My friend won’t let me kill my baby. Or, to be much more accurate, she wants politicians and laws to decide when or if it’s okay to kill my baby. I’m 23 weeks pregnant and I've had a human life in me since the day I got the first positive pregnancy test. Now, we’ve named her, she’s a she, she wiggles like crazy, she’s about a pound and a half with almost all fully functioning organs (just her lungs need serious continued growth). She’s been “viable” since 2 weeks ago. Still, she’s inside of me. My body. Not someone else’s. If I wanted to kill her, that’s my right.
The language I’m using is provocative. If anti-choice and pro-choice believers want to come to any sort of agreement on the issue of personal choice in abortion we need to be willing to speak or at least hear each other’s language. I’ve written my description in horrifying terms: killing a baby. It makes my skin crawl just reading the title of this essay. But I realize that’s how my friend would see it. And, in my own case -- for me -- that’s how I see it, too.
Since I can remember, I’ve known in my heart I couldn’t have an abortion. Of course we can’t ever know what the future holds, but I went to extraordinary measures to avoid pregnancy. I didn’t have intercourse until I knew I would be able to care for a child. Then I always used birth control. No matter how wasted I got (those were some challenging times, the 90s) I never had sex without birth control. Because, as I’ve said, as soon as I know I’m pregnant, logic or science aside, I feel I’m carrying my child inside me. Immediately I begin the relationship that will last for both of our lives where I will care for that child forever.
My position as a pro-choice woman is just as strong, however, as my personal choice not to have abortions. There are several facets to this position. The first, and the least digestible for the anti-choice movement, is that I believe knowing when life begins is a personal and spiritual decision. I have friends who believe life begins with the quickening (feeling movement of the fetus). I have friends who have had multiple abortions who still aren’t sure when life begins. I also have friends who believe life starts at conception, but for personal reasons have had abortions. This aspect of the pro-choice movement is typically pointless as we debate with the anti-choice believers. To most of them, abortion is always murder.
Carrying a fetus, a baby, inside our bodies is an exclusively female ability. It is this fact alone that makes abortion different than all other laws governing our bodies. We have laws that say we can not physically beat each other up. We obviously have laws against murder. We have laws that try (in vain) to prevent self- or other-harm through drug use or acts like drinking and driving. And, as soon as an infant is outside of its mother, we have laws protecting that child. Thankfully, infanticide is illegal in our country. There is no comparable situation, however, where men or boys have a life growing inside of them.
When we begin legislating decisions for one gender and not for another, we say one gender has fewer rights than the other. Therefore, no matter how difficult it is for some people to accept, no laws should govern what happens to a life inside a girl or woman. Until my baby is born, what happens to her is entirely my decision. And I will fight for every woman's right to control her own body as fiercely as I will fight to keep my own baby safe and healthy.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
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11 comments:
For me, it's not so much baby/not baby as it is person/not person. Call it a baby, I don't care, but until a human can perceive and process experiences, I'm not that fussed about ending the life. But of course we don't know exactly when that is, so I'd err on the side of caution, which wouldn't be at fertilization, but at some point less than the second birthday. :)
But I don't think the two sides are ever going to agree on this, so the best we can do is try to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
I go back and forth and back again and err ... on the side of the woman who has thought it all through and doesn't want this *** being born of her womb at this time.
A former sweetheart's wife is the poster child for late-term abortion. She testified in Congress on the circumstances of why, in 1994, she had to choose what the folks on the anti- side call a "partial birth abortion."
Senator Henry Hyde (may he =not= rest in peace) told her she was a murderer for the choice she made.
Her circumstances and those like hers influence my views and will continue to do so.
Google 'viki wilson'
Very intresting post. I've always been pro-life, but I really like how your post made me think. It is making me examine why I think what I think. I think we get so caught up in our side being right that we see the other side as the enemy and don't really listen to what each other has to say.
There was a pro-life demonstration on my kid's campus not long ago. He reported that some pro-choicers staged a counterdemonstration and that they had a sign that said "Fetuses taste like chicken."
I love public discourse.
I have never understood why other people are so insistent to change *my* beliefs. Why doesn't this fall under I'll do what I want and you do what you want, as does my best friends recent decision to become a swinger, hmm?
I took a class in college where pro0life women explained in the text that allowing abortion to happen de-valued mothers. If I over simplify it is because I didn't get the argument.
Perhaps the best "resolution" if there is be one, that I have ever discovered was written by Stephen Dubnar in Freakonomics, where he concludes that in general his data showed that a woman normally does a pretty good job of determining when she is capable of bringing a child into the world.
So maybe this is true. I can't possibly put myself in all the women's shoes out there, so maybe I will leave it to them to decide.
You don't have the right to kill a viable fetus. If a pregnant woman's viable fetus is killed in a car accident, manslaughter charges typically follow. If a pregnant woman is beaten, and her assailant deliberately assaults the fetus, murder charges are often filed. There comes a point when it's not "you" anymore, it's "you and someone else" and that point is generally called "viability" -- a fetus that can survive without the convenience of a placenta and umbilical cord.
You have no more right to kill suc a fetus than you have to kill a week old infant (although some bioethicists have argued forcefully that if we allow viable fetuses to be killed way may as well let parents kill very young infants who are "viable" but equally helpless).
KILLER
DOOFUS
yes, the baby lives inside of you. But its not you that is being killed. You certainly have the right to choose whether to have a baby. But, you made that choice when you had sex. With sex comes risk of pregnancy. Now you're trying to minimize the consequence of your smaller mistake by making a huge mistake.
Dont mistake and think this is "inequality" in anyway. At no time does a man have a right to kill his children. The question of it being in your body is a non issue. Women do have more consequences to think about when having sex. Not because of legislation, but because of nature.
Kill the babies!!! They'll just grow up to be disgusting people raised by shitty mothers undeserving of the opportunity to care for them in the first place anyway. I say we feed them to the lions and make a blood sport out of it. BABY FEST 2015: 'There Will Be Baby Blood'.
Well i belive the mother will always no best and should and does have the right to, as you all say kill the baby.It's easy for a father to say they will be there to help but then leave when things get rough.A mother is there for the long run and has to deal with the body change and health problems.ITS NOT RIGHT BUT ITS A PART OF LIFE AND A WAY FOR THE GOVERNMENT TO MAKE MONEY....MONEY RULES THE WORLD .....
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