Yes, I Am a Pro-Choice Pregnant Woman

Content notice: discussion of abortion and pregnancy loss.

Recently, someone asked how I, a pregnant woman, can be pro-choice.

Not actually me

Also not me

I found this question bizarre.

It's been rattling around in my head for days and the more I think about it, the stranger it seems.

How can I, currently pregnant with a baby I wanted, planned for, and am capable of caring for, not think everyone who happens to let a stray sperm slip by should carry that pregnancy to term and be Blessed with the Radiance of Motherhood?

Is it too simple to just answer, "Because I am me and I recognize that other people are Not Me?"

The question bothers me. The underlying assumptions bother me. So I'm taking to this blog to work through the messy tangle of thoughts.

Wrong Assumptions Implicit in This Question:

1. Pro-Choice = Pro-Abortion

I think abortion is a horrible, tragic thing, especially in the forms it's currently practiced in our country. Abortion is nobody's first choice. Whether it's to end an unwanted pregnancy or a wanted pregnancy that isn't viable, abortion is where you end up when something has gone wrong. Aside from maybe a couple of sensationalist celebrities, I've never heard anyone talk like abortion is the greatest thing ever.

In fact, I'd even go so far as to say I'm anti-abortion. I would like to see the rates of abortion reduced, and I think most people agree with that. The difference is, I think we get there by providing sensible education, access to birth control, and better social support for women, not just outright making it illegal. I also want to see poverty rates reduced. Would it make any sense to make it illegal to be poor? The only way to reduce the number of abortions is to reduce the circumstances that put people in the position of making that choice in the first place, not punish them for being in an impossible situation.

The fact remains, though, that no matter how sad abortions make me personally, they are a societal necessity. A woman has the right to decide whether or not to let her body be the host to a life-draining parasite for, at the bare minimum, 10 months. What's the alternative? A society where the life of a fully-formed human doesn't matter at all, compared to the continued existence of an embryo. A society where women can be prosecuted for having miscarriages if witnesses say she secretly wanted it. (It happens, in countries where abortions are criminalized.) A society where desperate women die every day as a result of back-alley abortions or botched DIY jobs. However you personally feel about abortion, you have to recognize that you are not everyone. You don't know each person's story. You don't know each woman's pain. You are not judge and jury on every life decision made by another human. No matter how much you think she should want that baby, she doesn't. (Or does, and can't carry it, for a plethora of possible reasons.)

Most of all, the purpose of laws is not and should never be to inflict one person's or group's set of personal moral beliefs on an entire society. Laws are in place to create a viable society. If you believe abortion is wrong, don't have an abortion. But if you enjoy living in a country based on the tenets of freedom, you have to accept that other people are going to live and feel and believe differently than you. You don't have to like it, but please, stop blowing up clinics because of it. If a fetus is a human life, adult doctors and nurses and patients are definitely human lives.

2. If You're Pro-Choice, You Must Not Believe a Fetus is Human

Many pro-choice advocates do state that they don't believe a fetus is human, but not everyone who holds that viewpoint agrees (...duh? When has every member of a particular group EVER agreed on all points?). Perhaps if I subscribed to this philosophy, I could see some sense in the bafflement-- how can you say babies aren't human until they're born, but say you already love your one-week-old cluster of cells? (I still think the question is hugely misguided, since-- as anyone who's ever been pregnant can probably tell you-- the majority of love and attachment you feel towards that growing fetus is mostly based on hope/projection/potential and not the characteristics of the actual lump which, let's be real, has a tail for a while and no real hobbies... but I'm saying I could at least understand how the question could be asked.)

But I've never said I don't believe an embryo is human. That's not how I see it at all. It's clearly human-- a human embryo. Much like an egg is a chicken embryo. It's a cluster of molecules, like everything. Is it just a rock? Of course not. But is an egg a chicken? No, it's an egg. 

One reason I think people shy away from declaring that a fetus is human is because then they run the risk of being confronted with the M word. If that's a baby, isn't killing it... murder? (Dun dun DUNH!) The ONLY way you could possibly justify ending that life is if you dehumanize it entirely and tell yourself it wasn't human, right?

