[The use of “pro-choice” in the title is borrowing, purely for rhetorical effect, the pro-lifers’ definition of “favouring mandatory, recreational abortion”. This is in no way an endorsement by me of this clearly nonsensical definition.]
I learned an interesting piece of my family history while I was in hospital: in 1949, my grandmother was given the opportunity to have an abortion. (In fact, since abortion would remain illegal in the UK for nearly two more decades, she was probably offered an “emergency D&C”, but the intention was to terminate the pregnancy.) With three small children, one of whom was seriously ill, she had every reason to feel unable to go through another pregnancy, but she decided she was up to the task.
If she’d chosen differently, I wouldn’t be writing this now, because the baby she gave birth to grew up to become my father.
When I heard this, I thought about the question pro-lifers frequently pose: “What if your mother was pro-choice?” What if your mother (or in this case, grandmother) had chosen to end a pregnancy and, as a result, you didn’t exist? Knowing that the possibility was discussed brings me as close as I think I’ll ever be to answering the question, and my answer is a great big “So what?”
Yes, if my grandmother had ended that pregnancy, I wouldn’t be here. But I wouldn’t be able to resent my non-existence, and the rest of the world wouldn’t be aware of what it was missing; it’s hard to say that anyone would have been worse off. In any case, I clearly am here, so speculating about what if I wasn’t is a purely philosophical matter with no practical bearing.
What’s more, there are any number of choices that had to be made the way they were in order for me to exist. If either of my parents had chosen a different university, they would never have met and I could never have been conceived, but university choices aren’t subject to the same debate that abortion is. That doesn’t prove, in itself, that the debate isn’t justified, but it does go some way towards demonstrating that “What if your mother was pro-choice?” is a red herring as far as the debate is concerned.
Another favourite way for pro-lifers to express the sentiment is the bumper sticker that says “Your mother was pro-life”. But I’ve got no evidence to say anything of the sort about my grandmother. Yes, it’s possible that she chose to continue the pregnancy because she considered that the emergency D&C would be murder. It’s also possible that she enjoyed being pregnant and wanted, in spite of all the difficulties, to bring this new life into the world. (If that’s the case, it’s an attitude I inherited from her.) I don’t know, and part of being pro-choice is that I don’t feel I have the right to second-guess her.
She had access to abortion and she chose to give birth. I don’t know what pressures were on her to choose one way or the other, but from what I know of her and the way I heard the story, I’d guess she weighed up all the factors and made the decision she thought was the right one. And since I’ve seen no evidence that she wants to put pressure on any other woman to decide any given way, who knows? Maybe she is pro-choice.
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There’s also the other corollary of these statements – “You wouldn’t feel that way if you actually had children”. This one was used towards me back when I was in college (and a women’s studies major to boot). I can’t even remember what the actual name of the class was, but it was taught by two lawyers, and I think it was something along the lines of “women and the law”.
Anyway, obviously one of the course topics was reproductive rights, and we ended up watching two videos in one week – on was some horrific manipulative graphic anti-choice video (the kind that they use to ‘counsel’ women against abortion), and one was a video on Margaret Sanger and the actual horrors she encountered that prompted her to found Planned Parenthood.
Needless to say, conversations would get a bit heated, and I actually had a woman say the above to me. My response? “My mother was pro-choice and she CHOSE to have me”.
I identify with this, Nick, in a lot of ways. A couple of years ago, I found out that my parents–who have been divorced for more than 40 years–got married because my mother was pregnant with me. My father apparently tried to persuade my mother to have an abortion, but she refused. I don’t know why and since she is very tight-mouthed about things concerning my father in general I am not going to bother asking, and my father–who is the person I heard this from–made it sound like his motives had to do with their complete lack of desire for children and the fact that neither of them was really prepared to be a parent. I have no reason to doubt him. Based on what I know of my mother now, though, I am guessing that she did not want to have an abortion more out of fear–it was illegal, dangerous, etc.–than out of her desire to have children, but when I think about her life and how difficult having children made it, and I can honestly say that I wish she’d been able to choose abortion freely and without any problem. I don’t know that she would have chosen abortion, but she might have and that choice might have given her the chance to live dreams that I know she had that she had to give up because she had us kids. It’s not about second guessing my mother’s choice; it’s about wishing for her that she’d been able to make her choice in an environment free of the fear and guilt that comes from making abortion illegal.
I was also very surprised when a good friend who I know is pro-choice asked me if knowing this made me rethink my stance on women’s reproductive choice. His question was not rhetorical. My answer, for all the reasons you give in your post, was no.
I know my mother was pro-choice. She had an abortion at age 16, gave up her next child for adoption at age 19, and then had me at age 21. She also took me to the doctor for my safe, legal abortion when I was 16.
It’s weird because I am here because of abortion. My mother got pregnant by my biological father (whom I never met) and had an abortion under pressure. Then a couple of months later she got pregnant with me and refused to have another abortion. She’s been pro-life ever since. It is weird to think that I wouldn’t be here if abortion had been illegal and the question of, “What if your mother had an abortion?” never takes into account that some of us are here because of it.
Courtney
My mother is/was pro-choice too. She CHOSE to have my sister and I. Pro-choice does not mean pro-abortion. It means choosing!
I guess that’s the selected slogan because “We Claim Your Body In The Name of Jesus And Your Mom’s Is Ours Retroactively, Too” would be a tad too long-winded. Ah, well. The short version is quite repugnant enough in its tone, thankyouverymuch.
What bothers me the most is the implication that pro-choice women are wantonly having abortions and that all women who have children are naturally opposed to abortion.
The only bumper sticker more obnoxious is “choose life.” As if carrying a child to term is always the only life-affirming choice. The woman is not a life that matters to these people, it’s only the fetus. No matter that the pregnancy might risk the woman’s life, or that she might not be in any position to take care of a baby.
