About reproductive rights.
Note: I finished writing this post yesterday, November 5, 2024, as the polls were closing in California and the NYT needle started falling to the right. Now that the presidential race has been called, and the country again has said no to electing a woman, I have at least one more paragraph forming in my head. But enough. I can always post more later.
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This blog post has been difficult for me to write. In fact, it’s been over two years in the making—and in some ways, a lifetime. I started writing this post right after the Dobbs decision came down, and now I’m struggling to finish it before the polls close today. I had hoped to influence people who feel compelled to vote Republican for the single purpose of stopping abortions nationwide. I’ve decided to finish it even though it looks like I’ll miss my deadline for trying to make a difference in this election. Maybe it’s important for me to write it down, just for myself.
What I have to say may surprise you (how long have we known each other now?). Once I wished for a decision like Dobbs, even serving as publicity chair for my local Right to Life League auxiliary. First figuring out what I believed about abortion as a teenager, the obvious question was “when does life begin?” Viability seemed like a reasonable answer—but it was a moving target, constantly getting closer to conception as medical science progressed. I reasoned that conception was the only immutable moment to choose. That meant every embryo was a baby, and I had to be against abortion. Not just for myself, but for everyone, to protect the innocent unborn. Young me had so little understanding of the prevalence of sexual assault, even including assault by husbands and boyfriends. I also didn’t know how unreliable birth control is. I blithely agreed that women should make their “choice” before conception. Pregnancies due to rape were terribly difficult and unfair; but I thought they were very rare, and importantly, not the fault of the baby. Once IVF became a thing, I thought people using IVF shouldn’t cavalierly freeze, throw away, or abort extra embryos.
But over decades as a progressive—because policy-wise, I was always aligned with Democrats on other issues—I felt asked, even challenged, to reconsider my beliefs on abortion. No one was asking me to have an abortion. They were asking me to consider reproductive freedom a human right. It’s difficult to discuss any wedge issue these days; even average people are wary of sound-bite culture, afraid to give an inch. But I’ve participated in enough conversations, in person and online, to hear good arguments for supporting a woman’s right to choose.
The obvious first argument is...if abortion were murder, its legality wouldn’t be debatable. We don’t argue about killing babies after birth, no matter how inconvenient, expensive, or ill the children are. Obviously the problem is determining when an embryo or fetus should be considered a living human baby. I had reasoned my way to the conviction that life begins at conception, but clearly many others hadn’t. There was no way to “determine” the fetus is a baby before birth; we would have to agree on any definition other than “life begins at birth.” And in the years after Roe, a lot of people were able to be vocal about abortion, and many did not agree with my reasoning. These were people I admired and trusted; compassionate, caring people, many of whom were already loving parents.
Please bear with me as I make a little digression. I’m organizing this post chronologically for the most part, but awkwardly my most recent observation really belongs here, next to these comments about the people that made me rethink my conviction that life begins at conception. I always wondered why anti-abortion activists didn’t make more noise about the embryos wasted or killed in the IVF process. But IVF patients are people who are desperate to have their own biological children. If those people could freeze, toss out, or selectively abort the majority of the embryos they created, clearly they did not believe those embryos were already their babies. There was no way to prove I was right about when human life begins, but there was also no way to prove they were wrong.
Back to my chronological argument. As I said, I was aligned with Democrats on issues other than abortion, wanting to level the economic playing field, build a strong safety net, and expand diversity, equity, and inclusion. I voted Democrat but felt guilty and sad that that meant I was supporting abortion rights, too. But then I saw the stats that made me feel okay about not being a single-issue anti-abortion voter: since 1973, abortion rates have gone down more under Democrats than under Republicans. Not surprising: people who can afford food, housing, and education and who have access to sex ed and birth control have fewer unintended pregnancies and are more able to welcome one in case of a surprise. Democrat policies are what Catholic nun Sr. Joan Chittister is talking about when she makes the distinction between being pro-life or only being pro-birth.
Once I had kids of my own, I began to see it was wrong to outlaw abortion. I had been able to picture myself carrying even a rapist’s baby to term (thankfully I was never tested). But I could not even imagine forcing one of my daughters to go through such a pregnancy. People talked about exceptions for “life of the mother”--which seemed obvious to me, if the mother dies how will the baby survive?--but now I thought there should be an exception for the mental health of the mother, too. I didn’t see how we could write a legal exception for every possible case, especially considering the lack of understanding we’ve seen in Congress about the simplest questions of reproductive health. (The one that sticks in my mind was from Todd Akin, a U.S. Senate candidate who actually did lose his campaign, I’m glad to say: “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”) I don’t trust our legislative body to make decisions about my body.
In spite of our sound-bite culture, the arguments out there for keeping abortion legal and accessible have continued to get more detailed, nuanced, and, therefore, convincing. For example, “late-term abortion” sounds so terrible I assumed it was a lie meant to outrage pro-lifers. But Pete Buttigieg talked about it openly at a Fox news town hall, and now I understand better. I cry every time I watch the clip. “We’re talking about women who have perhaps chosen a name. Women who have purchased a crib. Families that then get the most devastating medical news of their lifetime....”
And now, witnessing the chilling effect of abortion bans on women’s health care, I’m all in. I would still choose abortion for myself only in the most heartbreaking circumstances (and I’m too old to actually face the choice myself, though I still care about the issue, duh), but I now believe abortion should be legal and accessible, with the choice should be made by the pregnant woman herself. Since Dobbs, we’ve seen women like Amber Thurman die because they couldn’t get abortion care in a state with strict abortion restrictions, with doctors fearing prosecution or loss of license. And even women who will never have sex or never become pregnant are hurt by abortion bans, because fewer doctors will choose to train as obstetricians and gynecologists. Progress in the diagnosis and treatment of uterine or cervical cancer, for example, will stall as fewer studies are proposed, approved, and funded. Ob/gyns learn how to manage high risk patients—but who wants to sign up for a career with such high risks for the doctor?
This is what I had written by the time the polls closed in California. Unfortunately, especially in the light of the election results, the abortion issue is far from settled. This post feels unfinished because it is. But I will stop now, and leave you with Michelle Obama, eloquent and heartfelt, speaking about reproductive freedom at a campaign event for Kamala Harris. No pull quote—I encourage you to listen to the whole clip.