've picked up from our families and friends and whatever institutions we've been exposed to on the way.

A friend of mine told me several years ago that she started dating her husband when he was married to someone else, in a relationship that had crumbled almost when it started. She told me because we'd just heard a person we worked with state emphatically that he would NEVER do something, something I can't at all remember now. "I never say never anymore," she said, "because I NEVER thought I'd date a married man. But when we met, that was it. It was the right thing to do, although I would have never thought it would be."

So there went her nevers, and I've had my own fall apart, that's for sure. A couple of years ago, a friend asked me to state that I would never re-enter a relationship that had caused me significant pain. I couldn't say that, and more powerfully, I didn't want to. I could see all the reasons why, but knew my own foolish and well-intentioned (and a little bit stubborn, yes) heart well enough to know that I'd have to follow it, and I wasn't presumptuous enough to think I could predict what it would say. Good thing, because I was right.

I was exposed to the Catholic church from a little girl on up. Somehow my corner of it never pushed us into pro-life marches and like activities, although I'm sure somehow if I looked intently back through the haze of the past four decades I could pick up countless messages that maybe I'm blocking now. We often prayed for the souls of the unborn, in petitions in Mass and in prayer services, but to my mind, what was wrong with that? Might as well pray for them as anyone, I can imagine I reasoned, as life taught me young that it wasn't always easy out here, and we all need whatever  prayers people take the time to pray for us. These prayers  did not equate, for me, an indictment of anyone else, although in a sense that's what they always are.

I've always been repelled by pro-life protesters, with their posters of dismembered fetuses and live little children standing there next to parents waving them. I don't see the point, and I've never felt that intimidation, even in this age of "shock and awe" was the way to go for any kind of lasting change. Sometimes when I drive by my office on the weekends, they're camped out at a clinic nearby, standing or sitting in their lawn chairs out by the road, serving, I'm sure they believe, as a message or a witness to passersby and the women entering to do what they probably think they need to do to survive. And when I see them - especially, I'll admit, the men - I want to respond in unhelpful, rageful ways. I want to make profane gestures. I want to ask them if they've walked this road, or helped anyone else do it. I want to ask if they've adopted children themselves, or believe they're speaking as the mouthpiece of a God that none of us should have the hubris to assume we can represent. But I don't.

I've supported two friends through the process of making a choice that was the right one for them, with mixed feelings myself, each time, because the thought of abortion itself leaves me sad and cold, I'll admit. Partial-birth, in particular, is tough for me, because I do believe that to be the death of a human being, and I don't understand why anyone would do it short of the threat of death.

I hate the whole idea, honestly, but I also hate the reasons why I know it exists, the forces and suffering that leave human beings desperate and afraid, or perhaps even simply numb to what they're experiencing. I also believe that it's very important that women, who are often used around the world as spiritual and physical dumping grounds for anger, discrimination and mistreatment, who mother their own children and grown adults on a daily basis, have some kind of power to choose their own way. I've worked with immigrants to this country whose husbands have denied them access to birth control, so families live in poverty in depressed areas with eight children because this is what "God wants". These are the supposed gifts of his will. I don't buy it.

And whereas my body and soul doesn't at all agree on a visceral level with so much that abortion represents, I refuse to become the arbiter of someone else's gray area of right and wrong. And I'm also mindful that the choice I believe I'd have made, or would make today, is done in the context of an education that has led to relative financial stability, sexual and emotional relationships entered into mindfully and respectfully, and warm support from a family who would support me and a child regardless of whatever decision I make. This is a pretty good stacked deck. Not everyone has this, and even if she does, I have no idea what motivates her and helps her make her decisions. I might not agree with it, and it might often make me sad, but she gets to choose. The alternative just doesn't work. 

Comments

[OCgirl]

oh wow. well said. i loved this post. whenever i've considered blogging about why i'm pro-choice (especially with the recent roe v. wade anniversary), i've always had difficulty finding the right words. but i agree and relate to everything you said. i certainly couldn't have said it better than you did.

[Karen McCarthy]

You are so insightful and so articulate! You know that I share some of that Catholic-school history with you, and I am thrilled to learn that you grew up with an independent mind coupled with a heart tuned in to the needs of others ... and a realistic understanding that most women's circumstances transcend pamphlets and slogans ...