What We Missed.
Tracy Clark-Flory with more details on the right-wing "coming out" of Abby Johnson from Planned Parenthood.
And to add to that a post from the community site from Shelly Blair, co-host, Fair and Feminist on KEOS 89.1 who has interviewed Johnson before.
The New Yorker on what really happened during the Israeli attacks in Gaza.
Amanda debunks the "what if you were aborted," argument anti-choicers love to throw around.
One of the new owners of the Chicago Cubs is also the first openly gay owner of any sports team.
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Rhode Island's infamous 'loophole' that left indoor prostitution legal was closed today. So now all the activists who conflated prostitution and trafficking will have a chance to show us that arrest is a form of rescue.
http://kmareka.com/2009/11/03/the-loophole-is-closed/
As someone who comes from a very similar background as that of Abby Johnson. . . this story resonates with me.
I go to church. I've been approached to sign petitions for "yes" on prop 8(I live in CA), protests on gay marriage, and asked to stand as part of those 40 days for life campaigns referenced in the first article. It is my joy and pride to tell those people how I stand as a Christian and a feminist on these topics and that yes. . . you can be both! You can be progressive and Christian. We just need to remember our faith fashions who we are. . . it shouldn't fashion what other people are. I get to have honest conversations w/people at church who judge me for being a feminist and feminists who judge me for being Christian. I just wish that, like myself, Abby had been able to be well rooted in both her beliefs and her feminism. I know what and why I believe on both sides of that and I can hold my own in pretty much any conversation. If Abby had that rooting she may have been able to resist the ploys I imagine happened on the anti-abortion side to coax her to them. It sounds as if she was vulnerable in alot of ways and I hope she sees that these people are doing nothing for her and are very simply, and quite obviously using her. The way they are using this woman is disgusting!
She has also stated that this pro life group has harrassed her and THREATENED her husband and daughter, why on earth would someone then align themselves with people like that?? Even if she has truly "converted" I would hope that she goes about her activism in a less menacing way and distances herself from the "Coalition for Life" but instead she goes and runs to the O'Reilly Factor.
It's interesting to see how comments like the above try to explain away Johnson's decision as that of a poor, weak, vulnerable person who has simply been brainwashed into being a puppet for the right wing, and has no real understanding of her position. Surely a person couldn't possibly decide using their own reason that there is something wrong with abortion.
She very well could have come to this decision after a lot of thought, but to join forces with the same people that harassed you and threatened your spouse and daughter is pretty suspect. I would hope that she would have considered aligning herself with a less menacing pro life group. She was a bit quick in dashing off to the O'Reilly Factor to tell her story.
The stories I've seen don't specify that the threats came from the Coalition for Life, a Christian whose stated goal is to "end abortion in the Brazos Valley peacefully and prayerfully." I find it extremely hard to believe that they would be the source of death threats.
How many pro life groups claim to use "Peaceful" means these days? I've been on the front lines in front of clinics as an escort and what many pro lifers would see as "peaceful" many if us see as menacing and harassing, including shoving pamphlets into open car windows, taking pictures of license plates and video taping cars driving into the clinic's parking garage. For the most part we had people that just prayed and sang hymns, but it's the few crazies that really do the damage and they'll be the ones most vocal about Johnson's "conversion"
Reason and finding something wrong with aborton is incompatible.
Ah. So, you actively want people to have abortions? You think that they are, for example, preferable to not inadvertently conceiving?
I am unremittingly pro-choice; that doesn't mean that I feel there is nothing wrong with abortion, but rather that I feel a person's right to bodily autonomy trumps most other moral concerns. However, if there could be a world where, for example, contraception was universally available and unwanted pregnancies never occurred, I would view that as preferable to readily available abortion.
A not-entirely-risk-free invasive surgical procedure isn't exactly a great option; it just beats the currently available alternatives.
I'm pretty sure Gopher meant that no reasonable argument could be used to make abortion illegal or inaccessible. I think most anyone who visits this site would agree that preventing an unwanted pregnancy in the first place is preferable to needing an abortion.