The person who initially asked this question clearly had trouble understanding this point. In an online conversation, we were debating some political matter (as we often did, since she was very right-wing. Like, Alex Jones, Birther, Gay-Frogs, Sandy Hook Truther, right-wing), and I had to bow out of the conversation because it was just getting too confrontational and frustrating. I already deal with an anxious personality and a tendency to stress, so as a pregnant person, I let myself out of that pointless adrenaline-fest. She responded by posting a picture of the remains of an aborted fetus, with the message that since I'm pro-choice, it shouldn't bother me to look at the aftermath, or possibly to prove how human that tiny fetus looked. I had to go throw up for the rest of the afternoon. I was so disturbed that someone would do that when I'd just said I was feeling sensitive and protective of my own baby. Of course I feel sad and upset when I see a picture of a dead baby. What a ridiculous thing to challenge! I feel even more upset when it's clearly been mangled by the abortion process. I fear losing my baby every single day. I love my baby. But again, I also know that OTHER PEOPLE AREN'T ME. I want the baby I'm carrying and I want it to be safe. That's a completely different circumstance than someone who didn't plan for a pregnancy and isn't in a position to carry it to term! And YES, I think it should be legal, while NOT wanting to see pictures of it. I also think APPENDECTOMIES should be legal! Do I particularly want to see a picture of an appendectomy? HECK NO, especially on my queasy pregnancy-stomach. Pro-CHOICE, remember? Not pro-abortion. That means that I will defend my choice to love and carry my child just as fiercely as I will defend someone else's choice to terminate a pregnancy.

So if I think a pregnancy is a human baby, how can I justify legalizing murder? Because it isn't murder, and calling it that is disingenuous sensationalist crap. Is a coma patient not human? Of course they are. But sometimes, because of a dim prognosis, inability to pay continued medical bills, or just a personal belief in mercy, that coma patient is removed from life support and allowed to die. As a pregnant woman, I am a life support system. I am a habitat. I am also an entire human person who gets to decide when the right thing to do is to take a baby off life support.

Imagine this scenario. You're walking on the beach one day, when you come across a body washed up in the surf. You check the throat and find a weak pulse, so you begin CPR. There is no one else around on the beach and the tide is coming in. The CPR is working to keep the person alive, but it will be a long time before they wake up. You can't move them without stopping the CPR, and now the water is around your ankles. You don't know how high the tide will get or if help is ever coming. 

You might personally think, "I don't care, I would keep giving this stranger CPR no matter what!" But that's not the question I want to ask you. My question is, if someone else, in a similar situation on a beach you can't see, stops giving CPR and walks away, is that murder? Can you convict, in a court of law, that that is murder?

To my mind, the only reasonable answer is "no." At worst, it might be negligence. But there are a thousand factors and a thousand variations that make it more or less negligent. What if a huge storm was coming? What if a tidal wave was imminent that would kill both of them? What if they were about to pass out from insufficient oxygen going into their own lungs?

The point is, each of us only sees our own beach. You don't know for sure what's going on on someone else's beach or in their lives. The embryo/fetus/baby is human, just like the stranger in the surf is human, and so are you. Nobody else should be able to tell you whether or not to stay on that beach*.

But I'll still unfriend you if you send me pictures of the dead body after the storm. Come on.

*(The "what-about-ist" in me points out that abortion isn't just the removal of life-support, it is the killing of the fetus before or during its violent removal; I'd just like to point out that this is the standard procedure because of pro-life legislation. Anti-abortion lawmakers actually passed laws making it less humane than it could be, because they wanted to punish women as much as possible during the procedure. If you object to the methods of abortion and would like to see those changed, you and I are in agreement there.)

(Also, I've never seen substantiated proof of this, but some pro-life people have passed around anecdotes of late abortions, like after 23 weeks, where the baby survived the abortion process and was then incinerated. I, like all rational people, naturally agree that this is horrifying, if true. Abortions after 21 weeks are extremely rare, less than 1% of all abortions each year, and the vast majority of that >1% are abortions for medical reasons, on wanted babies... so if this situation ever happens, it's one in a million. Still shouldn't happen, I agree, but it's not a good anti-abortion argument.)


