Coming out

I've outed myself a couple of times in online places. Back in February, I admitted on FB that I actually really like Hot Chelle Rae. I know - it's not good music, but it makes me want to MOVE and makes me sing and smile simultaneously. I outed myself long ago as being bisexual, and it was an important point in this post. And a couple of days ago, I admitted the possibility that after all these years proclaiming my extrovertedness, I might be an introvert (gasp!).

Now I'm going to come out on something else. I'm a (mostly) centrist liberal. I'm not registered with either major party (I know, gasp again!) and I believe very much in individual rights. I know that we sometimes have to consider the needs of the many over the needs of the one, but as the balance of how that feels and works tends to vary from person to person, whenever it is possible to uphold the rights of an individual without endangering others, I think that should be the priority. A lot of my politics come down to privacy and individual rights . . . thus, mostly a liberal.

But I'm a liberal who believes that life begins at conception. (I hope you saved some gasps for that.) I will likely be asked to leave the liberal enclave now. I might even be escorted out. Does this mean I have to leave the club? Start listening to different music? Be a suit? I hope not.

I said "life begins at conception" in the long, awkward-sentence way because I am NOT pro-life. (not, Not, NOT!!).

In fact, I really hate the idea that this question can be broken down into two camps at all, but what I might hate even more is the inequality between the two. Pro-life vs. Pro-choice? Soooo, if you believe in a woman's right to choose (or her partner's, for that matter . . . because, I don't know if you know this, but - pssssst!! - men are involved in making babies. I say this because we seem to have forgotten about male participation in pregnancy in this country of late.) you are . . . Anti-Life?

Moreover, a woman who considers an abortion clearly has no respect for life, if things are broken down this way . . . she hasn't, for instance, considered what kind of life that baby would have, if born, or how she would or wouldn't be able to provide for it, health issues, issues about parenting and her partner's involvement. (Sarcasm is dripping heavily now)

I have to be honest here and say every single woman I've known who has considered abortion, much less had one, have had the long view on life and asked themselves not just "how will this impact me?" but "what kind of life would this child have? Am I prepared/ready/able/supported in order to give them the best life possible?" Every. Single. One. (Certainly, there are women who may have abortions blithely, but I don't know them.)

On the other hand, I have never heard someone who was vocally "Pro-Life" (yes, the scare quotes are necessary) clearly answer what should happen to the unwanted, unplanned for children that they think should be born regardless. Their interest seems to end in making sure that the woman cannot get access to a medical procedure protected by law, or that she is intimidated out of it. What happens with that child seems to be someone else's issue to sort out.

Granted, in the last couple of years I haven't asked any of them . . . there were some really scary people who used to gather outside of the building that was next to my Physical Therapist's office. There was a cordoned off area, and 6 times a week, as I drove down and back that street, I saw them very visibly and audibly praying. It took me going during a snow storm to see they the sign they were congregated in front of - "Boulder Women's Clinic" - before I realized they were there to pray away the patients and doctors of that facility. Maybe I should go back and ask them if they have thoughts about what someone who is emotionally and financially unprepared for parenthood should do once their baby is born. Maybe I should ask them if a mother who already has children should lay down her life in the situation where its a health risk for an unborn baby. But instead I limped by in my knee braces and said, "It's nice how your right to scare people is protected."

(And please, let me be clear here. I support their right to pray, just as I support Rush Limbaugh's right to say putrid things about women, or my friend's who did get an abortion having the right to take that action. My issue is . . . if you believe prayers are heard, if you believe prayers are answered, if you believe prayer can change things, then you must also believe that there's no difference between praying at home for abortions to stop, and praying at the doorstep of the abortion clinic. In which case . . . why are you at the doorstep again? Oh, to intimidate people with your prayer. Yes, because the sacred act of praying and communing with God should always include that.)

For me, this came to a head one VERY early morning driving through deepest, darkest Pennsylvania. It was, no joke, like 5am. And as the sun rose over the rolling hills, every mile, on the mile, there was another graphic billboard showing, as it proclaimed, "the results of abortion." I mean, first of all, ick. People have children in their cars. (do the "Pro-Lifers" care about them?) And, also, it was 5am and as a 25 year old, I didn't need to see that. I'm all for truth, and information, but people can get that without it being splashed all over the road. They can go looking for it when it's pertinent to them. As it happens, I was driving to Connecticut that morning having worked late the night before. And I was driving to Connecticut to babysit my foster-brother while my mom went to some function.

And it hit me. What would happen if the pro-choice "side" advertised similarly, showing, "the results of unwanted children." Because, my foster brother was the best case scenario. He was neglected, but as far as anyone could tell, never abused; malnourished, but not unfed. He was developmentally delayed but not irreversibly damaged. And (and this is key) he was removed before his first birthday.

But I know something about babies that people have but don't raise. And I can't think of anything worse than that.

If those beaten, neglected, starved, emotionally-handicapped-for-life children were depicted graphically on billboards supporting Pro-choice you can be sure the "Pro-lifers" would cry foul saying it was overblown, predicting or even marketing abuse, and that the pro-choicers were using pain and suffering for their own political gain.

Umm, hi. Do you not think the woman who chooses abortion feels pain, remorse, regret? And also, dear "Pro-lifers" - whose life are you protecting? Do you have a way to help ensure that child you're insisting needs to be born will have the opportunity to have a good life? What about the woman? Her partner? Her other family? Other children she may be supporting? Yup, this is why "Pro Life" is in scare quotes for me.

So, I support my friends who have chosen abortion. Because children need so much that if you know you can't give it to them, or don't want to, or aren't able to . . . your having had sex, or birth control that failed, or whatever happened shouldn't doom somebody else to a life that can't be what it might have been in different circumstances.

I say all of this, and still admit it: I think life begins at conception. (I think it, but don't know it for sure. And it's important to note, it's what I think, and there's room for other people to think differently.) It would take out a piece of my heart to walk into "Boulder Women's Clinic" with or without the prayer-scarers. It would take very special circumstances too. I don't know what I believe about souls, or God, or "the right to life" (it seems like we are so casual with our other rights, I'm not sure why this right should be more important than others) but I know I think that whatever makes a person a person starts at conception not some magic date later. And still, I don't think it's my government's place to decide that for me, or anyone who may disagree with me. I'm not going to raise the children of those people, and neither are the prayer-scarers, or the "Pro-lifers" so who am I to make that decision for them?

It's also worth noting that . . . it's easy for me to say how difficult or impossible it would be for me to choose abortion since I'll never have to. This is perhaps the upside of having my junk be so jacked up as to be almost totally infertile - I can hypothetically take a hard line because I'll never be in the shoes of the women who actually have to make hard choices about their lives, their childrens' lives, their partners, and quality of life.

So, I'm a life-loving Pro-choicer? A Pro-lifer who protects choice? I'm not sure. But I do know that when issues as complex and personal as this are boiled down to two sides, everyone loses, and that in a free-society we should spend some time reflecting on reasons to make something illegal, not the reasons to legalize something; so I continue to straddle this line but not because I'm wishy-washy but because I object to the line in the first place.