The March for Life, the nation’s largest annual anti-abortion rally, takes place today in Washington DC. It’s normally held on or near January 22, the anniversary of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in every US state.
I’ve written before of my evolving position on abortion. I grew up in a solidly pro-choice family. My great-grandparents had been original supporters of the Birth Control League, the forerunner to Planned Parenthood. Many of my family members, particularly my Aunt Marianna, were and are long-time volunteers with PP. (I note that they were mostly Republicans — fiscal conservatives but social liberals with strong environmental concerns. They’ve mostly become Democrats now, chased out by the rise of the religious right in the GOP.) When I was 17 and in high school, I got my girlfriend pregnant (I’ve told that story here and here.) I went with her to get the abortion.
I remained staunchly pro-choice until the dawn of the 21st century. In the midst of a long and convoluted return to Christ, I joined the Mennonite Church. In the aftermath of 9/11, I was drawn to the radical pacifism of the Mennonites and their Anabaptist brethren. Their views on war, poverty, and life seemed radically countercultural and tremendously appealing in a time of looming war. Still in the early stages of my spiritual rebirth after my 1998 near-death experience and horrified by the jingoism that was sweeping the country, I felt at home with the Mennonites. And I felt at home with their consistent life ethic. “Consistent life” is a position often associated with Anabaptists as well as some Catholics; it opposes all forms of violence. The consistent-lifers I met through the Mennonites were vegans who were against the death penalty, war, abortion, even (in some instances) armed policing. Many had volunteered with Christian Peacemaker Teams in dangerous parts of the world. They were sexually conservative, but borderline Marxist in their economic vision. They lived simply and sacrificially. And it was so unlike anything I’d ever known, I was enchanted.
From about 2001-2004, I took a consistent life position; I took it in my first eighteen months as a blogger. (Dig around in my 2004 archives here.) I never, ever advocated making abortion illegal. But I did advocate for making abortion unthinkable by winning hearts and minds so that women would be more inclined to choose adoption. I supported a combination of better sex education and more financial aid to help women keep their babies. I felt inner disquiet at the position I was taking, sensing that it was too simplistic and too extreme, but I felt deeply attached to the Mennonite ethic of radical non-violence. It seemed so beautiful a position. To paraphrase Hemingway loosely, it wasn’t workable — but it was pretty to think it was.
Many things pulled me back to the firmly pro-choice position. One stands out. In 2005, one of my favorite teens at All Saints Church (an Episcopal parish where I worked as a volunteer youth leader from 2000-2007) confided in me she was pregnant. She was 16, unwilling to tell her parents. She needed advice and help. She was clear she wanted an abortion. I gave her a few hundred dollars to help pay for it, counseled her before and after she went through the process. Faced with a real-life young person who needed me, the thought of preaching to her about the sanctity of life seemed absurd, cruel, indefensible. I instinctively knew the right thing to do, and did it.
Becoming a father, as I’ve written before, reinforced my reverence for women’s sovereignty over their own bodies. Watching a woman you love go through pregnancy, labor and delivery is enough to convince most folks that this is something that should always be chosen, never compelled. And of course, being a father to a daughter drives that point home even further.
Finally, the assassination — what I consider the martyrdom — of George Tiller in May 2009 signaled my public return to passionate pro-choice activism. In Dr. Tiller’s name, as well as in the names of my wife, mother, daughter, and sisters, I began to be a monthly donor not only to Planned Parenthood but to Emily’s List and the National Network of Abortion Funds. No more hand-wringing indecisiveness for me. I was and am back in the game as a fiercely partisan advocate of the most basic right of all, the right to exercise sovereignty over one’s flesh. I stand with Dr. Tiller’s legacy, and ask that those who hated him also hate me. Had I the skills he had, I would do as he did. That’s not false bravado, merely the desire to stand in solidarity with those who take great risks because they place so much faith in women’s dignity.
I’m proud to be a public voice for choice, humbled to be welcomed back into a movement that I left for several years. I still encounter folks who remember my Mennonite days, and I hear from old friends in the consistent life movement who are disappointed in and saddened by my apostasy. We continue to have friendly dialogue, and I explain as best I can my journey back home to choice.
I am still a Christian. I offer my prayers for the safety and well-being of those marching in Washington DC today. I know how sincere and passionate they are in their beliefs; I have friends among them. I have been where they are. But I also pray that they fail in their aim to make abortion illegal or otherwise unattainable. Many of the marchers are right in their belief that this is the great moral struggle of our time. But with both humility and certainty, I believe they have chosen the wrong side.
A healthy organism should always be changing, growing, and learning. It takes courage to be so honest, to admit that one can change one’s mind (the opposite of “Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia”). I think the important thing is to be fully engaged in whatever it is one is doing and what one believes at any time – that’s the lesson I took from Sartre and from Hesse’s “Siddhartha”.
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I’ve always been pro-choice, since I was in my early teens. If I need an abortion, I want to be able to have one. The corollary is that it’s my responsibility to use contraception wisely, so that hopefully I will never need one.
I wonder if the ‘consistent life’ Mennonites you mentioned expended money and effort trying to make meat-eating illegal.
As a progressive consistent life sort, I find it very curious that this post makes no mention of any change of heart or mind regarding the status/rights/dignity (or lack thereof) of fetal life. Since you are discussing a change of mind regarding the morality rather than legality of abortion, surely this merits some mention?
I’m Mennonite, grown up Menno and I’ve never heard of the ‘consistent life’ stuff. Maybe it’s more in the American churches and not the Canadian ones.
