Choice

Today, I got called "anti-life."  This was, of course, during a Facebook conversation regarding the birth control aspect of the president's health reform plan.  Somehow, this has devolved into an issue of abortion, which I find both hysterically and morbidly amusing:  the objects used to prevent one thing are being equated with it

It isn't amusing to be called "anti-life."  It's incorrect, for one thing.  For another, it's a comment that is designed to rile people up, and if you haven't seen my handy guide to making it through the election season, perhaps now would be a good time to toodle over there, because riling people up for the sake of a good political knock down/drag out fight makes me want to urp.  I'm not down with the urping,  people.

Speaking of urping (or not urping, as it were), my high school debate coach (who is going all Brigid on me again), used to tell us that there were a few things we couldn't write oratories about.  (She directed me in a play which featured a character saying, "Makes me want to urp," in case you were wondering why I equate her with a phrase denoting vomit.) An oratory is a persuasive speech, for those who don't know.  Ms. Silvers wouldn't let us write about drug use, teen pregnancy, or abortion.  Her reasoning was simple:  people have made up their minds about those things, and no amount of persuasion is going to convince them to change their minds.

So I'm not going to do that.  I'm not going to try to make you believe the way I do.  Instead, I'm going to tell you exactly how anti-life I am.

Somebody asked me, during a separate political discussion, what I would do if my teenage daughter got pregnant.  I didn't bother to respond then, because the questioner was being an asshat, but I'll respond now, in list form.  Woohoo!

• First, why are you singling out my teenage daughter?  I do have a son, you know.  And as awkward as he is, one assumes that at some point in time, he might be able to get his body and mind to function in some way that points his body toward a girl with a womb that can be implanted by his sperm.  Of course, it is a truth that women bear the majority of the burden of sexual health in our country during their youth.  You hear a lot about girls going "on the Pill," but rarely do you hear about the milestone of a dude putting on his first condom.  And there is the simple biological fact that boys don't have uteri or cervixes (what is the plural of cervix?) or vaginae (omfc), three parts necessary for the growing of a baby.  But with the exception of deities or the mothers of deities, ladies don't get pregnant all on their own.   So let's add my boy to this scenario, okay?
• Second, I would hope, once Teh Sex starts being had, that my children will take advantage of the birth control that I will make available to them should they ask.  They will only be allowed to ask after what will be, on River's part, I'm sure, a conversation punctuated with much giggles and snorting.  The girl finds bodily happenings hysteeerrrical.  I can't even imagine how Teh Sex Talk will go with Jeffrey.  Bless everybody's heart.  I'm sure I will make it through only with the help of a few cocktails and possibly a mild sedative.  However, Teh Sex Talk is going to take place with both of them.  I will stress personal responsibility and moral consciousness, but I will make it clear that A:  I'd rather know than not know and B:  I will provide them with contraceptives if they are too weirded to purchase said  contraceptives.  (Please note that I will further let my son know that if he is too weirded out to buy condoms and if my daughter is too weirded out to be examined by an ob/gyn, neither one of them is ready for sex.  I will let them know this on the way to the drug store to buy condoms.)
• Third, should a pregnancy happen when my children are under the age of eighteen, this is what we'll do:  we'll keep the baby.  
• That's what I said.
• Our family has a lifestyle that is such that I'm a stay-home mom.  I don't foresee this changing any time soon.  So after my daughter (or my son's girlfriend) has the baby, the baby will stay with me while my children are at school.  The baby will have access to more than adequate housing, food, medical care, and clothing.  The baby will be a responsibility added to our family that will require sacrifice that all of us will be able to make.  It will be a loved addition to our family.

This is the CHOICE that I would make if my children were irresponsible enough to get pregnant as minors.  As their parent, I would make that CHOICE for them because our family is luckier than other families in that we have the means and the psychological fortitude for it to be the right CHOICE.  Any CHOICES they make after they leave my home as adults are their own choices, choices I would try my hardest to stand by without bitterness or sorrow.

But it would be hard.  Because I'm not anti-life.  When I had my miscarriage at five weeks, before I even saw the heartbeat flickering on the monitor, when all I had to go on was a faint pink line, my heart was simply broken.  For me, the scrap of tissue leaving my body had all the potential of any of my other children, and if the truth be told, I still keep track of how old that scrap is, measured against the age of the little girl who came after--and who wouldn't be here without that loss.  Even now, writing about how empty I felt after it all, I am crying.  I MISS that little child who would be in kindergarten right now, handing out Valentines, even as I adore the little girl who is probably sneaking a lollipop as we speak.

When I got wind of friends or family who were making the choice to have an abortion, it was all I could do to be supportive and not beg them to continue their pregnancy and to let ME raise the eventual baby.  But I couldn't do that.  I mean, literally, I couldn't take care of those babies financially or psychologically and I could not ask my friends or family to make a choice different than the one they were making.  

Being pro-choice is not about being anti-life.  It is about recognizing a woman's right to govern her body.  It is about acknowledging the science that an embryo that cannot live outside its mother's body does not have equal rights to her.  It is about, on a daily basis lately, wrestling with your soul and your faith and your mind about the rights of the father, the advances in science, the morality of an individual versus the morality of the group.  

People think being pro-choice is easy.  It is not.

That is why it is so frustrating to me when opposition to equal access to birth control to all employees in this country is voiced.  Birth control PREVENTS abortion.  (No, not all the time.)  It prevents folks from choosing abortion.  It prevents folks from choosing to raise their teenager's baby.  It prevents disease (condoms only, y'all, let's be real.)

Now, all of a sudden, conservatives are harping on "religious freedom."  But they don't mean religious "freedom."  They mean religious rule.  They mean, once again, that they want to use the government as an instrument of morality.  They want to allow an individual's religious beliefs dictate a political decision that will affect millions of other citizens who might not share that belief.  You think that it's a coincidence that this whole "religious freedom"/birth control brouhaha has come up right as Santorum--who has called contraception "license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be"--surges? I don't.  I think it's a calculated move on the part of conservative politicians who hate Mitt Romney and who are counting on a small and vocal part of the conservative block to get all het up about people forcing the Church to fund Teh Sex Orgies.

None of that is real.

Here's what's real:  contraception is used by almost all people in this country.  NOT all people, but the vast majority of us, despite religious beliefs, view birth control as not just a health issue, but an issue of common sense and common living.  Birth control is like wearing a seat belt or getting a library card.  Can you NOT wear a seat belt and drive?  Yeah, but it might kill you.  Can you read a book without getting a library card?  Yeah, but it's probably going to be more expensive.

The "mandate" that conservatives are talking about has become, under the president's compromise, not really much of a mandate at all.  He wants private insurance companies to have to offer birth control.  But now Roy Blunt wants to introduce a bill that would make it okay for ANY company to deny birth control coverage based on religious beliefs.  Oh, YES, let's do THAT.  And while we're at it, let's make religion a reason not to do ANYTHING we don't want to.  Don't want to pay taxes to fund wars because your faith tells you that it's wrong to go to war?  Cool!  Don't want to pay taxes to fund school lunches that serve pork because your faith tells you that it's wrong to eat pork?  Cool!

Religious freedom isn't about a religion having the freedom to ignore the social contract.  It is about the STATE not creating a religion.  Giving citizens equal access to birth control isn't about creating a religion.  Nor is it about denying a religion.  It's about, in fact, acknowledging that sex has biological repercussions that cut across faiths and morality.   It is about CHOICE and allowing people to choose to protect themselves against disease and unwanted pregnancy, regardless of what a religion tells them to do.

And I'm pro-choice, you know.

As difficult as it is sometimes.