3. Pregnancy is Amazing and Since You're Experiencing It You Must Know That

Obviously, since I'm pregnant for the second time, I must love it, right? And if I love it and love my kids, I must want everyone to experience that joy, right?

Excuse me while I laugh until I THROW THE HECK UP.

(Literally. Laughing makes me vomit.)

Ok pumpkin, you clearly need some things explained to you, so lemme lay it out. Pregnancy is the worst thing that (mostly) doesn't kill you. It is not magical. It is not sacred and spiritual. It is disgusting and inconvenient and painful and horrible and it lasts forever. Ok, not for everybody, some people love it, and I do my best not to low-key hate those people and their beautiful glowing faces (you know who you are). The only way I survived pregnancy the first time or coped thus far the second, was because I was blessed with a wonderful, kind, patient, boyfriend-then-husband who took care of everything. I'm talking the bills, the driving, the barf clean-up, everything. And I really lucked out with him. He could have walked away, if he wanted to. He could have opted out of that situation and had no consequences to his body, his future, or his reputation. Nobody would be accusing him of murder for that.

I had hyperemesis for the whole pregnancy, the first time. It wasn't as severe as some, but between the frequent vomiting and the crippling hormonal depression, there is no way I could have held down a job. If I had been alone in that situation, with no support system, I probably would have ended up homeless. Thankfully I'm lucky enough to have the wonderful friends and family that I do... but so many women have no one. 

If I had been homeless, broke, suicidally depressed, starving, still throwing up, utterly incapable of functioning because of my pregnancy, would I have gotten an abortion? No. I say that with absolute certainty, crazy as it sounds, because I am a little crazy. Especially about babies. If I personally had been in that situation, I would have stubbornly held on and done my level best to keep that baby. Because that's me. But there are hundreds, if not thousands, of women right now in situations as bad or worse than the one I've posited, and they aren't me. For me, a baby is a ray of hope. For someone else, a baby might be the anchor that sinks them. The bars that trap them in an unbearable situation. Pregnancy is very difficult, and we have little to no workplace protections to ensure continued employment for pregnant women, or accommodations to make the job possible while pregnant. We don't have adequate research into why pregnancy makes women nauseous, or depressed, or dead. We don't prioritize the needs of pregnant women. In a country where the corporate bottom line is the ultimate morality, being truly pro-LIFE would mean being anti-profit, and heavens knows we can't have that. We can't actually create infrastructure to SUPPORT women. Oh no. It's much cheaper to just blame them.

After all, why did you have unprotected sex if you didn't want to get pregnant?


Oh, you used protection, but it failed? Too bad, still your fault for having sex at all! Ha ha, you dumb slut! Shouldn't have boinked a rando!

Oh, you were in a committed relationship but neither of you can afford the astronomical costs of carrying and delivering a baby, much less the cost of actually raising one? Still your fault. You shouldn't be poor. Only rich people deserve to have sex.

Oh, you were in a committed relationship but your partner bailed after the whoopsie? Your own fault, you should have chosen better AND not had sex.

Oh, you were raped and it wasn't your choice? Nope, still your fault, you were asking for it by having a vagina.

The "but what about adoption" crowd also falls prey to this misconception. They act as if the baby is only potentially problematic after it pops out. What about the ten months of lost wages if you are fired when you can't perform your job because you're pregnant? What about the cost of prenatal checkups and birth? What about the enormous emotional and mental toll not only of being pregnant, but of being faced with selecting strangers who will be in charge of this life you are unwillingly bringing into the world? What about the tremendous obstacle to your life that IS bearing a child?

Even if you might be able to swing a pregnancy, finding an adoptive family isn't simple. There are thousands upon thousands of children waiting to be adopted in the U.S. alone. If you're anything besides a straight, white, college graduate, you have even less chance of finding good adoptive parents, and chances are that baby will go into the foster care system and be bounced around from family to family, some of which will likely be abusive, and very few of which will match the loving picture you conjure up in your mind when you say "BUT ADOPTION!"

