WHY I WENT FROM PRO-CHOICE TO PRO-LIFE
I wasn't always pro-life. I guess for a while I was pro-choice. Actually, I never really thought about it much until a personal experience made me confront the question of when life begins. Being pro-life to me is not a religious position either. It was a conscious decision I made based on my experience. There are the hardcore pro-lifers out there and the hardcore pro-choicers out there. I think the average person doesn't really think about this issue much though. When asked they may say they are one or the other, but probably doesn't have much of a reason. That was me for the first 21 years of my life. I figured it's not my job to tell a woman what to do with her body. Yep, that standard knee jerk response.
My wife became pregnant a few years after we married. I was scared and excited, like most first time parents-to-be. There was a complication very early on and the baby didn't make it. I was devastated. It was in the first month that this happened. No matter what anyone says, that was a baby to me. It was our baby. I was so upset. It was then that I realized several things. First, I considered it a baby...a life even though it was only growing for a few weeks. Secondly, I became angry. There were women doing this on purpose. They were ending the lives of their own babies. Thirdly, I am officially pro-life.
The first argument you get from pro-choicers is why do you want to tell a woman what to do with her own body? Right? Like I said, that is what I used to think. My answer today is....I don't want to tell a woman what to do with HER body. If she wants to pierce her body 100 times...go for it. If she wants to get tattoos....more power to her. If she wants to get fat by over-eating....I say eat up. Heck, if she wants to cut her fingers off, it is her body. The baby inside is not her body. It is the baby's body. Don't like this? Still think it's her body?
O.K. Let's try this. A woman moves out of her house. She needs to store all of her belongings for a month until she gets a new apartment. She rents a room in a storage facility and puts her possessions in that room. The owner of the building decides to throw all of her stuff in the garbage. Does he have the right to do that? It is HIS building. We have no right to tell him what to do with his building. Obviously, he has no right to throw away the woman's articles. Even though the valuables are in his building, they are not his. Do you agree with this? Now picture the storage facility as a woman's womb and the possessions as a baby. Same thing. Do you still agree? If yes, you are pro-life. If you are pro-choice and saying to yourself right now that this is not a fair comparison, I say that you are right. In the first example, it's just a bunch of stuff. In the second example, it's a life. If you give more value to the goods in the storage facility than you do to the life in the woman's body...shame on you!
The next argument you get is: What about the babies that would not grow up in good surroundings? Should we put them through a miserable childhood? This argument never made sense to me. nah....let's not put the children in bad surroundings.....that's not fair to them. Let's kill them instead. That argument actually makes sense to some people believe it or not. Well, if not growing up in an ideal environment is the criteria for deciding which babies live and which babies are aborted, I wouldn't be here today. My guess is there are a lot of people that wouldn't be here today.
What about the father's rights? It is not a question only for the potential mother. The baby is his as well. Yeah, that gets pro-choice women mad. These same women would argue that the father is financially responsible for a baby when it is born By the way, I agree with that. But you can not on one hand say the potential father has no say if the baby is born because it is not his body or his choice, but then turn around and on the other hand say that once the baby is born he has equal responsibilities. He should have equal responsibilities throughout.
I don't claim to have all the answers to the complex questions such as pregnancies that are the result of rape and incest. The hardcore pro-lifers argue that the baby is just an innocent life created by a horrible situation. I tend to have more compassion in such cases as I think most pro-lifers do. I struggle with these situations honestly. The baby is an innocent result, yet I think forcing a woman who was raped to have a baby that was the result of that evil, is a bad idea. Same thing for a girl who is molested. It's just a bad idea. If a woman's life is actually in jeopardy...as in she could die...again an exception could be made. Most pro-lifers give an exception to situations of rape or incest when it comes to being anti-abortion. The problem I see with making a blanket exemption for rape and incest is the obvious. If a woman is vehemently against having her baby, what is she going to do? She is going to claim rape or incest even if one did not occur. Now there isn't just one life in the balance. There are several. The baby....the boyfriend/husband/date in the case of a rape accusation or father/brother/uncle in the case of an incest accusation....and the woman herself....along with the families and friends of all these people. It really does get confusing and complex. And like I said, I don't claim to have the answers to these situations.
The overwhelming majority of abortions are "birth control" abortions. They are not the result of rape. They are not the result of incest. They are not to protect the life of the mother. They are abortions of convenience. I know most people are not going to change their minds based on debates or arguments. I didn't. I changed mine based on a personal experience. An experience that I don't wish upon anyone. If you are pro-choice and think abortion is fine, I probably won't change your mind here, but hopefully I gave you some things to think about. Just remember, if you thought the man who owned the storage facility had no right to throw away the woman's belongings, you really need to rethink your position with an honest, open mind.