Where the hell did you get that from? Obviously as a pro-choice women I'm for women having control over their reproductive abilities and that means use of contraceptive and comprehensive sex education. You are obviously really anti-choice because no rational minded person wouldve got what you did from the post I wrote.
*shrug*
It seemed to me that you were pretty clearly stating that having personal questions or doubts about the morality of abortion is inconsistent with being a rational person. I disagree.
I myself have some doubts as to whether abortion is an utterly moral neutral act, however (as noted above) I feel that claims to bodily autonomy trump other moral concerns.
Look, I understand that what you probably meant was, as Vasa pointed out, that being anti-choice is irrational. I agree. But what you actually said was much broader and less accurate than that.
I applaud you though for working "you're obviously anti-choice" and "you're irrational" into a single, neatly packaged jibe. That was well done. =)
Reason and finding something wrong with aborton is incompatible.
While it's my belief that you can support gay marriage and be a Christian, there's no way that you can be a Christian and pro-choice from what I know. In the Bible, God knows you before you're born and plans for your birth. If that's true, then you're killing his creation.
I'm agnostic, but I grew up in a Christian family and went to church.
I'm not saying that you support abortion personally, since you didn't make that clear, but it's really difficult to support all feminist beliefs and be Christian.
I remember reading an article that stated that everytime abortion is mentioned in the bible, it's not said to be an immoral act.
To clarify. . .
I am wholly and completely in support of a woman's right to choose and do NOT believe that the Bible verses you are referencing should be used to support the anti-abortion stance.
Check out this site on that one.
http://www.postfun.com/pfp/blasphemy.html
I, also, never said I support ALL feminist beliefs. I don't support ALL of any given belief system. Too many interpretations.
Wow, that's a very interesting read. I don't often hear anything in defense of feminism when it comes to the Bible, more than often it's against it.
Thanks for the link, the breath of life part makes me think.
"there's no way that you can be a Christian and pro-choice from what I know."
Erm...no? (Either that or my "Prayerfully Pro-Choice" Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice bumper sticker is a total lie! XD)
The part about God having one's life planned out before birth is not a universally-held Christian theological precept - it may have been what you were taught, but not all Christians believe that. We run an incredibly large gamut, you see. =)
um, i'm feminist and christian, and i (and most everyone i go to church with) completely support abortion rights. it's not hard in the slightest. you can't seriously be saying this.
it goes like this: the country is SECULAR. separation of church and state, yanno, you may have heard that before. therefore, if something cannot be proven by science, then it is a matter of faith, and therefore should not be enshrined in any way in the law. you and i may believe that God knows us before we're born, and that's fine and dandy that we believe that. BUT I CAN'T PROVE IT TO ANYBODY. so why should they live under the moral code i've ***chosen*** for myself?
not to mention, i (and, again, many other christians i know) have had abortions for various reasons.
seriously. this comment is beyond ridiculous.
Wait. It's one thing to be pro-choice legally, but following the Christian tenants it is hard to argue for abortion as morally neutral. The first generation of Christians were against abortions--this is readily proclaimed in very early Christian literature not found in the Bible.
So I'd say through what I've studied about Christianity, the most 'pro-choice' you can be to jive with all the teachings is 'pro-choice legally and pro-life personally.'
Christians are not all the same. It sounds like you are trying to argue a blanket statement for what all Christians believe (or should believe according to Christian texts) if they follow the tenants.
I hold firm in the fact that you can't believe in God and believe that God knows you before you're born and have an abortion and be a good Christian. You're ending a life, right? Sure you can say that a fetus isn't a baby, but it has a heartbeat, and it's alive. And thus, "thou shall not kill" comes into play.
wow. You interpret things so differently than I do.
If you believe the mother is a human and alive / a life, then you respect her as such. You don't throw stones at her for the choices she makes about her body.
I can very well throw stones if another life is involved. You throw stones at people that harm humans/living things, right? This is the same case, with a human life. Of course, I never bring up my stance in real life, or voice my opinions to a person that has had abortions, because I wouldn't do that. But it does completely change my view about their compassion.
