Why I am pro-choice

It’s Blog for Choice today, and many feminists are blogging about why they are pro-choice. Clicking on the links on the right side of my page will take you to lots of other essays.

Note to real-life friends who disagree with me on abortion rights: I know how you feel. I will not be changing my mind, and I do not expect that you will be changing yours, so it is probably in everyone’s best interest that you skip this entry. I’m not looking for a debate with you.

I’m probably not going to have an unplanned pregnancy. I’m no gold star lesbian, but it’s been eleven years since I’ve slept with a man and I don’t intend to do so ever again. If I get pregnant, and I’m thinking about doing so in the next few years, it will be completely by choice. It will cost me quite a bit in fertility testing and frozen sperm, and the resulting child will be very much wanted.

I can’t discount the possibility that my fetus could have some terrible genetic defect that would give a child a miserable life. I would most definitely abort a fetus that tested positive for Tay-Sachs, where there is no hope for meaningful life, only a painful death within the first few years after birth. (I am not a carrier and I doubt carriers are allowed to donate sperm anyway, but this is the most extreme example I could think of, hypothetical as it would be for me.) I would also not rule out abortion in other cases of severe abnormality. I’m not talking about Down’s syndrome, cleft palate, or a variety of other disorders with which one can still have a full life. Honestly, I haven’t made a yes/no list of what kinds of disabilities I think I could handle as a single parent, but there is a limit to what I would put a child or myself through, and I am grateful that abortion gives me that option. It would not be a painless choice. I know I would grieve terribly, aborting a wanting pregnancy. But I would make the best decision for my life and I would rather try again for a child who will be reasonably healthy than one who will know much suffering and little pleasure.

Another reason I am pro-choice is because of my friend Aine. Aine died of cancer in 2001. I met her in 1997, when she was newly-married, carrying an early-second-trimester fetus, and about to have a mastectomy. On her honeymoon, Aine discovered a lump in her breast. At the doctor’s office following her trip with her new husband, Aine received the news that she was both two months along in her pregnancy and had breast cancer. She had the mastectomy and her lymph nodes removed during the pregnancy and started radiation and chemotherapy right after she gave birth to her daughter, with labor induced a few weeks early so that Aine could start her treatment as soon as possible.

Aine had abortion as an option, and many of her friends suggested it to her in order to give her a better chance of survival, but she chose to give birth instead. She was 38 years old and knew that if she had the radiation and chemotherapy, she would not have the chance to have another child. I’m not a doctor so I don’t know whether carrying her pregnancy to term shortened her life, or by how much. I know that I lost my friend in January 2001, and I miss her. I am also glad that Aine had the choice and that no one forced her to risk her life for a pregnancy. Aine was both a Catholic and a fighter, and felt that she was doing the right thing by going through with her pregnancy and that she was going to beat cancer. She didn’t, but she was the agent in her life, even though it was cut short at 42 years old.

I have no wish to limit abortion only to cases such as these. The only circumstances under which I am likely to have an abortion at this point in my life are severe fetal abnormality, or danger to my health. I believe that other women are capable of making the choices that are best for them and their lives and that only an individual woman can decide what is right for her. It is up to her to decide if she can handle a disabled child, if she can handle giving a child up for adoption, if she wants to put her body through nine months of stress. The majority of pregnant women decide yes. I’m glad the choice is there for those who decide no.

I am pro-choice because I believe that every child should be a wanted child. I never want to see any child born into a life where he or she will be abused. I will not be drawn into the false dichotomy of whether it is better to not have been born than to have experienced abuse. I will only say that no child should be born into a situation where there is not love and welcome waiting for him or her, where there is not a family prepared to meet his or her needs and love him or her.

As far as the “what about the babies” issue? It’s really in the eye of the beholder. Most Americans see cows, pigs, and chickens as food. I’d no more eat one than eat my laptop. My beagle is a member of my family. I love him and play with him and praise him. The hunter who owned him for the first year of his life saw him as nothing but a machine, there to do a job, only given food to keep him alive to continue to do the job, and dumped him when he would not perform. I think that is the real atrocity, not the removal of cells that are not yet capable of living outside another body. In a wanted pregnancy, even a blastocyst or embryo is viewed as a child, and that is a woman’s prerogative, just as it needs to remain for her to not have it in her body for the next nine months if she does not want it there.