The other thing that this line of discussion completely disregards is the completely accidental nature of all our existences. There’s an old, rude locker room gibe that starts with one person asking, “Did you ever wonder?” and the one who doesn’t know the joke answering “Wonder what?” and the punchline is “What if your dad had rolled over and jacked off that night?”
You happened. However, any number of factors could have precluded your existence, some of which may even have been in your mother’s control. The “what if your mom aborted you” question ignores this. The fact abortion opponents pose the question, though, is very telling. I’ve heard the question asked for over twenty years now, usually by men (and often very young men) who find abortion troubling, and I think it reflects two things. One is your basic garden-variety existential fear, and the other is the fear of maternal rejection. If mom didn’t have to have you, she doesn’t have to continue to love you.
I wouldn’t be here if my parents hadn’t chosen to have sex at just the right moment some 38 years ago. Does that mean that it’s immoral of me not to have sex all the time?
My pro-choice mother conceived me as the indirect result of having an abortion. She had two healthy sons and was eagerly trying to get pregnant again. She succeeded, and several weeks later contracted Rubella (German measles). Given the level of medical knowledge at that time (mid 1960s) it was presumed that the child would almost certainly be born profoundly disabled. After consulting with her doctor, her preacher, her husband, and her mother, she made the decision (legal in Vermont at that time) to have an abortion. Three months later, I was conceived (against doctor’s orders, I might add — she’d been instructed to wait six months before trying again).
If my pro-choice mother had not chosen to have an abortion, I would not have been born. Makes my stance on abortion almost predestined.
And I suppose “All your uterus are belonging to us” just didn’t have the right ring to it.
I think people have this “It’s a Wonderful Life” vision in their head: without their existance, the people they love would not be as well off as they are. And maybe their right. But maybe, the world would inadvertanly be better off without them. Maybe it’d be completely nuetral. But, it’s the height of egotism to think that the world wouldn’t go on without your birth.
Definitely. It kind of goes hand-in-hand with the whole “what if you’re aborting the next Einstein” thing. The world and humanity would continue even without the most influential individuals in history. Maybe we’d all be worse off, maybe someone else would have filled the void. It’s impossible to know and useless to the overall debate.
It amazes me how some Christian anti-choicers can simultaneously believe that god controls everything and has a grand plan for everyone and that a choice by an individual woman in a brief moment in time could screw it all up by denying one potential person an existance.
I just wanted to raise my hand as geeky enough to appreciate that.
I am pro choice and made the choice to give birth to three healthy children. My mother told me several years ago that she considered having an abortion with each of her pregnancies for different reasons, but that she ultimately decided that she would be a good mother and that giving birth was the right thing for her to do. She is pro choice as well. Reproductive rights is about that… choice, and isn’t about forcing women to either give birth nor abort at someone elses whim.
I am pro-choice.
None of my friends who are pro-life see that as a “definition of “favouring mandatory, recreational abortion.”
Be careful how you generalize. We don’t like the other side speaking in generalizations about us.
Aside from that, you’re arguments are right on. There are many factors that play into the fact that you exist.
My mother would almost certainly never have married my father if she hadn’t aborted her first pregnancy, so she was pro-choice, and it worked out pretty well for me. I’m not the least bit ashamed of this, but I’m posting anonymously because she hasn’t given me permission to tell anyone.
By the same logic, we could ask people who was born out of wedlock, “What if your father had used a condom?” Or for Catholics, “What if you parents had waited until marriage?” Or even, “What if your mother hadn’t been raped?” Certain past actions might seem to have turned out well in hindsight, but they don’t necessarily make for good policy in general.
No joke.
My mother’s parents met because of World War II; granddad was in the Air Force and grandma was a military nurse. They were from completely different parts of the country and wouldn’t have met if it weren’t for the war. So it turns out that Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, among a number of other factors, was necessary for my personal existence.
This does not, however, seem like a good reason for me to become a neo-Nazi.
And the variation on that: The world won’t go on if I don’t give birth.
I’m also here because of Hitler’s rise to power–if it weren’t for that, neither of my grandfathers would have even come to America, let alone met my grandmothers.
That just sounds backwards to me, if that’s what they’re thinking. My thinking would be, if my mom HAD to have me, I’d never know whether or not she really loved me; if she CHOSE to have me, then I’d know she wanted me…
(Oh, and count me as another geek who appreciated the uteruses are belong to us…*chortle*)
Anyway, it’s fascinating how many stories are here. Here’s mine: my mother was sick during her first trimester, not knowing she was pregnant, and then not learning until well into her third trimester that the illness could affect me. She said if she had known that at an early enough time, she might have elected to have had an abortion. Needless to say, we’re both perfectly happy she didn’t, but as the original article says, I’d hardly be in any kind of position to resent it if she had. And actually, if I had been more seriously affected by the illness (it has a wide range of congenital effects), I might have wished she’d had one!
We’re both pro-choice *shrug*. Personally? I’ve never had children and probably won’t: but I think I never could have had an abortion myself if my life had taken other directions. That doesn’t make me pro-life, though. Odd how these distinctions get so lost in polarized view favored by the pro-life. I only see the nuances and thoughtfulness in the pro-choice crowd…
Cheers,
BEG
Does that mean that it’s immoral of me not to have sex all the time?
I vote yes.
I’m a little creeped out by the pro-lifers’ use of the term “was”. My mother isn’t dead. And she IS pro-choice.
My parents wouldn’t have met if my dad had finished college first time round. So am i totally immoral for not dropping out?
My parents would not have met but for (a) the early 20th century Russian pogroms tha sent my ancestors fleeing for America, and b) a car breaking down at just the right place and time (as well as conditions c through Ω).