As the daughter of a pastor who is adamantly pro-choice (not just in a "legal sense," completely pro-choice) and who also has a Ph.D. in Christian theology, I'm offended by your comments here.
First of all, it's worth noting that attempting to define what constitutes "Christian" is pretty ridiculous considering that Christianity is a huge umbrella politically, going from extremely liberal to extremely conservative and hitting every point inbetween. The ideas of your family's church or your personal experiences with Christianity don't define the religion as a whole, and acting like they do is rather insulting to others who consider themselves Christians. For one, the Bible itself has nothing specifically to say about abortion (it wasn't even an issue back then; people thought life didn't begin until "quickening," so anything that happened to the fetus before then was fair game), so taking any verse to be an anti-choice (or pro-choice, for that matter) political statement is an issue of personal interpretation. By contrast, you can find quite a few verses in the Bible that are anti-gay. A lot of them are cases of mistranslation, but still, it's more than what the Bible has about abortion.
Secondly - and this isn't directed at prettyinpink but just anyone in this thread - most of the pro-choice churches (most mainstream Protestant denominations) are the ones requiring their pastors to go to seminary. By contrast, the non-denominational churches and a lot of the more conservative Protestant churches (the Southern Baptists, for instance) don't require that their pastors have any sort of formal theological education, or they require very little. So there's a positive correlation between support for women's right to choose and having been taught about Christianity by someone with an actual degree in it vs. someone without one. I'm not saying that one has to have a degree in theology to understand the Bible or to be a Christian - far from it - but isn't it kind of funny that so often the anti-choicers are the ones held up as the "real Christians" when, statistically, they tend to know less about actual Christian doctrine?
This is not necessarily true. Both the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) are 2 very large, mainline Protestant denominations that are adamantly pro-life and also require 2 or 3 years of graduate school in order to become ordained.
I was making a generalization, and that's why I tried not to use "all," in terms of the fact that churches that require more education = churches that are pro-choice. It's a general rule, but not applicable in every case.
However, I do want to point out that neither PCA nor LCMS (this coming from someone who was originally raised LCMS and attended an LCMS school before my parents divorced and my mom remarried my current dad*) would be considered "mainline." They're both splinter groups of larger churches, the Presbyterian Church USA (in which my dad was ordained) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, respectively. "Mainline" is meant to distinguish the original Protestant denominations that arrived in America from their offshoots, as well as from nondenominational or newer churches. As such, a "mainline" Lutheran, at least in the U.S., would belong to the ELCA, not LCMS or LCWS.
(*I don't see my bio dad anymore, so I consider my stepdad my dad. It's a long story that I really don't want to go into.)
Hey there, fellow PK! *waves*
Anyway, love this comment - you said everything I was thinking (and then some!) and articulated it so much better than I ever could. =)
OMG!!! Are you seriously saying there is one way to interpret the bible and Christ's teachings? Wow, do some research!
Alright everyone calm down. I never said I was Christian myself btw--but I have studied it pretty closely. But disregarding the fact that different Churches and Christians think about it differently, I believe it is still hard to justify abortion as MORALLY (not legally) negligent. When early Christian documents say "abortion is wrong" flat out, that is obviously how they interpreted Christ's teachings regarding the subject. Also, quickening was part of the Jewish culture- and even then it probably had to do with the high rate of miscarriages back then. Sure there are 'more than one way' to interpret Christ's teachings but only to the point that they jive with stuff in context. I think there is a point where it is 'stretching it' and saying there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG with abortion is indeed stretching it. Just my opinion.
I have not met every single Christian, interviewed them and gotten their views on abortion, have you. The bible is interpreted too many ways to count and not all Christians use the bible as a life rules book.
To some people Christian means to be as Christ like as possible and live by his example, honor his legacy. To do that you pretty much become more Buddhist like than the most well known ways that Christianity is interpreted and practiced.
Still, that sweeping generalization is not true, nor is it healthy.
be careful about those assumptions. In the ranks of the same folks who have female ministers and marry homosexuals,you may also find pro-choice Christians.
