Conversion or Coercion?

Note: This blog entry is on the subject of abortion. I realize my postings have ranged a bit on the heavy side lately, so hopefully there will be more about fluffy kitties and frolicking bunnies in the near future, but sometimes, I just have to go with what's on my mind. Please drive safely, and obey all traffic signs.

There's a gap the size of the Grand Canyon between being pregnant and not, but the next gap—the one between a safe pregnancy and a dangerous one—is even larger. The distance is so great, in fact, that some people standing on the (fortunately) highly-populated "safe" side have no idea that the dangerous side even exists, much less has any residents.

When I'm feeling calm and understanding, I have a fair amount of sympathy for the short-sighted viewpoint that broadly states there is "NEVER" valid reason for abortion—particularly those abortions known as "late-term" abortions. I'd like to believe that, myself, but I'm afraid I have a bit too much of an understanding of basic biology to do so. There is so much that can go wrong ... even catastrophically so!

That's as good a reason as any to call any healthy birth a "miracle".

But ignorance, while it may give people the capability to dismiss statistics with a single wave of their hands, is no means at all of dealing with actual people. As Thud describes, there is a pain I find agonizing to simply imagine in hearing the story of a woman reviled as a "baby killer" for seeking the services of an "abortion provider" after her child died in utero.

That story, by the way, is not an exception to the rule—that story IS the rule, and simple Internet research will lead the honest seeker to heartbreaking stories seemingly without number. (I'm not giving links here this time, lest someone of an unshakable "Pro-Life" position—distinguished, at least in my mind, from "pro-life" by the vehemence and flammability of their rhetoric—use that link to further their own goals.)

Thud is so very correct when he states that those who choose to protest at the offices of doctors who provide abortions—among other things!—have no idea what has brought patients to those doors. They presume to know, by virtue of the generic "procedure" practiced within, but they do not know. They do not know, and more importantly, they do not want to know.

George Tiller, a physician known more for providing late-term abortion services than for anything else—though that was not at all the extent of his work—was gunned down on Sunday, May 31, 2009, in his church as he served as an usher. His wife of 45 years was sitting with the choir. And within 24 hours, blogs and comments I could barely stand to read—here are Google search results if you have a stronger stomach than I—described his murder as a "really late-term abortion".

There is no excuse for this magnitude unconscionable cruelty. If you do not understand the legal distinction between "murder" and "abortion", then you need to read a dictionary. If you do not LIKE the legal distinction between the two, then you need to try to work to change it through methods that are less like those of a terrorist and more like those of a rational adult. One person acting outside of the law—and outside of the vast, silent majority of otherwise similar belief-holders—does far more damage than the obvious ... extremists cripple the cause that they believe they support and moreover, their use of fear as a conversion tool backfires more often than not.

Coercion is, after all, a far cry from conversion.

If this entry seems disjointed, that's because it is: I've struggled for days to put it together, despairing of finding just the right words and just the right tack—rightfully so, because some of the sites I've been reading at would lead me to conclude that there is not one person on the pro-life side who would not dismiss me outright simply because I stand on the side of choice. This is another casualty of extremism—it gives the false impression that there is only one flavor of a position to hold, and only one type of person who holds it. When I realized that I was falling into that impressionable trap, I crawled back out to try again.

Then, my own history on the issue stopped me. After I gave birth to Little Girl, you see, I flipped from loosely pro-choice to loosely pro-life. I was not able to articulate the change beyond stating that while I still thought abortion should remain legal, I could not fathom availing myself of the option. Reading the many personal and painful stories of "late-term" abortion now, however, brought my views of bygone days into sharp and unmistakable focus: basking in the rosy glow of a wanted pregnancy with a life partner, a HEALTHY pregnancy for both me and my child, I was quite plainly unable to so much as imagine a pregnancy created out of violence, or a pregnancy that carried no possibility for life outside of the womb, or a pregnancy that endangered my life.

The poverty of my imagination—holding my much-wanted baby, the product of a textbook-perfect pregnancy that caused me only one single twinge of nausea and a few weeks of grossly-swollen ankles—made me rich beyond the wildest dreams of women who have not been in that position. Women who have suffered horrific and over-simplified genetic diagnoses such as "incompatible with life" or worse—and yes, there is worse than that. How could I—how could anyone?—be more capable to determine the best of no good options than the woman in question, her doctor, and as many second opinions as she needed?

And how did I get to this point, to realizing that I am not only pro-choice, but STRONGLY pro-choice? Because someone who misguidedly and mistakenly believed himself to be "pro-life" murdered a medical professional, George Tiller, who was performing LEGAL MEDICAL PROCEDURES at the risk of HIS OWN LIFE. Because the violent act that caused George Tiller's death led me to do my own research, and now I have some small understanding of the agony behind decisions that are so far from the simple word of "choice" that there are no canyons wide enough to characterize it.

George Tiller was helping women who few other people are truly willing to help—and he was helping them in a way that few other people are willing to do: he was trusting these women to make their own choices among horrific options, with not one outcome among them as happy and healthy and WHOLE as the one that I was lucky enough to enjoy (without having to make a single decision myself). And while I wouldn't wish that sort of decision on my worst enemy, I am absolutely certain that the decision MUST remain that of the woman, along with the advice of her doctors.

We all live in an imperfect world—a "fallen" world, if you prefer that terminology—through which we all muddle as best we can. If nothing else, I would hope that we could agree that we should all advance our causes and beliefs without trampling on the lives of others like ourselves, going about our all too-brief existences legally and with careful thought and thorough consideration.

If anyone among us, like the man who murdered George Tiller, cannot do this, we all suffer the consequences—the diminishment of those who do not see things the way we do as human beings and the elevation of those who do: the US versus THEM mentality that invariably results in women losing husbands, men losing wives, and children losing parents.

The "Pro-Life" camp may well argue that the developing child in utero is already losing, but I believe they fail to see the forest for the trees. As much as I would love to have a second child—and I would, but I cannot, for reasons that I do not wish to share here—if a second pregnancy threatened my life, I would consider my born child FIRST, and yes, myself, and I would want to have the option at MY discretion (and my doctor and partner). There is no one more qualified than THAT set of people to make any decisions that need to be made—indeed, no one else is qualified at all. And if that is true for me, then I must extend that it is logically true for other reasoning and mentally healthy adults.

I've gotten too far off track to tie this entry neatly up with a bow, and it seems appropriate enough, because there is nothing neat at all about this topic. As an imperfect solution, it corresponds to the world around it—but the same cannot be said of the murder of those who either agree or disagree ... although my words may not convert anyone, I will never so much as attempt to coerce anyone, either.