What on earth should I be doing, given this logic?
My mother didn’t want to have kids but my dad got her pregnant and she didn’t want to have the baby but my dad was Catholic and eventually she learned to get into the baby but my dad only became more abusive.
What if my mom was pro-choice? Would I be at peace now?
This was always my favourite when I was a volunteer clinic escort. My response was always that both my parents are pro-choice, and both were involved in the struggle to decriminalize abortion in Canada. And it wasn’t just my parents – when my grandmother died, I was given her buttons and t-shirts from when she was a pro-choice activist.
I think that the question “what if your mother was pro-choice” ignores the possibility that you still could have been born, but under different circumstances. Alternate history stories bring up that issue. There’s no guarantee that you would not have existed if your mother had chosen to abort you. You may very well have existed, but in another time-line. Sorry, I’ve been reading science fiction lately.
I like Sam’s answer “my mother was pro choice and she CHOSE to have me.”
I agree with nolo that existence has an accidental nature. “What if” questions are mostly a waste of time. (Unless you’re writing alternative universe/history science fiction.) My maternal grandparents came from Sicily. My grandmother was pregnant with my mother when she made the crossing and she gave birth just a few weeks after she arrived. Had my grandfather decided to move the family to Argentina instead of the US, my mother would have been born there.
Another Hitler baby here!! Three of my four grandparents were engaged to other people when WWII started. My American grandfather married my Dutch grandmother in a DP camp.
And if my father had been able to follow his true vocation (as a college professor) I also wouldn’t exist, since I was conceived the night after he learned he had passed the civil service exam for the soul sucking bureaucratic job he’s had ever since.
Meanwhile, I’m just waiting for the opportunity to gently point out to some spittle spewing “What if Jesus’ mother had aborted him” fundie that the Virgin Mary may, in fact, have been the only woman before Margaret Sanger who DID have a genuine choice. Gabriel said, “hey, wanna have God’s kid?” and she said, “Um, yeah, sure.” She could have said, “hey fuck off, angel man, I’m busy.” She CHOSE to have Jesus.
My response is “I don’t know if she was or not. However, I am tremendously thankful that my existance is not due to my mother’s enslavement by the pro-life agenda!”
In actuality, I exist partially because my mother’s doctor found her choice to be worth upholding. She had endometriosis, and when they removed the offending tissue he went out of his way to see that she could still have a chance at becoming pregnant, because this was important to her.
That question assumes that our mothers were obligated to breed and that we, their children, are the center of the universe.
I was born pre-Roe. I’d rather my mother had the choice to carry her pregnancies (including the one with me) to term or abort. She’s more than a brood mare.
More to the point, I don’t want to think that my exsistence was a BURDEN that my parents had to take, I want to think that I was wanted, and was joyfully taken. Not a parasite that my mom had to carry to term.
Likewise, Astraea. Maybe we should have some stickers printed up ? Preferably in that Tron-esque typeface… :D
Back in the 80’s when I was in highschool (Reagan was president), a favorite anti-choice “trick” was to say something like this (I’ll probably mess this up, but I’ll do my best):
“A woman, already mother to seven children, is pregnant again. She suffered complications and nearly died during the last birth. Three of her children are deaf. Her husband has recently passed away, and she is completely impoverished. Should she have an abortion?”
If you say yes, then they respond: “Congratulations: you just killed Mozart.”
Sigh.
Holy shit! Mozart was alive during the Reagan presidency? And he was killed by answering that question with a “yes”? How did that not make the news? Would answering, “If she chooses to have an abortion, then yes” have killed him, too? I am flabbergasted. I guess everything I knew about Mozart was a sham – like the moon landing.
Regarding the title, “What if your mother was pro-choice?,”mythago says:
FINALLY someone addresses the real issue here – the declining use of the subjunctive tense for discussing counterfactual hypotheses. Traditionally people would pose counterfactual questions such as “What if your mother WERE pro-choice?” or “What if I WERE King of the Fore-e-e-e-e-st?” But times change. A contemporary cowardly lion would probably speculate about what life would be like if he WAS King of the Forest (and without tremolo, probably), or if your mom WAS pro-choice.
As mythago notes, the use of the past tense verb in place of the subjunctive tense verb can lead to a little confusion, but I guess context provides enough clues about the author’s meaning.
(Ok, who is the geekiest now?)
The punchline to the “joke” is Beethoven.
And to be really snarky, I could deal without Ode to Joy ringtones.
Q: What if your mother aborted you?
A: You’d be talking to yourself…not good.
A: What if you had a brain?
A: What if Hitler’s mother had an abortion?
I believe that had my mother had both a. access to safe legal abortion and b. lived in a culture that did not demonize those who have abortions almost as much as those “not-so-nice girls” who got pregnant and “had to get married” she would have terminated the pregnancy that resulted in my existence.
My mother found herself in that situation, and chose not only to have me, but chose not to take precautions because there was a family history of high risk pregnancy.
she had me prematurely. I’m here. I’ve had cerebral palsy since birth.
I of course, find myself “on the fence” about abortion.
If I hear of another wealthy white couple that chose abortion rather than having a disabled child …in other words the reason to abort was soley based on a disabling condition diagnosed in the fetus…I’ll be honest. I get well and truly pissed off. I see that as confirming the societal stereotype of “better dead [read never existing] than disabled.”
But, I firmly believe the choice has to be there. Even for the reasons that piss me off.
Because no one gets to dictate when someone *must* produce a child. Period.
