Life: Response.

It is likely that we won’t agree on abortion.  It’s not that you can’t see my point of view and understand it and it’s not that I can’t see your point of view and know why you feel the way you do.  It’s that there is a rift in the way we talk about things.  That is what I was trying to address.  I don’t like the way the discussion is framed and I tried to change the premise.  I had a revelatory thought on abortion about 4 years ago and it’s been driving me crazy ever since.  I don’t want to talk about abortion, it is a can of worms I didn’t want to go near.  But this thought persisted.  The thought was this:  what if no one really wants abortion.  Maybe I have been naive, but I thought that at everyone’s heart of hearts, they would wish that these choices didn’t have to be made.  If a person could somehow erase all the circumstances that were leading up to this decision for abortion, that they would.  I wanted that to be the starting point for discussion:  no one wants abortion.  What if we started things there and then worked backward to truly address what it would take to make this happen.  (Politics and legislation is not the answer in my opinion.  I’m not interested in taking away anyones rights or asserting my own will.  I’m interested in thinking about things differently.  I’m interested in worthwhile discussion.  I’m not interested in assessing people’s past decisions and forcing them to justify their actions.  We are all doing the best we can with the situations we’ve been given or landed in.  It seems reasonable to me that a forward thinking society could look at this and instead of accepting things as they are, we could work towards giving our children better options.  Let’s put everything on the table and figure out what processes and institutions are contributing to these situations.)

The flaw in my process is that I am idealistic and broad when it serves my needs and I can be painfully matter of fact when I know the effect it will have.  But I am also driven by my faith, and this persistent thought that things aren’t as they should be won’t leave me alone.  I felt I had to try to make this argument.  

Catherine's Points...

1. It is called "choice" because the anti-abortion folks started using "pro-life" deliberately to imply that people who support abortion are "anti-life". We are not. We believe that women have rights and that at times those rights supersede the rights of an embryo.

I guess I don’t disagree with anything you say here.  You are clarifying what you believe.  Your last sentence illustrates the impasse that two sides of this discussion often end up at.  I’m going to move on from this without addressing it.

2. Please give evidence of "The damage done physically, mentally and emotionally to a woman..." not necessarily. Many women have carefully thought through their choices and are not traumatized or scarred by abortion, which is not to say that they take it lightly.

I was making assumptions here that I didn’t even know I was making.  It never even occurred to me that this wouldn’t be one of the most traumatic things a woman could go through.  I guess I will withdraw my conclusions about the effect of abortion on a woman.  Consider me stunned.  

3. Why do we always have to talk about the woman's role in supporting all conceptions? How about a post encouraging responsible men to have vasectomies?

Because that is where the pregnancies are taking place.  Reality overrides basic fairness and we must deal with things where they are.  It’s disingenuous to say that women don’t have a greater responsibility for their own bodies than someone else.  No one will ever consider what happens to their own body more important than that person.  But to your point, yes of course men need to stand up and be accounted for, they have a huge responsibility in this.  That in fact is part of my point.  I think we should all be thinking about this on different terms.  

Almost 100 people have viewed my original post and that blows my mind.  I take it very seriously that people would give their time and thought to the things I write.  This was a subject that I could no longer avoid.  I pray that understanding and compassion prevail and that relationships might be strengthened because we are bold enough to talk about the important things that affect us.  This discussion, while uncomfortable, has helped me to further clarify why the hell it is that I’m writing this blog.  My intentions are to acknowledge the beautiful and broken things in this world and present the Gospel of Jesus Christ as an answer to both.  I may fail, but he will not.