There are Christians who don't allow women to wear slacks and no one gets to dance due to it's immodesty and there are Christians who have trans ministers...Look into the diversity before you judge.
Sorry, I don't like to get all Biblical, but you said something deeply disturbing...
Regarding Christianity I tend to be a fundamentalist, literalist even. Its neither fair nor accurate to say that Christians can't be Christians while being personally pro-choice. Some pro-life people make the argument well, WWJD? Well, traditional Jewish belief is that life is created at birth, not before. This is based on Genesis ("God breathed the breath of Life into man...") and as a literalist I support that interpretation, though I think I personally mark it at viability.
Other pro-lifers say that God had a plan for you while you were still in a womb. Well certainly He did. But God is omniscient, He had a plan for you even before He created the planet. That doesn't mean you had Life before He created the planet. The Bible says He knows the number of hairs upon our head, but that doesn't impart life to hair. People say that by aborting a fetus we're changing God's plan. But how can mere mortals change the plan of The One who created the universe? Is your idea of God so small???
Finally, people say fetuses have heartbeats & therefore life. A heartbeat alone does not make life. Actually when life begins is a metaphysical question, but a heartbeat alone does not mean life. People who are brain dead have active heartbeats, but that doesn't make them 'alive'. Heartbeats & respiratory function are the lowest level brain functions, they do not indicate life (IMHO).
Anyways, just my 2 cents...apologize for the religious treatise, I just hate it when pro-life Christians *seem* to speak for me.
The bible is blatantly against homosexuals, it says in black and white in every translation that homosexuality is an abomination.
It makes a LOT more sense to be pro-choice and Christian (the bible doesn't say abortion is wrong but that miscarriage and forcible abortion could be a punishment) than to be pro- same sex marriage and Christian. the latter is completely contradictory.
My favorite response to the "what if you were aborted?" argument. "Very unlikely seeing as I was a planned pregnancy." Of course only certain people can use that. Really, the only way there was ever going to be a chance of my mom aborting me was if there was a health issue.
1) *You* were not planned, the pregnancy was. The sperm that fertilizd your egg had been one milisecond slower then *you* would nt eist and your parents would be just as happy. THey weren't thrilled about *you* they were thrilled about *a* baby, no matter who that baby was, it just so happened and luckily for you, the right sperm got to the egg.
2) Planned pergnancies have been aborted, Not just for health reasons either.
3) Either you accept that wanted or not EACH AND EVERY pregnancy is up for grabs including the one that gave you life or you don't. Playing the classis game of who was wanted/planned vs those who weren't is BS. Most people were accidents that weren't aborted for one reason or another. You don't hold more value as a human being because you were planned.
Why do you hate me so much? Your post sounds like a typical troll. Completely insulting and full of misreads of my original post.
"*You* were not planned, the pregnancy was."
You should read my comment. I actually said "pregnancy" not "I was planned."
"Planned pergnancies have been aborted, Not just for health reasons either."
Again, READ MY POST!! I said "Very unlikely." I actually know my mother, she finds abortion immoral with a few exceptions one of which being health. You don't know my mother so you have no right to predict that she would have an abortion without a health risk.
"Either you accept that wanted or not EACH AND EVERY pregnancy is up for grabs including the one that gave you life or you don't. Playing the classis game of who was wanted/planned vs those who weren't is BS."
Now you're just making baseless assumptions about me. And how is saying "I was planned" classist? Poor people can plan a pregnacy just as much as the rich.
"Most people were accidents that weren't aborted for one reason or another. You don't hold more value as a human being because you were planned."
I NEVER said I was more valuable than anyone else. It seems to me you just read so much into stuff just so you have something to be mad about.
How do you get that I hate you? Where did I say that I hate you ro said somethign hateful to you? If it is considered hateful to say that it was always a possibility that you and anyone born could have been aborted then it shows where you really stand on the abortion issue.
Not a single person born was owed the life their mother gave them via not aborting them, there were still teh chance of you or me or anyone else being miscarried. There was stil la chance that you could have had a birth defect, there was still a chance that you could have threatened your mother's life. NONE of those things were within your control and one of them WERE within your mother's control IF she had access to safe, legal, affordable abortion.
