Reflections from a Former Anti-Abortion Activist --Alternet

[Demeter]

http://www.alternet.org/story/42888/


Reflections from a Former Anti-Abortion Activist

By Elizabeth Wardle, PhD, AlterNet

Posted on October 14, 2006, Printed on October 15, 2006

Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from Abortion Under Attack: Women on the Challenges Facing Choice, edited by Krista Jacob.

In the house and church I grew up in, there was no question about where I would stand on abortion. A fetus was a life. We opposed taking life. Case closed.

What conversation can be had when only one question is considered pertinent? I was a chaste, Christian, small-town, pro-life teenager from a happy home with two parents. My most exciting experiences were church camping trips. At sixteen, I had never even kissed a boy. Nothing had ever happened to me to suggest other questions were relevant in the abortion debate. I was sure of my views and sure my experiences provided enough information with which to make an informed decision about what was right for all women everywhere.

Thus, I goaded my girlfriends into attending protests and meetings and starting teenage pro-life groups. No one questioned me. Where we came from, my girlfriends were wrong not to have thought of going to the meetings before I did. They admired my staunch, unquestioning sense of what was right and wrong. Looking back, it's clear I was pompous, self-righteous, and unbearably certain of myself. But I had the total peace of mind that only comes from a worldview with no shades of gray.

My certainty and peace of mind were not to last, however. College showed me that life is full of gray.

In college I discovered that some people have sex without feeling they have done something dirty, that women get pregnant who are in no position to take care of a child, and that one of the most frightening things in the world for an eighteen-year-old from a pro-life, Christian fundamentalist family would be telling her parents she was pregnant. If I had become pregnant and informed my parents, I knew exactly where I would have gone: straight to a home for pregnant teenage mothers, to be physically well-cared for and proselytized to for nine months, after which time my child would have been adopted by a good, white fundamentalist family dying for a healthy new (white) baby. I would have been shamed. My parents' biggest concern would have been how to hide my pregnancy from their friends.

[Maat]

1. An interesting perspective.

Thanks for the post.

[OnionPatch]

2. I've never been anti-choice but

This woman's thoughts reflect my own on abortion. I know that many abortions are done out of the shame of unwed motherhood. When a teenager has to worry that her parents are going to disown her, beat her, etc. etc....abortion looks like a pretty darn good option. These attitudes have to change. Teenagers have sexual desires. That's another thing we have to face as the truth and deal with it appropriately. I would never look to eliminate the choice of abortion, but I would love to see the numbers drop dramatically and making it against the law is not going to do that. My opinion is that this woman is on the right track to the answer.

[CornField]

3. It is interesting, isn't it?

So many times our society looks at the end of a long process and decides that if that end were illegal or banned that the entire process would change. Unfortunately, history has shown us this is not the case. Our legislators can write law after law after law banning suicide, but it will do little to prevent suicide. We have laws outlawing murder, yet it has done little to stop one person from killing another -- even in cases where the agressor knows it might very well cost his/her own life.

Laws outlawing, banning and/or limiting abortion do nothing to prevent or reduce abortion. We must look to the reasons for abortion... the reasons why women feel they have little alternative but abortion... if we want to make real head-way. We need to move away from the social whispers of a woman's body and/or her sexuality being dirty or otherwise something of which to be ashamed.

In short, we can no longer allow the extreme religious movement within our country to scream louder than anyone else. Forget about the abortion debate for a moment. If we want to maintain our county as a free society, we must learn how to raise our voices louder than those of the fanatics.

[Demeter]

4. And Birth Control. I Presume?

Sex education, birth control, and perhaps better socialization of the young men....