When I was a teenager, first learning about my body, how it worked, what it could do, and what it could be forced to do whether I wanted it to or not, I was pro-choice. I wanted to be able to own my own body and make my own choices what could happen to it.
When I was still yet a teenager, I was forced into the position to choose. I did not feel safe telling very many people about the position I was in. Most did not learn of it until long after the situation was “resolved.” I was raped when I was fourteen years old. I was impregnated against my will. I did not know how to access medical care without endangering myself. I chose to keep the baby, to raise my baby myself, though I did not know how to make that possible. In order to do that, I kept the pregnancy secret. And, when I miscarried, I kept that secret too. I was not examined by a doctor until I was 18 years old, newly married, and pregnant with the first child I bear alive.
When my son moved in my belly for the first time, I knew he was alive and that his life had value. He wasn’t just a random collection of cells my body had thrown together out of boredom or ill-luck. He was a human being. Even though he was only a tiny collection of cells that could not possibly survive outside of my womb, he was already a human being.
I was indoctrinated with pro-choice ideology as I received my public school education. I was taught that fetuses were not human. This wasn’t taught as a legal conclusion reached by the SCOTUS. I was not taught that fetuses had not been granted rights to life by the Supreme Court. The inhumanity of fetuses was taught to me as a scientific fact. But this is not true. This is not an honest representation of the actual facts at hand, which means it’s a lie. And I recognized that lie the moment I felt my child alive inside of me. So, I became pro-life.
The reality that people all over the world are killing their children — no matter the format that reality takes — appalls me. It appalled me as the mother of autistic children who read in the paper that a sister called a mother’s murder of her autistic child an “act of love.” It appalled me when I realized that I had not felt safe in my own home as a child. It appalled me when I learned that parents actually sell their children into slavery or into a marriage they cannot escape, which is the same thing.
We live in a brutal world. Every single day girls and women are put in positions where they have to choose between pregnancy and death. For some, this choice is quite literal, because trying to carry their baby to term will likely or inevitably kill them. For some, this choice is true for less obvious reasons.
A successful pregnancy requires access to medical care, an abundance of healthy food, a safe and sanitary place to sleep, access to the tool necessary for hygiene, and a support system to help prepare the pregnant person for the delivery and aftermath thereof. In fact, they need everything a normal human being needs plus what is required to make a new one. And they may have special needs unique to their situation.
The reality that there are people who are in a position to have a successful pregnancy but choose to destroy their child instead breaks my heart. But the fact there are people who are forced into pregnancy without having any path to a successful pregnancy breaks my heart more.
We live in a world where neither girls nor women are guaranteed a choice with regards to getting pregnant. We live in a world where neither girls nor women are guaranteed a choice with regards to having sex.
The idea of using the words “pro-choice” with regards to abortion seems incredibly misguided. I do not want women to choose to abort an otherwise viable fetus who can be brought to term safely. I want women to be able to choose whether or not they have sex and to have the choice not to conceive whilst having sex if they do not want to. I want men to be able to choose whether or not they have sex and to have the choice not to conceive whilst having sex if they do not want to. I want all participants in sex to be empowered to make the choices that are in the own best interests from their own points of view.
While our current level of technology cannot promise 100% protection against unwanted conception between two consenting parties, we do have the technology to get pretty damned close if all parties are empowered and expected to participate.
What we cannot promise with any degree of certainty is a right to life. We have made pregnancy safer than it has been throughout much of human history, for both mother and child, but there are some serious discrepancies among different kinds of people with regards to their likely outcomes. And the fact remains that some people are not given a choice whether they conceive a child. Some people would choose to conceive if they could. Some people would choose to never conceive. Most people just don’t want to risk conceiving every single time they have sex, nor should they have to.
I wish every child that has been conceived could be born, but that is not within my power. Nor do I believe it is within my authority to demand it be so. But I believe every child that has been conceived should be conceived by mutual choice. I believe it is unethical to conceive a child through force or fraud. I believe it is irresponsible to have unprotected sex without being willing to take responsibility for the possibility of conceiving a child. I believe it is immoral to kill someone because they are inconvenient or unwanted.
I want every person who has sex to do so because they choose to do so. I want every person who conceives a child to do so because they choose to do so. I want every person who wants to participate in a successful pregnancy to have the power to do so without fear of deprivation or retaliation for their choice. I want every person to have the right to live their own life according to their own choices and I want every person to have the power to live their life well if they so choose.
We live in a society that sees pro-choice and pro-life as opposites. I choose to see them both as necessities. Women should be able to choose what happens to their bodies before it happens to their bodies, not merely after the fact.
Stephanie Allen Crist 