I can't wait for someone in the comments to get up in arms at me and tell me that every second of pregnancy is a blessing and a miracle and anyone who ever feels differently is a big selfish sinner. Pregnancy is AWFUL. The only reason anyone ever does it on purpose is because making tiny people is AMAZING. I hated pregnancy with every bone in my body, and I wasn't crazy about the newborn stage, either. It was impossible to get anything done. But now that Poopy's 17 months old, I'm really getting into it. The part where I have a tiny mix of me and Mr. Man running around, gabbing to herself in baby language, kissing everything that might even slightly have a face, hugging me, saying "Mama," making me laugh (yes, and barf)... yeah, that part, I personally love. That's not to say it isn't ALSO awful and I get how it's not for everyone, but I definitely think birth is the cut-off for abortion. 

Well, somewhere between birth and the first birthday, depending on how well they sleep through the night.

That was a joke, calm down. 

If pregnancy is a delight and a breeze for you and you orgasm your way through every birth and motherhood bestows upon you a dewy glow of radiant life-meaning, awesome. I am so happy for you. (Mostly. Maybe don't tell me about it while my uvula is being digested by my acid reflux.) But you aren't everyone. It only takes the tiniest bit of imagination and compassion to comprehend that.

4. I Am Currently Living With Every Mistake I've Ever Made

I've heard so many people, in the debate over abortion, arguing about "personal responsibility." When this comes up, I can't help but think we have different definitions for that phrase.

When I think of personal responsibility, I think of dealing with the consequences of your actions in a way that is logical, mature, and well-reasoned. For instance, if I am attempting to follow directions somewhere and I miss a turn, I wouldn't just rant and rave and sob behind the wheel of my car, blaming the road signs for my mistake. (Well, I might if I was pregnant, amirite?) That would be failing to take personal responsibility. No, I would say, "Whoops," (acknowledgement of my mistake), and turn around at the nearest legalish opportunity (attempt to correct mistake rationally).

But apparently, to some people, turning around would be failing to take responsibility. To them, "personal responsibility" means "you made your bed, now lie in it," for everything, always. So if you're following directions and you miss your turn, well, too bad, this is your road now! You better drive down it for the rest of your life. Married the wrong person? Too bad. Stick it out.You made this decision, now live with it forever. Accidentally put your shoes on the wrong feet? Well, you have no one to blame but yourself! Now walk in those wrong shoes. 

This is what happens when we live in a world of "should" instead of "now what?" "Should" says, "You live in poverty and need help paying your bills? Your own fault, you should have gone to college!" or "Oh, you're in student loan debt and can't find a decent job? Too bad, you shouldn't have gone to college!" or "You can't afford child care and you're going to get fired if you take any more sick days? Well, you should have planned your life better and foreseen every turn and predicted every problem! It's called PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY!"

"Now what?" says, "How can you proceed from here?"

It's not about blame or expecting everyone to do everything the most perfect, intelligent, moral way, whatever that means to you. It's about looking at the world as it really is, and asking how each of us can move forward now and make our situation better. It's about progress instead of blame, improvement instead of shame, practicality over prescriptive idealism. It's about stepping down from your position as Superior, humbling yourself, and admitting that you don't know everything. Because really, everything about your life that you think makes you better than someone else, actually just makes you luckier.

And don't join the Mommy Wars. Be a woman who makes her own choices, and supports other women's choices. Be a mom who supports her friends who don't want kids. Be a breastfeeding mom who supports her formula-feeding friends (or vice versa). Be the one mom at your MOPS group who actually listens to your anti-vax friend. Be the Christian who doesn't try to convert your Atheist friends. Be the body-positive woman who cheers her friend's weight loss. Basically, be pro-choice. Be pro-woman. Heck, be pro-human.

This was long and ranty and controversial. Bonus list!


 Other Things I Personally Don't Like But Wouldn't Outlaw

- Nipple piercings
- All guns
- Ayn Rand
- Motorcyles
- Big mushy chunks of onion 
- Bad grammar
- The Bachelor
- People who gossip in this very small town and try to start crap and go around planting drama like heirloom tomatoes (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE)
- Disingenuous arguments
- Drugs
- Pineapple on pizza
-