Alina, there was always a lot of stuff like this going on: http://www.bridgefolk.net/2009/07/20/pro-life-pro-peace-seminar-at-mennonite-church-usa-convention/
Lucy, I don’t know that I was ever convinced that life began at conception. I accepted that a process that would eventually lead to life began then, but in the absence of the capacity for the most basic sentience was not then or now ready to talk about a fetus as a human being. What I mourned then was the loss not of life but of potential. So I didn’t have a fundamental philosophical shift about what a fetus is. I had a philosophical shift about the rights of the potential (and not yet sentient) human being versus the rights of a fully sentient fully human woman.
What happened in my pro-life days is that I allowed myself, for a while, to lose sight of the harm caused by forcing a woman to carry a child against her will. Or more accurately, I allowed a kind of romantic affection for babies to mix with what I saw as the radical intellectual consistency of my Anabaptist friends — and that overrode my prior (and current) reverence for women’s sovereignty over their persons.
Thanks for responding, Hugo. Your response helped me to understand some of your earlier posts on this topic, which had always puzzled me. It had never occurred to me that anyone with remotely feminist beliefs could stomach the idea of being pro-life unless they believed that a fetus is or becomes a human being at some point during gestation. The thought of moralizing about a medical procedure in the absence of such a belief seems intrusive and paternalistic in the extreme.
You’re certainly right that the pro-life movement has a nasty and profoundly anti-feminist tendancy to get romantic about babies and maternal instincts and such. I wish that more pro-life people were willing to admit that a baby is not always a blessing, adoption is not always a great option, and an unplanned pregnancy can seriously derail a woman’s career, education, and finances.
Hugo-
I find your story fascinating. Many of your shifts could be the result of have a restless personality.
Consistency . . . It’s so strange to see that in many states somebody who kills a pregnant woman can be charged with not only the death of the woman, but also the death of the fetus. If a fetus can be legally aborted, how does this make any sense? Where do you stand on this?
You’ve told us how you feel about Dr. Tiller. I’m also curious about your take on Dr. Gosnell. In your opinion where does he fall on the Saint – Evil spectrum?
davev, I would recommend Jill Filipovic’s take on Dr. Gosnell, as well. You can find it here.
Yes, Jill has the post of the year so far.
Beautifully written.
However, I’m not sure that the pro-life movement is necessarily romantic about the wonder of babies. As has been noted, contraception is really the key for anyone who actually wants to reduce the number of abortions. Unfortunately, too many in the pro-life camp are in fact pro-life (in part) because they see the baby as a punishment for the woman’s promiscuous ways. Thus, advocating contraception is unthinkable to many pro-lifers, because it eliminates the rightful “punishment” for the woman’s “sin.” Far from seeing babies as a miraculous blessing, babies become the punishment for sin. It’s a horrible way to think about children, and it also explains why for many pro-lifers they only care about the fetus while it is a fetus — once it needs food stamps, head start, public transportation, good schools, etc., its needs are no longer so important.
Comrade, I agree. I never felt at home in the pro-life movement, as there were very few whom I met there who weren’t also deeply reactionary in their views on marriage and sex. Occasionally, I met someone who was pro-life but also affirming of same-sex couples and of sex outside of marriage, but damned few. The pro-life agenda was inextricably linked with right-wing politics, and even the few progressives I found in the movement were either closet conservatives or felt isolated and alienated.
And I ended up leaving the Mennonites over their view that the only proper locus for genital sexual activity was heterosexual marriage. That was simply an untenable position for me to hold, as it violated some of my most basic beliefs about pleasure and purpose.
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As I read over this post and the Are Women Human blogger’s take on the subject, I was interested but not convinced. I am a woman, a woman who most definitely believes in her own humanity and dignity and autonomy. Although there is quite a bit about the pro-choice positions I’ve heard that appeal to me (especially the parts that are so pro-woman), I am stuck on several points from the pro-life positions (or anti-abortion if you will.)
I have been struggling for years with how to balance my desire not to be seen as a baby-making factory, or an ivory tower that must remain “pure and virginal”, with my desire not to harm other people. At what point does a child I would carry become a person who can be harmed? DaveV brings up an interesting point about laws prohibiting harming a pregnant woman who desires to be pregnant. Is the child at that point the woman’s possession, part of her body, a distinct person with distinct interests?
One thing the pro-lifers like to talk about is partial-birth abortion, late-trimester abortions. etc. Does a pro-choice position necessarily mean that abortion is completely acceptable at any point in the pregnancy? If the answer is no, what is the line past which a person must not go, and how would this not trample on women’s rights?
I’m afraid at this point I have more questions than answers. Where I find myself at the moment, for lack of something better, is a midlining stance. Contraception, great, abortion, fine up until the fetus/neonate/baby/child/whatever can feel pain. A friend of mine draws the line when the fetus has a beating heart. These are not popular opinions. I’ve been told more than once I must turn in my feminist creds for not being 100% pro-choice. I don’t care so much about a particular label that I will stop wrestling with a topic that concerns me greatly and pick a side I can’t fully embrace.
I’ve had a pregnancy scare. I know what it is to pray and pray and pray my period would come and my home test would show negative. I know what it is to tell the potential father of the potential pregnancy that I was late on my period but it’s all OK, and have him scream at me that had I been pregnant he just knows I would have had an abortion without telling him. (Not true.) I don’t excuse people who say an egg that was fertilized yesterday is more important than I am. I do not believe that “potential” has the same weight as “current, in the flesh, everyone agrees I matter”. But there’s got to be a line somewhere, and I am very uncomfortable having that line at birth.
When it comes to economic policy, I’ve long said that I want my community, state, nation, and world to thrive, but not at the expense of the most vulnerable. Is it too much to ask that I not thrive at the expense of a vulnerable being inside me who can feel pain? Many questions, so few answers.
**Full disclosure: Yes, I went to Planned Parenthood yesterday for my annual exam and hormonal regulation of my periods. Hard to call it “birth control” when not having sex does a damn good job of that on its own.**
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