My mother, a red-state moderate Republican, is probably even more pro-choice than I am, a raving pinko loony. That’s because I am prone to all kinds of moral nuances, and my mother can’t stand that crap. Bottom line: she used to work in the emergency room of a midwestern city back in the 1950s, so she knows what all these young women coming through there looked like. Those of us under 50 or so believe in the right to choose for all kinds of high-minded reasons related to personal liberty and such. My mother believes in the right to choose because she still has a visceral memory of sliced up cervixes in a pool of blood.
With South Dakota looming, I thinking our historical amnesia is just about complete. I fear it will take a generation of seeing spilled blood and guts and thousands of butchered young women before the public will suddenly “get” that the alternative to legal abortion isn’t “pro-life” but lots of dead woman and dead babies.
Didn’t Mozart die anyway?
Didn’t Mozart die anyway?
That’s what I had been taught, but it seems that we were both wrong. Rather than dying over 200 years ago, he was killed (note: killed, he didn’t just up and die on his ownsome), by an answer of “yes” to a question about abortion within my lifetime. I didn’t know that was possible, but you learn something new every day. Like that time I was in Jamaica during National Cheese Month. There I learned that everybody needs cheese, every day. Tomorrow I’m hoping to learn exactly where the best place to keep one’s immortal soul is.
If we’d only killed Mozart in time, Salieri would have been a happier man and written lots of catchy pseudo-reggae jingles about cheese. None would measure up the slogan once contributed by Almost Live, however:
Cheese. It’s good for you. Eat it IN CHUNKS !!
This discussion runs counter the the usual Alas arguments about using donor gametes. Whenever someone suggests that using donor gametes should be banned, someone invariably says “you are saying that these wonderful children should not have been born!”. Well, just as Nick wouldn’t be alive to complain if she or her mother had been aborted, donor kids wouldn’t be alive to complain if they hadn’t been conceived. (Tough there is a difference – the unconceived donor kids definitely don’t feel any pain during their non-conception, and the mother of an unconceived kid doesn’t undergo any risks of abortion.) It is better to be unconceived than aborted.
What if teen mom/dad X/Y had used a condom?
What if teen mom choose to abstain from intercourse?
The existence of choice and a resulting kid does not automatically lead to the notion of abortion.
What if mom/dad did not find that fancy doctor to overcome a natural challenge to conceiving the natural way? Could anti-choice be used to justify a prohibition on use of artificial insemination?
The “I am here aren’t I” point could be used to support an argument by a save-the-sperm protester to justify rape, or prohibit the use of RU486 or even spermicide.
Consent is the issue.
I would rename “anti-choice” as “anti-consent” to more accurately reflect the opposition to individual choice by a woman.
P.S.– Jake, you don’t have a soul. Your final resting place will be a vat of boiling vegetable oil at Alexis on Burnside. Your afterlife will feature tzatziki dip on the side.
Opa. You poseur.
Then you need to get on over to the Harry Potter discussion. Remember what your ol’ investment advisor Voldemort sez and diversify, diversify, diversify!
Why? What’s the difference?
Q: what if your mother had been pro-choice? (note the correct use of the subjunctive there, by the way.)
A: she was. at least i know for sure i was a wanted child. do you?
I unconceive roughly every 21 days. Most women are at about 28.
Has anyone noticed that this bumper sticker: “smile your mother chose life” is, essentially, pro-choice? It’s not: “smile, we forced your mother to have you”.
Another sticker for my future bumper sticker: “Smile, your mother had a choice.”
Save that one for a few decades, Elena. Roe hasn’t been around that long yet.
To echo PDXNAG’s comment in #45, I’d tell the anti-choicer that I wouldn’t have existed without premarital sex, and therefore, I’m against abstinence-based education.
This post has a lot of resonance for me. It’s common knowledge within my family that my mother (who is an Evangelical xtian, by the way), almost had an abortion with her third pregnancy, which turned out to be my little brother. We were living in a foreign country, her birth control failed and her doctor had already told her, after her second, that another pregnancy would seriously endanger her health — if not her life. She’s always said that she would have had no qualms about having an abortion; she couldn’t see leaving two very young children and her husband for the sake of an as-yet unformed third. As it happened, she didn’t get sick as she had feared and went ahead with the pregnancy, and she’s still pro-choice contra her church’s position on abortion.
I have just never been able to wrap my mind around this one. I was conceived entirely accidentally, when my parents had been dating for not all that long. I know that my mom considered abortion–I know that from both of my parents, in fact. But I just can’t imagine what has to be going through someone’s mind to fixate on that as if it’s an actual argument. Clearly they’re not saying, “what if your mom were pro-choice?” exactly, since as others have pointed out, many of our mothers *were* pro-choice, they just *chose* to have babies. But even skipping over that and assuming that “pro-choice” means “aborts all pregnancies automatically in every instance, even planned pregnancies,” still, so what? The only answer to the “what-if” in this case is, the world would have been a little different for my family. But there’s no telling whether it would have been better or worse. Maybe my mom would have had several kids a few years later, and maybe one of them would have been a world-saving great genius, and because I was such a difficult baby she was discouraged from conceiving that child and now the world is doomed. Such sillyness.
I admit I feel grief for children who weren’t born – specifically, the children a friend of mine never had. She’s a little older than me. She was supporting herself and putting herself through college when she became pregnant. She wanted to finish school before starting a family. But abortion was illegal then. Illegal but not uncommon. She went to a well-meaning abortionist (not a horrible predator like you read about), but a week later she ended up in the emergency room. The abortion had been incomplete, so she had an emergency D&C and treatment for an infection.