I tell you what, you show me where the majority of poor couples planned their pregnancies and you have a point. Plenty of poor women have legal access to abortion but it isn't exactly affordable and they don't have less desire for sex because they have less money. Or are you saying that poor people PLAN to have children they can't afford (operative word here being poor)? Keeping an unplanned pregnancy doesn't make it planned, it makes it wanted.
Oh please, your whole post was incredibly hateful and like i_muse said you completely picked apart and misinterpreted the words. That is very troll-like behavior.
"I tell you what, you show me where the majority of poor couples planned their pregnancies and you have a point."
Like right here, I said poor people CAN plan a pregnancy. Not that the majority of them do.
The article linked above says that there's countless things that could result in a person not existing. Like if my dad's fiance didn't dump him for another guy, then he might have never met my mother and therefore I wouldn't exist.
Hateful where? I disagreed with you, I made you uncomfrtable at the thought of your existence not being some absolute gurantee but I was not hateful towards you.
Your insistance that I am a troll because I dont agree with you is hateful.
If trolls are anti-racist I am a troll.
If trolls are pro-choice even when it comes to sex-selection then I am a troll.
If trolls are WOC then I am a troll.
If trolls are people you disagree with and insult just because they disagree with you then I guess that makes me a troll.
I'll do you the favor of ignoring you and all of your comments from here on out if you do the same for me.
"If trolls are people you disagree with and insult just because they disagree with you then I guess that makes me a troll."
That is pretty much the definition of a troll. You did insult me, were incredibly hateful and completely twisted my words to make it seem I was saying I was better than people who weren't planned. I suggest you re-read your own posts because they were filled with hate towards me when I didn't do anything to you.
"I'll do you the favor of ignoring you and all of your comments from here on out if you do the same for me."
No, I'm not going to do that. I highly doubt you would ignore my comments even if I did. As I said before, you like to twist things around so you will get angry.
WTH?
I said if a troll is someone YOU disagree with AND (that means we're still talking about something you've done here) insult JUST BECAUSE they disagree with YOU then I (as in I am the person you disagree with and have insulted just because you disagree with me) am a troll.
I hate no one and as a woman of color who has been exposed to a lot of hate, accusing me of hating someone simply because we disagree is an insult to me. A huge one. Yet you continue to insult me because I disagree with you. That wont make me agree with you, it wont force me to see things your way.
You *did* have a tone of "well that doesn't work for ME because *I* was planned"- what does that say about those who weren't? That they hold no water for an argument against pro-lifers who ask that silly question? Your response was scientifically false and I pointed that out, it also had an air of classism because a LOT of the people who are not planned come from poor homes. I pointed out those two things and all of a sudden- for no reason- I hate you? I don't see the reasoning or logic you used to reach that conclusion about me. Everything I said about you could be applied to EVERY SINGLE HUMAN BEING ON EARTH, the BS you spouted about me was very specific to your assumptions and hatred toward me for daring to "step out of line" and shine a spotlight on your priviledge.
Phenicks, you tend to put words in commenters mouths/comments. Time and again, thread after thread, you seem to misinterpret or choose to interpret comments incorrectly, in order to start an argument.
I don't know if that is your intention or not. If it is, you classify as a troll.
You just misread me, this isn't your first time either. The first time you totally insulted me you for whatever reason didn't realize I was a WOC.
However:
1) She said and I quote "I was a planned pregnancy" she would have been right in saying "the pregnancy was planned and would not have been aborted" because *she* didn't factor into that decision, she was not a person at the time and she was totally unknown as an individual to her parents. She was a genderless embryo/fetus, her parents hope for a child.
2)Who she is NOW and what she was then are different states as she is a human being with full rights and whatnot now but back then she was just another embryo/fetus and her existence was by no means a guarantee. How could you or anyone else POSSIBLY be for abortion rights and then spout that is somehow HATEFUL to say that someone could have been aborted or was not a gurantee?
