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.

Catastrophic Failure

That's what i'm calling it because that's what it was.   the loss of everything.  every. thing.

but what i actually lost?  3 hours of audio.  Some music that can be redownloaded.  four paragraphs of revisions, maybe a handful of pictures.

i am very fucking lucky i had decided to back up all of my writing, and dump all of my necessary files onto usb drives in the very recent past.  My dad has fixed it, given me a new hard drive.  I must begin the process of rebuilding my comfy computer space.  my shortcuts and my bookmarks...

In other, more depressing news, i suddenly realize that i don't know Edonith.  Anka's true love and greatest annoyance.  He saves her and he lets her go over and over again.  He is tall and pale and good with plants.  And he is quiet and friendly and welcoming.

These are the things i know about him, but he is so flat, so cardboard.  I realized it as i sat down and tried to force myself to write his Children story.  Because they are all moving forward but for his and Daniel's.  I can't figure out how to write it.  I can't figure out what to write that will show us what makes up Edonith, because Edonith is made up of nothing.

blah.

how do i even fucking fix that?

and what could he possibly be thinking about me for saying that??

...

you know what?  probably nothing.  because i never gave him a brain with which to think.

Evicerated

I like that word.  it pleases me.


it's what I'm currently doing to the guide.


relentlessly, without regret.


it's what it needs.  what I need.


and starting with the teaser childhood stories has allowed me to see it.

A New Year and Opportunities Abound

Metadata is awesome.  On Facebook once, not too long ago I saw a site for publishing an e-book, which has been my goal for quite some time now.  I had already looked into Smashwords, but my problem with that is that the formatting of the Word document is completely baffling to me.  This new site, Tablo.com, you can either pay to have someone do it for you, or you can input it into a template and it does it for you.  So that's what I'm doing.


In fact, I spent most of yesterday when I was "working" (I always love classroom files where more than half of it is group discussions, and I earn a dollar a minute to browse the internet with my foot on a pedal...) critiquing stuff on Scribophile, and doodling around on Author's Den.  Over there, at AD, it turns out they've changed the access of the free members once again.  You are only allowed 20 pages.  I've been part of AD since before and forever (I still remember the day I set my password, at the computer in the Hwy 83 house, quickly, before rushing back to the table to take my turn at the game we were playing)  I'm grandfathered in with my 160 pages, but I cannot add any more.


So I have two choices in my somewhat half-hearted plans to use my teasers on Author's Den (Writing.com really feels like a bust... more of another reviewing site, like Scribe).  I can either pull down everything that's up there and start over, which seems okay to me, but will be time consuming.  Some of those poems and stories I'm not sure that I have hard copies of any longer.  Or, I can say  "Eff it." and just leave AD hanging around in limbo-ed stasis.


I guess there's a third option, but that involves upgrading.  i don't have the money for that right now.


But then last night I logged into Tablo, where i had apparently already made a user name, and I began to lay out my first e-book.  A Study in Shade and Shadow.  Once i had it pasted in, i went through and did another edit, once again using some things I've learned from my short time on Scribe.  Even with the things i fixed, the crap i couldn't believe had gotten past me on dozens of other read-throughs, I'm impressed with the story.  I love that story.


I'm nervous to push it through... and I need a cover before I can.  I'm hoping maybe the husband will make one up for me.  something simple.  maybe an arch, with a line of fire... ooh, yeah.  i like that...


Once that's done, Letters From the Desert will be next... probably.  or perhaps i should break off and do the five Children stories first... then there will be some connection back for when Enna and Eillim mention Nessa... hmm...

Christmas Vacation

And quite a vacation it was.  I didn't work for six days... then worked sporadically throughout the rest of my pay period, ending up short money-wise, but finding an awesome money saving deal that will at least save us for this month.  Already work has picked up now that the new year has set in, and hopefully I can make up some of what I lost last month in this short period.


I'm not sure that I really did enough Other Stuff to justify all those days off.  But probably, I did.  Some writing.  Some critiquing and being critiqued on Scribophile.  I just uploaded a second, fleshed out, named version of the Kath reunion with Spencer story.  I'm really enjoying the critiques I'm getting back.  Helpful.  Useful.  Not annoying.


This morning I did some rearranging, adding folders and sorting stories into correct places on my USB drive.  I need to get the five When They Were Children stories worked out, and I'd love to post them as a serial, maybe once a week... one every two weeks.


This morning I went through The Royals, Nas and Risi, and tried to mend what I broke the last  time I went into it.  I think I can find a way out, and I like the attitude of Nesris better now, but I hate that I made such a mess of it.


I also did a first revision of The Seer, Boss and Milah and Yemar.  That was fun, and enlightening.  I'm using some of the things one critiquer said of the reunion story... because these are all teasers, referring to things the reader doesn't know.  I have to keep the balance between intrigue and oblivion.


This, of course, means I have to still finish Edonith's story, as well as the Carrie-Jo/Daniel one...


I'm not sure what to do with them, but maybe I should sit down and reread them.  Maybe it'll give me an idea, just to go back in.


I waver between worrying about all of this-this is my 30th year, and my 6th year working on what has turned into The Verse in earnest.  We should hope that I have plenty of time left to work on it, but I would not enjoy dying knowing that it is incomplete and unfinished.  So I worry, and fret.  And other times I am sure in my ability to finish in no time at all....