And yeah, ten years later she had medical confirmation that she’d never be able to conceive again because of scarring. She had looked forward to having a family, with two or three children. A mean person could look at it as being proper punishment. A totally weird person could speculate about how one of her children might have grown up to discover an AIDS vaccine. I just think it’s sad, and I wish so much that things had turned out differently. By now, I guess, I might be sending baby gifts to her brand new grandbabies. But that’s material for an alternate universe.
my favorite response to this is that, since my granparents met during WWII and as a result of it, and my great grandparents met during WWI and as a result of it, I wouldnt be here without those two enormous machines of death and destruction. I dare say most people my age rely on similar or the same historical contingencies for their existances.
But it is hard to suspect that the world is better off as a result of the holocaust or mustard gas.
The correct answer to that is “Does she want one?”
If yes, then yes. If no, then she should have all the health care she needs, welfare/unemployment benefits/a job that pays a living wage, childcare so she can go to work, education if she wants it, health care for her other children, and some sort of counseling if she needs it after all this shit she’s been through.
Guess what the “pro-lifers” aren’t working for. Yep. Both of them.
My mother is pro-choice. She nearly died during the course of an ectopic pregnancy, and is sterile because it wasn’t aborted sooner.
Before that, when she was pregnant with me, she sued the state of NY for the right to teach while more than 3 months pregnant. And won.
My mother is my inspiration as a feminist. She rocks!
What if my mom was pro-choice? It doesn’t matter because I’m here and I’m alive enough to tell you all what I think. I totally agree with one of the early ideas presented, that if my mother did abort me, I would not give a crap because I would not be alive enough to do so. But there are a lot of “what-ifs”. I have to agree with everybody on that. This argument from the pro-life people is not very legitamate by itself.
So all of these “what-ifs” did happen, we are all here sharing our thoughts, we should cherish our existence. And in order for you, or your partner in bed, to get pregnant, some more “what-ifs” needed to happen. So we should cherish the existence of our fetuses.
Some of you may argue: “But I’m not ready to have children.”
I may argue back: “Don’t have sex.”
You may argue: “But I need sex.”
I will definitely argue you back: “You don’t. You just think you do.”
I like what John Howard said: “It is better to be unconcieved than aborted.” If you are never concieved, there is no chance of you feeling pain. Maybe, by chance, fetuses can feel pain. You may say that they don’t, but really, there is no way to measure.
Grace said that Mary was the only woman ever to have a choice of whether to abort the baby or not. When she was confronted by Gabriel, she did not have the choice to abort the baby, but she did have the choice to concieve it. She is not the only woman ever to have a choice whether to concieve or not.
The body was created very intelligently. Most of the time, when there is an illegitamate baby, the body will destroy it and have a natural abortion. This is one of many causes of a miscarriage. When I say illegitimate, I mean unhealthy for the mother, or just unhealthy in itself.
To answer that joke up there. It couldn’t have been Mozart because he played violin with his father at the age of three. The answer couldn’t have been Beethoven because Beethoven was abused by his father. Beethoven’s father died while he was studying with Mozart. How could their fathers have died before they were born?
That’s all I have to say. Cherish life. Cherish the life of your fetus. Don’t worry too much about it. Life is cool. If you don’t want it, don’t make it. If you made it, don’t destroy it. If someone made you make it: adoption. There is another answer for every problem that is posed. But I understand where you all are coming from. A choice should be a basic human right, but it’s not. It is something that we have to work for.
down here in new orleans, they have a more obnoxious version of the question on bumperstickers: “Yo’ Mama Was Pro-Life, Dawlin’.” to make it sound like a “yat” accent (a “yat” is someone who grew up in the 9th ward, probably for generations, and the accent is kinda like a southern version of brooklyn. the term comes from the contraction of “where ya at?”)
the catholic church gives them out at churches and at parochial schools.
“…The body was created very intelligently. Most of the time, when there is an illegitamate baby, the body will destroy it and have a natural abortion. This is one of many causes of a miscarriage. When I say illegitimate, I mean unhealthy for the mother, or just unhealthy in itself….”
Nonsense. Nobody else says “illegitimate” to mean anything other than “out of wedlock”. Think up a new word or phrase. How about “not viable” or “profoundly damaged” or “afflicted with such a serious defect that it will die in utero, and possibly kill the mother or render her infertile forever after unless it aborts spontaneously or has the merciful good fortune of having been conceived in an environment in which the mother can request a therapeutic abortion”.
I know a woman, happily married, with two beloved teenage sons, and – surprise – she wasn’t as perimenopausal as she’d thought she was, and she became pregnant at age 45. She and her husband thought long and hard; she decided to abort the fetus, and he backed her up. Sure, you can tell her that life is cool, and she made it, and don’t worry too much about it, just carry it to term and let someone adopt it. And when she says, “Are you out of your mind? Leave me alone!”, then go ahead and blog about how disappointed you are. But don’t get in her way, and have the grace not to tell her that by your reckoning, she didn’t earn that choice.
This world is hard enough. Have a little mercy.
My Mum was pressured into having children by my Dad. She never wanted any. While growing up my brother and I were very much aware of that. My Dad f*cked off, as all good Daddies do, and left us all to it. I got pregnant by accident when I had just turned 21. While I had no problem with abortion in general, I didn’t feel it was right without a damn good reason, so I kept the child. The Dad left us, and now I’m alone on benefits raising my autistic son. I don’t enjoy being a mother. As much as I love my son – and I do, dearly – I feel, just as my mother did, that my life has very much taken a turn for the worse as a result of having a child. I now avoid relationships with men out of fear of pregnancy. It breaks my heart because there’s a man out there who I love but can’t be with. Supposing I did get pregnant again somehow, I would be heading straight for an abortion. I for one am deeply grateful such a procedure exists and that I’m lucky enough to have that choice.
Dianne:
Somebody set up us the bun (in the oven).