Is it also hateful to have menstrual cycles because you know, the egg your father's sperm fertilized could have been the one before and that would have meant that *you* would never have existed. It's simple science. The same goes for me, the same goes for you, the same goes for everyone. I think its incredibly arrogant to imply or worse state that *YOU* were somehow planned, the only people that could say that are those who were created in a fertility clinic an deven then chance came into play on which sperm got to the egg and which egg was chosen and implanted.
But as far as the "what if they had aborted you" argument, I have another.
What if my mother HADN'T had an abortion? My mom had two abortions before me (she may have had three), and decided that if she got pregnant again by my father that she would keep the child. And hence, I was born! If she hadn't had those abortions, I wouldn't be here, and neither would my sister. I'm pro-life myself, but I absolutely hate that side of the argument. When I'm asked that by someone who doesn't know that I'm pro-life, I respond with "What if my mom hadn't had an abortion, and decided to carry out the pregnancy? What if she had a miscarriage months into it or something happened that not only prevented that life from being born, but my sister and I? So abortion resulted in two lives instead of perhaps none."
Holy crap. I know Abby Johnson. She trained me to escort.
It's extremely odd that she would switch, to me, considering how she was committed to the cause (seemed to be, anyway). You do have to be pretty solid in what you believe to deal with the harassment. Coalition for Life just bought a building across from the PP--it seems like they're ramping things up. It's extremely odd that she would align herself with these people; however, I'm not sure that BCS has any pro-life group that's not them, if that's the route she wants to go. While many of the CoL people are (relatively) respectful, some are not. It's shocking-I'm shocked!
And that I would hear about it here? My little town...
Me too! I volunteer at PP Bryan, and Abby Johnson trained me just a week or two before her "conversion." After meeting her, I have to say she is the last person on earth I would ever have expected to join the other side. The training she conducted was really more like a pro-choice rally. She went on and on about how crazy the protesters are, how they're against all reproductive health services, not just abortions, how they spread lies about Planned Parenthood; she told stories about how she has been harassed for 8 years and was totally defiant about it; she even mocked pro-lifers for trying to convert her. She said something like "I'm the director of a Planned Parenthood. I've picked my side." She got everyone fired up, and I left thinking she was one of the most awesome women I had ever met. The fact that she would join up with the exact same crazies who have terrorized her for years is just beyond bizarre. And the idea that she had worked at PP for 8 years and never seen images of an abortion before? She told us she has had two abortions herself, but this ultrasound was somehow the first time she's really been exposed to one? It all just seems really fishy, and I don't know what to make of it.
My answer to "what if you were aborted"
is simple and works with those who believe in God,
"Well then, that mother would have that experience to learn with. If I still wanted to be or was meant to be born, I suppose my spirit would have just found another vessel to come through"
I personally do not believe spirit dies, but transitions and changes.
i had "what if i wasnt born to my current body/life/situation" thoughts all the time when i was younger and didnt know about abortion. it never really bothered me. like you, i assumed my consciousness would have just found somebody (har har) else.
but anyway, pregnancy/childbirth/raising children is way to complex and fraught with myriad issues, difficulties and joys to be some asshole's thought experiment.
Oh, in case it wasn't totally clear, I am 100% pro choice, pro women choosing to never have children and if they do have children, I support the many ways that can happen- birth plans, adoption, fostering, etc.
I volunteered as an escort and at Planned Parenthood, waaaaay back in the day.
Everyone(who was born after Roe V Wade)'s mother DID have the choice to abort and chose not to, so the whole "What if she'd had an abortion?" thing is pretty silly.
I agree that using the "What if your mom had had an abortion???" thing is silly. But, not because everyone's mom had the choice to abort. Just because it's legal doesn't mean that everyone has equal access, whether that unequality is due to geography, finances, etc.
*inequality
BINGO!
You do realize that most people alive today were born before Roe V Wade, right?
And you also realize that women were aborting way before it was legalized in the U.S.
I don't understand your comment.
