Sunday, February 23, 2014

When Did the Definition of Pro-choice Change?

Sometimes i have things to say that aren't about writing, but that are a practice of my skills, i find myself needing a venue to post to.  so here is another.  one i think about often...

When did pro-choice come to mean (at least to pro-lifers) "pro-abortion"

I am pro-choice.  Does this mean i am pro-abortion. No. absolutely not.  And you know what?  When i enter into a discussion on the topic, rest assured that i know exactly what the process entails.  I know how horrible, and horrifying, and sad the procedure is.  I know what happens.  I know.  There is no need to try to shock me with graphic details or guilt me with talk of a baby's beating heart.  I know.  I'm not pro-abortion.  I am pro-choice.

Me?  I don't think i would or could ever have an abortion, but that's the me, happy in my marriage, my new house, trying for a new baby, no problems that threaten, no scandals that scare.  Should my situation change, i would be forced to assess the change in my own soul and decide what needs to be done.  Part of abortion that the rabid pro-lifers never give themselves time to think about seems to be the torment of the mothers who are forced to face such a decision, or those who have had to make it.  I hear too often that they are murderers.

No, they're not.

I don't believe that a baby in utero is a person.  a pending person, sure, but mostly just a parasite.  I thought that for much of my own pregnancy.  This little creature attached to my insides, eating my food, weakening my bones, draining my energy, taking up my space.  I loved her dearly, once she came out, but a big part of why i love her is because she came out.

These pending people, of course, deserve love, and good care, and attention to their needs, but their rights should never EVER supercede those of the woman who is giving her everything to allow them life.  And even when that pending person has reached a stage where it is potentially viable to survive without mother, albeit with medical intervention, they should not have more rights than mother.  At that point, yes, the same amount of rights, but no more.

I do not want there to be abortion.  I do not want this procedure to be in the back of every sexually active woman's mind as the final stop-gap between being a mother and not being a mother. 

What do I want?

I want nonsecular, scientific, useful sexual and reproductive education taught to our children in schools at the appropriate age.  If you balk at this, you better be giving your children the education yourselves.  The right education, with the right terms, the correct consequences, and more options than just abstinence.  Because children don't abstain from the things they're not supposed to do.  Ask my Gator whether she's allowed to touch the TV and she'll say "No touchy TV."  But you may find her, an hour later, with her sticky fingers all over the screen.

I want affordable and accesible family planning (and the term "Family Planning" seems to also become a psudenym to the opposed for abortion as well.  No.) in order to prevent unwanted pregnancies for those too young, or unwilling for children at this moment.

I want afforadable and accesible prenatal care for every pregnancy for every pending human so we know they are safe and healthy and we are able to provide for their needs.

A bottom-up approach, not top down.  Banning all abortion will not stop abortion, look at drugs.  look at prohibition.  If we take these steps from the beginning of a child's life, we can change the way the child looks at the world.  Education in order to phase abortion out, so that it still exists for rare instances, but is never pondered lightly, because there is never an unplanned pregnancy.  You don't get that by standing in an abortion clinic parking lot throwing doll parts at heartbroken women.  You get that by going into the schools and doing what's right.

But, for now, I do want there to be a ban on abortion after a certain point, and for a time I was opposed to most pro-choicers when they were fighting the 20-week ban.  But then i read this article.  I'm pretty sure i cried all the way through, in sadness and in relief.   The final paragraph killed me and it changed my mind.  There needs to be a limit, there needs to be a certain-week ban, but placing it at the ultrasound, where most birth defects are found, is wrong.  Yes, there will be a loss of pending people with Down Syndrom, which is both challening and beautiful, or with spina bifida, scary but not debilitating.  But that 20-week ban would also be sentencing severely deformed babies, like the one in the article and others, and their parents to a traumatic and painful birth, an agonizing life, a too-soon death.  Abortion as end of life care, because the quality of that pending person's life, after birth, would have contained only pain, and torment and fear.  You wouldn't wish that on your ailing grandfather, so you bring hospice in, and he gets morphine.  Why do you wish that upon the soon-to-be-born?

I am not pro-abortion, i am pro-choice.  Meaning that everyone has a choice to make for themselves and the welfare of their own mind and soul and family.  The only abortion I need to concern myself is the one that I would have.  The only abortion you need to concern yourself is the one you would have.  And have you no uterus?  Well, as the wise Rachel Green stated, you have no opinion. 