I really don’t think any killed person would be able to resent his/her non-existence, unless you believe in some afterlife that only admits persons who were corporeally born. As for the world not being aware or caring, there probably are hosts of infants and persons whom the world really doesn’t know about or really wouldn’t miss if they died off. Usually we try to hold that killing persons is still wrong even if they do not get to regret their non-existence or don’t see their murder coming, or even if they are vagrants that nobody else would miss.
Course abortion is not murder and most of us have the maturity to see that our potential creation was not the center of our parents’ existence nor should it have been. But this anti-abortion trick question is really asking, “What if your mother’s love for you was voluntary?” I guess the truth is that either parent’s love for us was voluntary to some extent. But that’s not something we would understand as children. And a lot of people, the ones who were born at any rate, might still have this lingering childhood narcissism. Somewhere in their heads they might still believe that their mother was fully devoted to them from the moment of conception. The fact that their mothers might have valued their own interests or life priorities conflicts with this sentimental and selfish belief of how mothers should feel toward their embryos and babies. This question is aimed at people who think, “My mother unconditionally loved from the moment she found out I was conceived! From that moment should would have died for me!” Acknowledging that their mother might have considered abortion dashes that narcissistic belief.
But to be fair, even a pro-choice person might be kind of uncomfortable if his mother told him, “I was going to abort you because of the expense it would take in raising you. I wouldn’t have felt guilty about aborting you if I did.” Well, if ever that was the case, hopefully most mothers won’t find it necessary to say that if they decide to keep the fetus and become attached. But even if some pro-choicers might be personally uncomfortable with thinking about their mothers having no compunction in aborting them, they don’t allow their personal, emotional misgivings to denounce a legitimate right for women. If they are truly pro-choice.
The question “what if your mother were pro-choice” seems to imply that NO woman would have a child if she wasn’t forced to do so. Which piles yet another layer of woman-hating on top of the already heavy load that goes along with the anti-choice viewpoint. It also seems in conflict with the idea that as women, we’re all programmed with overwhelming motherly instincts and there’s nothing that we love more–or do better–than pop out and take care of cute little babies.
my mother *was* and is pro-choice. luckily for me, I was planned and wanted. may every child be so lucky…
“Grace said that Mary was the only woman ever to have a choice of whether to abort the baby or not.”
The misreading here is extreme and gratuitous. What I SAID, quite clearly, was that if you believe the Gospel account, Mary was the only woman BEFORE THE TWENTIETH CENTURY to have a REAL CHOICE OF WHETHER TO BE PREGNANT. In other words, in a time in which there was no reliable birth control (pre-1900, including 1st century Palestine but NOT the 20th century, in which many women DO have real choice, though increasingly few in the US), most women were married off and became baby machines. Mary, on the other hand, was given the choice of whether to conceive and bear.
Is that sufficiently clear?? Sheesh.
Odanu – my grandmother also got rubella while pregnant and didn’t live in a state where abortion was legal – so she was forced to continue the prenancy for 4 more months, until the baby was stillborn. Between her, and my other grandmother, who watched her own mother die on the kitchen floor after hemorraghing after having baby #10, all of the women in my family are extremely prochoice and support easy access to birth control.
I just love the idea that miscarriage of an imperfect fetus or embryo is such an easy process to go through. Miscarriage, even early miscarriage, can be hideously painful – as bad as labor itself; the bleeding is godawful; there’s a chance of bits left behind, resulting in continuing bleeding or possibly infection and requiring a clean-up D&C.
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If someone made you make it: adoption.
You know, I really have to say that I’m sick of the adoption option trotted out like it’s just that easy. Especially for a raped woman. The last thing I’d want to endure after a rape is ten months (forty weeks, do the math) of pregnancy, with all of its risks and complications. And while adoption is a good option for some women, it is hardly something we should push on women. I’ve known women who had to put their babies up for adoption (long story) and it tore them apart. Funny how we don’t hear about “post adoption syndrome.”
If it’s not your body, it’s not your choice.
I’d just like to know how many proud pro-lifers have adopted children ?
Let’s make a deal: Mandatory adoption of unwanted babies for all pro-lifers. Show up at a clinic to wave your sign and terrify clients ? Okay. But first you have to sign this contract stating that you’ll adopt and raise one unwanted post-fetus for each day you show up. No cherry-picking either, fetus-worshippers. Through the luck of the draw, you may very well get the mixed-race post-fetus, the mild Downs syndrome post-fetus, the spina biffida post-fetus which will die slowly and painfully before your eyes after birth– using up tons of your savings in the process.
No, you can’t have any public assistance for the post-fetuses you adopt. It was your choice to open your stupid yaps and meddle in affairs that didn’t concern you. Now it’s a child. Your child. Not a choice. Time to be responsible and impress Jesus with your bountiful compassion.
Grace: if the Holy Spirit came to me asking to co-opt my body and offering me sloppy seconds in exchange, I’d be pretty damn sure that didn’t involve “real” choice. Coercion, yes. Choice, no.
King James version, Luke
I contend that this is rape.
Sadly, there IS a group who oppose adoption on the grounds that is harmful to everyone involved. While some of their points may be worth discussing, they are so over-the-top rabid foam-mouths that even conceeding they POSSIBLY have a point disquiets me.
The whole adoption argument is crap anyway. As soon as you find people who are willing to adopt countless children with severe disabilities then we *may* talk. But Im not gonna hold my breath.
Very interesting posts and thread….
I was an unexpected pregnancy, my mom’s second, after she was told she could never have children, b/c one ovary was removed and the other never really developed, according to the doctors. So my mom was looking into adoption and then she went to the doctor b/c she was very tired and found out she was pregnant. I think her doctor fainted. Somehow the latent ovary had woken up.