Of course it's a ridiculous question, but, I like that it offers me the opportunity to speak to an anti-choice person about my perspective. I prefer it when they ask questions.
Sorry, I have never discussed abortion with anyone born before Roe other than my pro-choice mother...
Of course I realize that women preformed abortions before it was legal. The kind of "choice" available to women before Roe V Wade-- and to women who don't have the finances or who live in parts of the US where it's not available, as flowersk pointed out (I apologize for my classism there)-- is hardly a choice at all. Thankfully there were movements like JANE in Chicago, but even so...
My answer to the "What if your mother had aborted you?" argument is that honestly, if my mother wanted to abort me, then she should have. I know I exist, so it doesn't make sense for me to talk about my feelings before I exist because that gets way too complicated, etc, but when I say I'm pro-choice and believe that a woman should have the right to decide whether or not she wants to have an abortion, i mean that for EVERY woman, including my mother. My mother is very pro-life, so she wouldn't have had one, but even if she felt that that was the right thing to do, I know it's her decision.
Wonderful post and I completely concur.
Tweets about Maine aside, Chapel Hill got its first openly gay mayor, Mark Kleinschmidt: http://www.chapelhillnews.com/news/story/53408.html
My biological mom didn't have a choice in the sense that she was raised in a home that believed abortion was immoral and was told when she got pregnant that adoption was the "unselfish" and "best" option for the child. That child is me. I have met my mom over twenty years later and realized that she suffered serious trauma, regret, and depression after giving me away. I, however, had a pretty great life. What I struggle with is that perhaps if she had seen abortion as an option, and had not been told it was immoral, she would have been able to do so and perhaps spared herself the trauma of giving up her daughter. Perhaps I'll post about this on the community board someday in more detail...as the whole "adoption being the best option" thing deserves to be discussed and I'd like to put my story out.
The whole "what if your mother aborted you?" thing to me is simply silly.
The simple answer is: I WOULDN'T CARE. There would be no "me" *to* care about something. I would be a non-entity. There was not "me" until a developed a personality and feelings and experience. "Me" at the time was cells with no cognitive ability or ability to live outside the womb. So quite frankly, I don't care! Anti-choice people also like to use the question in context to their own already born children. A fetus is not a born child. Aborting a fetus is not like picking off your 5 year old. If they think it is, then ask them what would be more emotionally painful- a miscarriage or having your child die when he/she is 5.
Another note- I was the result on an unplanned pregnancy, and if she didn't want to keep "me"/the pregnancy she didn't have to. To me, the fact that I was unplanned doesn't make me feel bad. I couldn't care less. If she needed to have an abortion at that time then I have to trust her judgment for what would have been best for her family and herself. (To be fair to her, even though she was married and still is, she was still young and had a 3 year old.). She's a wonderful mom, by the way. And if I had been aborted, she would have had another kid and my brother would have a different brother/sister. As mentioned in the article, the possibility for creation of people is endless. Should we mourn every one and make a moral issue out of every lost opportunity?
And those who are religious and wish to make the argument against abortion because it's killing, speak with your god first, since "he" allows a 20% miscarriage rate. For someone so pro-life, he surely has a crappy record.
I agree with Pamela that the question "what if your mother aborted you?" is a silly one - even looking at it theoretically I still come to the same conclusion ("I wouldn't be here so I wouldn't care").
I was brought up by my mother to be pro-choice, which is exactly like it sounds - when she had me she was told she should probably abort because she nearly died having my sister but she CHOSE to have me anyway (apparently the easiest birth she ever had, so shows what your doctor can predict!). When I was faced with a similar decision (no life or death involved, just unplanned) I CHOSE to abort - no one knows what they'll do in that situation and we are two different people. But whatever decisions we made were ours to make and no one else's, exactly as it should be.
And here's the kicker - however much I can thank her now for bringing me up with an open and liberal mind, she also physically and mentally abused the hell out of me until I managed to run away from there. I can't even think about my childhood because I didn't really have one, and what was there in it's place makes me feel sick. So who's worse, her or me? Now there's a "what if" question I'd like to pose to the pro-life brigade!