I was raised to be “pro-life,” but the more life experiences I had, the more I realized that my worldview was simplistic. I came to realize that women live in the complexities of the real world, not in the simplicity of the world I had imagined for them.
I will never forget the day I realized the red curtain in an anti-choice poster was actually a woman’s uterus. In focusing only on the fetus, I had dehumanized the woman within whom the pregnancy was happening.
I realized that robbing a woman of agency in her own life was not “pro-life” but was itself an act of violence.
I remember the very sad story out of “pro-life” Ireland, back in 2012, where a woman was denied an abortion during an ongoing miscarriage because Ireland officially bans abortion. The woman died of blood poisoning. Pro-life turned into state sponsored manslaughter. Here is the link to the story. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/14/savita-halappanavar-death-irish-woman-denied-abortion-dies_n_2128696.html. Abortion is not a one-size fits all proposition like most pro-lifers would like you to believe. I am pro-choice and my choice was NOT to terminate my pregnancy or to use abortion as birth-control. That’s what contraceptives are for. Our society has got to get a grip and let women make choices for themselves. Anti-abortion laws are a new form of gender slavery. If men had a contraceptive pill they could take, I’ll bet there would never be a Hobby Lobby case about that before the Supreme Court!
Have you ever been married?
Yes, but what does that have to do with a woman’s right to choose?
Have you really been married? Like, married where you say before God that you are committed to this person for the rest of your life, for better or worse? You swore that before God, right Jim? So are you a widow or are you divorced? I think that’s super relevant.
OMG I TRY TO RECONCILE THAT YOU ARE A GOOD MAN SAYING GOOD THINGS BUT I HAVE THE HELL OF THE OTHER THINGS YOU SAY. HOW CAN I BELIEVE IN YOU???
Yes, I was really married.
I’m not asking you to believe in me. If what I say sounds true, explore it. If what I am saying helps you get in touch with deeper parts of yourself and helps you think about life in new bigger ways come on by. If it doesn’t do that I’m not worth your time. All I can do is to be honest,it’s your responsibility to decide if it is helpful to you. If it doesn’t work for you, don’t worry about it, just seek out a more reliable source.
David, let’s look at the possibilities, I can think of four:
I may be an evil person,
I may be a confused person,
I may be right,
I may be some combination of the above.
I don’t know how you would figure out which of those I am from blog posts alone. I’m in the same predicament in trying to figure out if your questions are sincere or mischievous.
Wouldn’t the safest bet be for you to assume I’m a mixture of at least some of the above and to take each post on it’s own merits?
Households headed by single mothers exhibit disproportionately high levels of poverty and stress. What does the future hold for unwanted children born into such untenable situations? Possibly a life of crime and prison. A sad statistic correlating higher abortion rates with lower crime rates hints that this may well be the case.
http://freakonomics.com/2005/05/15/abortion-and-crime-who-should-you-believe/
If individuals who purport to care about the welfare of unborn children really cared, they would fight tooth and nail to fund programs such as subsidized day care programs which would provide a place of refuge for those infants whose lives they have “saved.”
Refusing to do so is an act of socioeconomic violence.