My mom had another daughter, then lost twins eary on. Then she got pregnant with my younger brother and it was my father who tried to pressure her to get an abortion. She wasn’t sure what to do at first, but ultimately decided to go through the pregnancy and that’s how my youngest brother got here. She never told my brother that, but she did tell my sisters and I when discussing the issue with us much later.
It’s like in the original post. My brother wouldn’t have been here, but the awareness of his existance wouldn’t have either.
My sisters had abortions and they’re very open about that. You can say, well those pregnancies never produced children that would have been born and existed, yet in a sense b/c those abortions took place, the nieces and nephews that I do love and have an awareness of were born instead. B/c they do exist, I would have an awareness of them that I didn’t have with the earlier pregnancies which were terminated.
It’s so stupid, when the pro-lifers ask these stupid “what if” questions. If you do an abortion, you might not have a Leonard Da Vinci or a Marie Curie, but then you might in another situation, not have a Stalin or a Hitler.
I contend that this is rape.
Except for the part that you (deliberately?) left out:
37 For with God nothing shall be impossible.
38 And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.
Robert:
Where, in the two verses from the Bible that you have added to Q Grrl’s post, is Mary’s choice? Acquiescence? Yes, that’s there, but I don’t see any indication anywhere that Mary could have, or felt that she could have, said no.
It’s implicit in the context. You don’t report someone’s assent if you view them as being without agency.
But you do report her complacency and obedience if you view that as being an important aspect.
You do if you want to make it seem like they have agency, i.e., public and “freely given” confessions and retractions that were actually coerced under torture. But even if you leave aside such obviously cynical situations, you do if you think that someone’s assent in the context of your absolute power over her or his life is, in fact, freely given assent. In other words, the fact that you, from your position of power, think their assent equals a real choice does not mean that it really does.
Who is holding the position of power, Richard?
Robert: God is, as portrayed by His representative.
If God is the person with the power, then how is it that He “think[s] [her] assent equals a real choice does not mean that it really does.”
I’m fairly sure that if God thinks something is a real choice, then it is.
This is, Robert, a distinctly male perspective from which to view the situation and the text. Not only is the God in question male, but the Christian religions that spring from this story–not to mention the madonna/whore complex–are all distinctly patriarchal and have, on the whole, been serving men’s as opposed to women’s interests pretty much since their inception, and so to make the assumption you make is implicitly to serve those interests as well. But the perspective from which you are reading the text is also male because it does not take into account Mary’s distinctly female interior experience; nowhere in the text are we given access to what Mary, as a woman, thinks or feels about being impregnated by the Holy Ghost. All we know is that when the angel tells her that God can in fact impregnate her that way, she acquiesces.
It takes a great leap of faith to insert what you say about God into the text, and since this is a thread about abortion, not religion, I want to point out that it is precisely the opposite leap of faith, in the direction of trust in women’s autonomy, that the anti-choice movement is adamantly opposed to making.
This is, Robert, a distinctly male perspective from which to view the situation and the text.
I am male.
It takes a great leap of faith to insert what you say about God into the text
It takes an equally great leap of faith to take the interpretive tack that you are taking – actually, a greater leap, because while there is modest textual support for the consenting interpretation, there is no textual support for the rape interpretation.
My leap of faith is grounded in two thousand years of consistent and coherent tradition, cross-supported by corroborative testimony from the other demographically significant monotheism that has scriptural records of Mary, takes the text at its common-sense reading, and is consistent with the later described behavior of Mary.
What’s your leap got?
My leap of faith is grounded in two thousand years of consistent and coherent tradition, cross-supported by corroborative testimony from the other demographically significant monotheism that has scriptural records of Mary, takes the text at its common-sense reading, and is consistent with the later described behavior of Mary.
What’s your leap got?
Yes, but the 2k yrs of tradition is an obviously patriarchal tradition. As is the other significant monotheism to which you refer. Traditionally, neither gives much in the way of rights to women.
I believe that it is perfectly valid to disagree with the interpretation of QGrrl, but your answer in no way supports the position that yours is valid while the rape scenario is invalid. These divergent interpretations seem no different than the debate about what, precisely, god’s test of Abraham really was (test of obedience vs test of refusing human sacrifice). That is to say that neither side can win by relying on millenia of tradition.
Robert, I’m not interested in a pissing contest. My point is simply this: The text gives us no access to Mary’s interior reality when the angel comes to her. As male readers, you and I have no way of identifying with what that experience might be. We can try to imagine it, but we have neither women’s bodies nor women’s relationship to sex, pregnancy and childbirth, and so there is no way for us to read the text as women and bring women’s understanding of women’s lives to the situation in which Mary finds herself. The same is true of all of the men, and it has overwhelmingly been men, over the past 2000 years who have been interpreting that text. Q Grrl’s reading is a woman’s reading of the text. To try to invalidate it because it is not a male reading, which is what your agrument tries to do, only serves to prove her point.
(Also, as a point of information, am I right in assuming that by the “other statistically significant monotheism” you mean Islam? Because Jews do not believe in the immaculate conecption or the virgin birth.)
Q Grrl’s reading is a woman’s reading of the text. To try to invalidate it because it is not a male reading…
I’m not trying to invalidate it because it isn’t male. I’m pointing out the empirically true fact that her reading is of a partial text which specifically excludes the one and only volitional statement by the primary actor, whose viewpoint you are so solicitous of. That’s not a “female” reading, it’s a deliberately obtuse reading. Female != stupid, and people doing stupid things can’t cloak them by making a gender claim. (“You wouldn’t understand why we had to go out in the woods and get ripped and shoot at bears – it’s a guy thing!”)
I’ve read female/feminist readings of Biblical texts, including many that are challenging to my own personal beliefs, and have found them (at minimum) stimulating in their perspective. This is not such a reading.
