Not Ashamed: Pro-Choice and Pro-Life

If you haven't already, please read.3 the introduction post. That will give you context for this page.

I know that, last week, I said I'd be back to writing in the listed order. But if you're not paying me to go in order and my brain has Things to Say Now, I'm just going to go with that...

In the sincerest and least baggage-having way, I consider myself both pro-choice and pro-life.

I feel like there are a couple things I want to say right up front, before I get to discussing how this particular topic applies to me.

1. If you're pro-choice and already disgusted with me because I say I'm that and pro-life, do me a favour and read on. Because...
2. If you're "pro-life," I'm warning you right now that you're probably going to be mad at me in just a moment. I know I won't change your stance, so feel free to go read something else instead. (That includes the family and friends I know disagree...I love you and there's little for you to gain now that #1 up there has already made you Very Disappointed in me.)

In fact, let's do what we did last time and define terms. Pretty sure that will clear this all up, describe how it applies to me, and piss off those I suspect will hate me any moment now.

Pro-choice: I am in favour of women having the option to choose an abortion. In fact, I am in favour of them being able to make that choice without the man who impregnated them consenting or without the doctor's morals being consulted. (Yes, I've read/heard the arguments against and I still feel this way. If you think that this is an unstudied/uninformed opinion or one driven by popular opinion, you clearly don't know me or have forgotten what you know of me.)

Pro-life: I am in favour of human life and have very few circumstances in which I would take advantage of the option to have an abortion. But! I believe that most people who claim to be pro-life are more accurately labelled "anti-abortion." Because, putting aside the baggage and the connotations it's picked up, "pro-life" means being in favour of and supporting human life. Not just trying to discourage abortions. No, if you are actually pro-life, you need to advocate for a good life for that fetus even after it's born. Even if it's not a white human, a western human, a straight or cis human, a rich human, a fully able-bodied human, or whatever other traits you consider Right for humans.

To be truly pro-life, I think you've got to be a little less enthusiastic about the death penalty, even if your knee-jerk reaction to horrible crimes is that they deserve to suffer.

I think you've got to be in favour of prisons/criminal systems that support reform and healing, rather than humiliation and increasing the brokenness of those who've made bad choices.

I think you've got to be in favour of social programs that support the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of those people you were so adamant must be born.

And I think you've got to do that without exceptions for people who don't share your skin colour, your social class, your sexual orientation, your biological sex, your gender, your politics, and so forth.

I think you've also got to acknowledge that the woman carrying that baby is a human life. A woman who, with no exceptions, you have decided must carry the baby to term. You've decided this with no knowledge of her situation. You've decided to forfeit any thought of her life because, like everyone I've met in the anti-abortion crowd (and maybe there are exceptions, but I've never met or heard from them), her life ceased to be the one you were actively and actually in favour of the instant she was born. (Before you deny it, look at your attitudes towards social programs that support those with needs, look at your fervour for death and war, look at your hatred for those who aren't straight, white, middle-class or richer men and for those with different spiritual and political beliefs...)

I'm not arguing, mind you, for the morality of any woman's specific decision. I'm not in a position to do that. Right now, I'm just telling you why I don't think most people who call themselves "pro-life" are actually that. And I'm letting you know, then, what I mean when I say that I am pro-life.

I am in favour of a quality life for all humans, even the ones unlike me. Even the ones who have hurt me or made horrible decisions. And, aside from some moments of knee-jerk rage, I don't look at another life and hope that it is wretched or that it is ended. I want it saved; I want it bettered.

So, please stop using an incorrect label for yourselves, you so-called "pro-life" (but actually "anti-abortion") crowd. And also stop assuming that pro-choice means I'm out actively campaigning for every pregnant woman to get an abortion. I'm in favour of people having a choice. If I were in favour of all babies being aborted, I'd use another term.

Are there circumstances where I definitely would have or would heartily support someone choosing abortion? There are (including, but not limited to, any situation where the sex wasn't consensual). And I don't believe it's my place to make the choice for someone else or even to judge them if they make the choice for reasons that wouldn't cause me to make that choice.

Nor do I believe that laws that put the job of making that moral judgement in the hands of doctors are a good idea. We already have anecdotal proof that there are doctors whose personal morality will lead them to deny abortions to victims of rape or to those whose lives are endangered by carrying a baby to term. There are laws made by men who think that you can get pregnant by swallowing sperm (or at least ask questions that make it sound like they believe the throat is a thoroughfare to the uterus...). This doesn't exactly make me feel like these laws are made or administered by people who are in a good position to make the right choice for me or any other woman.

I am pro-choice.

And, in a more genuine way than it has come to be used, I am pro-life.

And, whilst I am a bit nervous to be vocal about this based on what I know possible repercussions of being vocal are, I am not ashamed.