When I Decided I Was Pro-Life
By Anonymous
I am that devout spiritual, yet atheist feminist. I am the girlfriend you call when you need somebody to accompany you to an abortion. I will drive you to the clinic and I won’t say a word as you prepare your body and soul for the choice you’ve made. I will, without a question, hand over my ID to the nurse and sign-in to the clinic. I will read through the pamphlets for you as you have your pre-procedural psychiatric assessment. You won’t want me to come in with you. I won’t insist, I wouldn’t want anybody to have retinol memory of me in disposable underwear on a table either. To take my mind off the pain and anguish I know that you are going through I’ll pick you up some orange juice and your favourite comfort food in the corner store after I’ve exhausted all the pamphlets. I’ll note how the fetal position will help you if you feel any abdominal pain and that bleeding for a few days after the procedure is normal. I will also note on which day you will need to go back to the clinic if you continue to bleed. I’ll fumble when the nurse asks to see my ID again so I can enter the clinic. After the procedure, I’ll sit with you and hold your hand as I wait for you to drink your orange juice. You’re so repulsed by it you don’t even bother feigning interest. I’ll feel helpless next to you… is there anything a person can do to help you? I wonder if you regret it yet.
With more confidence than I have ever seen in you, you’ll confess that you’ll never speak to him again and that you will never give him a second chance. We’re 16, how were we to know that you will get back together with him and you’ll have your second abortion just a few months later. But I’ll believe you and I won’t even second-guess you.
Years pass. Many of the women that I come across and fallen in love with have had abortions. I value, look up to and vehemently respect each and every one of them. Their hardship and adversity makes them the strong and resilient women that I know today. When I think of my peers giving birth, I think about how difficult their lives are and how they are a terrible mother to leave their crying babies at home while they escape from their reality and guilt your baby’s grandma to take more than her share of the childrearing. You’ll fall off the face of my earth as I am pretty reclusive and everybody has fallen off the face of my earth, but that’s another story. Through your innocuous social media declarations, I will see that you are pregnant again … Don’t you know about your options? Preventative and otherwise? Whatever, you’ve already got one kid, you might as well have eight. Fuck, go hard, have 19 for all I care.
How can we not be allowed abortions? Fuck, we should be giving them out on the corner.
- Pro-Choice Advocate: “Hey girl hey, you packin’? Want me to get rid of it for ya?”
- Walking Oven: “Hey, yeah, sure, was just on my way…”
It is true, we only see what we want to see and we don’t actively seek out opposing views. I don’t need to actively seek out reasons to infuriate myself and lose faith in people that I think are taking away others’ rights and infringing on their rights to free choice.
So what are Prolifers arguing? Well, if I were to condense it to the best of my ability, it would be that: Abortion is inherently murder.
Murder. Abortion = taking a life. Do I need to go into how our society generally frowns upon murder? (I hope you don’t want me to, it just seems too daunting and well there are grey areas, ie: euthanasia and war)
Let’s just try to push the crazies out of the equation for a bit. Ignore the crazy rednecks that murder doctors that administer abortions (the irony!) and the crazies that picket outside of abortion clinics that shame women on the worst days of their lives. Let’s also ignore the crazies that think the best way to prevent unwanted pregnancies is to not talk about it at all and not teach sexual beings about sexual health. Let’s just push all of that aside. Prolifers are just saying that abortion is the conscious acceptance of ending the life of another being. And isn’t it? Would you ever think or say any of the following?
Hiya fetus! You’re the product of rape, I’mma let your cells divide a few weeks and murda yo ass. Shit son, you have a developmental disorder? Welps, looks like Imma flush you down the toilet so that I can actually birth your younger brother/sister and not have to deal with providing and caring for somebody that will never live in a society that’s built around him/her. Fuck. Really? It was my first fucking time fucking. What are the motherf’ing odds?Um, yeah, so my parents are going to figuratively kill me, so… Abort mission. Nope. Not now, not ever.
And then it hits me. Prolifers are not talking about the reasons why abortion should or should not be committed. They are simply exercising their free right to express that (human) life has sacred value and that abortion allows for the end of a life. Honestly, I can’t see anything wrong with that, and trust me, I’ve tried. Dare I say, agree with that.