On the informational point, I am indeed referring to Islam, which has a somewhat richer biography of Mary than that found in Christian scriptures, as well as a cultural tradition of reverence for Mary. The validity of Islamic claims concerning Mary and her history are iffy in terms of Christian theology, but they are, prima facie, reasonable claims. (Basically, that Mary was a devout girl devoted to the Lord’s service from a very early age.)
You don’t have to agree with the reading, Robert, but calling it obtuse and stupid is unfair. So I will say this and then I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by continuing this: The angel does not ask Mary if she is willing to bear your god’s child; it tells her that she will bear it. Now, it is possible to read what Mary says in verse 34–“How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?”–as implying Mary’s consent, but it is equally possible to read it as Mary’s bewildered response, implying neither consent nor the lack thereof, to being told that something will happen to her, over which she has no control, that she understands to be impossible.
Nor do the two verses you pointed to change this. In verse 38, Mary basically says, “I am your servant, do with me what you will.” You are right, this too can be read to imply her consent, but it can also be read, with equal validity, as a simple statement of fact, a servant’s acknowledgment that she has no real choice but to do as her god wants. All I am saying is that a woman is more likely to come to the second reading than a man and that your appeal to a male tradition to invalidate the second reading is in fact playing precisely the kind of gender politics you say your are not playing.
In verse 38, Mary basically says, “I am your servant, do with me what you will.” You are right, this too can be read to imply her consent, but it can also be read, with equal validity, as a simple statement of fact, a servant’s acknowledgment that she has no real choice but to do as her god wants.
Certainly, it can be read that way, if you so desire it.
However, which interpretation is the one that gives the most credit to the woman? Which one casts her as the dutiful drudge, versus the one that believes she joyously accepted the choice being offered?
I remember once having a boss at a software company who asked for volunteers for an oddball assignment. I was glad to sign on; I had already committed myself to the boss, so I was game for anything. Why not assume that Mary – the human chosen to be the co-creator of the incarnation of the deity – was at least as on-the-team as a miserable wretch like me?
As for the political question, you can interpret anything I say through any filter you want. I can’t control your side of the screen. I’m just arguing with somebody, beats me what your gender is.
We can certainly stop discussing this if you wish, I’ve said my piece. I doubt either of us will convince the other.
So Robert, in your experience of reading the Bible, what happens to people who say No to God? Let us say more specifically, to women who say No to God?
A couple of the women in the Bible who come to my mind are Eve and Lot’s wife. God told Eve not to eat of the fruit of the tree, and she disobeyed. God told Lot’s wife not to look back, and she made her own choice. They said No to God, as Mary said Yes.
What do you think Mary expected would happen, if she said No to God? What would you expect to happen?
“Bear my child or die” is not a free choice, even if the woman says Yes, like Mary said yes. And of course you know that.
Yikes, I seem to have opened a can of worms.
I have always read the text in the way that Robert reads it, which, as he accurately states, is the way that the whole Christian tradition has read it, and (incidentally) presumably the way that the spittle-spewing fundamentalists I was fantasizing about arguing with read it – I was visualizing arguing with them on their own terms.
The name on my post is my real name, and reflects my actual gender. So my reading is a female one. Although I am aware of the ways in which the madonna/whore dichotomy hurts women, I am also aware that in the extremely patriarchal Middle Ages, adoration of Mary was a source of power and reassurance to many devout women, and, incidentally, many devout men. It never occurred to me that a strong (she dealt with being a pregnant unmarried woman in an extremely patriarchal culture, raised possibly the most feminist man ever to live, and then watched him being brutally murdered by the occupying power; Mary had some guts), virtuous woman who, later in the same chapter of Luke, basically says “God is helping me destroy the corporate overlords and help poor people” (read the Magnificat, I believe it’s Luke 1:46-57, which has been banned at some periods in Latin America as being too socialist and subversive) could be otherwise than a good role model for women. I have always read her assent as free. I don’t think that’s reading anything more into the text than assuming it’s coerced, though I admit that it is not explicitly stated one way or the other.
Clearly the tradition I grew up in was just too intellectual, too liberal and too full of women priests and bishops getting on with the business of serving others and worshipping God, to properly indoctrinate me in the patriarchy of my tradition’s sacred texts. :)
My mother was pro-choice. The year before she got pregnant with me, she had an abortion. Now, for those who believe that children’s souls hover somewhere, this would be proof that my soul had to wait for another pregnancy and the current me would be the one who didn’t “get to live” the first time round. For those who believe in reincarnation, they can believe that a death occured and the child’s soul came back as me in the next pregnancy, or maybe my soul came from a pregnancy that was terminated somewhere else in the world. For me, I go with Nick’s words:
Pogrom and Hitler baby here.
My great-grandparents fled pogroms in Europe in the 1880’s and wound up in Brooklyn. That’s where my grandmother was born. In 1938, while living in Brazil, they fled NAZI persecution. If it hadn’t been for the NAZI’s, they’d have stayed in South America longer and not wound up in New Jersey, where my parents met, married, and conceived moi.
But more seriously, my kid brother is a miracle baby, conceived before any kind of birth control was available. Mom had some health problem (which turned up while pregnant with me) which made additional children a life-threatening proposition. As the story goes, she was extremely ill with him, after having only been very ill with me.
Later, a woman I was with (no details because of privacy concerns …) nearly died from a pregnancy that her doctor refused to terminate because he was “pro-life”. But apparently not her life. She had to go to an abortion clinic (not that anything is wrong with that) because the hospital where she should have had the abortion wouldn’t do it because hte doctor didn’t think it was needed. And then she nearly died (she coded on the table) having the abortion because her health had deteriorated so badly.
So, I’m pro-choice, pro-contraception, pro-lots-of-good-stuff.