How about take the time out of trying to shock the pro-choicers, and go into your nearby school to fight for sexual education.  Educate away the idea from the minds of the girls and boys there, before they even have it.

3 comments:

  1. I very much agree with the idea of educating women and phasing out abortion. Like I have said in a perfect world I do wish that that the laws already in place for murder would protect all life. I do not believe the mother is a murderer. One thing I have to say is that as a generalization most pro-choicers like to say that pro lifers only care about the fetus and forget the born child but I feel the WOMAN is forgot even on the pro-choice side. I feel that often a woman is lied to or at least mislead into thinking her baby is less developed than it really is and she is "spared" from seeing an ultrasound which I believe she has the right to see. She deserves the right to know what her baby is. I think using he term "health care" when we are talking about abortion is very misleading. You don't feel regret about a an appendectamy (spelling?) Anyways my point is that many women are often wounded by abortion. Some right away some years down the road and it seems (again as a generalization) that there is nothing set up for these women on the pro-choice side maybe because it would mean admitting that abortion isn't just a simple procedure. My heart goes out to all women who have ever been at the crossroads of this decision. How scared and alone they must feel. And judged. You would never catch me throwing dolls on the side of the street but there are just as many people silently praying and gently helping women know all of their options and taking some of that fear away for them and showing them they are not alone. I have to ask since you see an unborn child as potentiolly human and as a parasite but you also think at a certain point abortion should be banned, does the baby become human to you at this point? What makes it that way for you? Honestly curious. Personally I never try to "shock" with graphic details or facts about stopping a beating heart but more I am shocked that that does nothing to change the minds of people. I understand abortion is an extrmely tricky subject since the child relies on the mother 100% to survive even I don't know all the answers to make this situation ever be perfect. As I have said, probably too many times, I do wish that ehisting laws protected all life but they don't and maybe at one point I did wish for stricter laws on abortion but have since changed my stance. Government intervention will only fuck it up more by possibly prosecuting women for misscariage and such. Government intervention is not the answer but I agree that education is (isn't it always!) But that includes not only sex education but education about the truth of abortion. No beating around the bush no misleading just straight up truth so woman can make completly informed decisions. Yes there will still be abortions but I think the number would go way down and the women hurt by abortion would decrease as well. I guess this is also my response to our previous debate. I realize to have my freedom I need to fight for others to have theirs. (And I believe I do) If I seem tk condradict myself on this issue its only because I am conficted as I see the unborn as a living person with a soul and feel they deserve human rights and that abortions involving physical and mental disabilities are discrimination. For some reason I can't review this on my phone so I apolagize for spelling errors and rambling but I hope it offers insight into the brain of a pro-lifer and answers your questions you have about on me from our previous chat.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Its Alicia by the way ;) I could only post as annon.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Alicia, you are definitely not a rabid pro-lifer that i have referred to, and i feel that way about you mostly because, though we disagree, we do so with loving intentions, and have so much in common when it comes to the rest.

    to answer your questoin, i think that probably at the point where a baby could survive on its own without mother is the point that it becomes a person who should have quality of life rights, and not parasite almost-person. but I saw Gator as a person, just like in that article i linked, at 21 weeks when i actually saw her. That woman saw her child as her son, as her future son when at 21 weeks, she chose to let him have peace instead of pain. but still Gator could not have survived on her own at that point, and had she had a deformity that woudl have killed her at or before birth, i would have had to consider her eventual quality of disconnected-from-my-lifeforce life.

    it's all very complex, and it's hard, and i wish it didn't matter so much and we could focus, like i said, on the bottom-up approach instead. i just had to get it down, a little bit to truly understand what i really think because that's just how i do it. Thank you for even more of your input and asking and yes, clarifying our previous chat. i like that you mention that you want the truth of abortion to be known, and i completely agree. and i don't think any person who has chosen to be on either side does so lightly and with no research into what they're choosing. and if they have gone in uneducated, it is our duty to educate not just the one side we agree with, but both.

    why are we spending so much money on bombs and oil when there's so much education needed in so many different areas!? ah, but that's a rant for another day...

    ReplyDelete