Letter to My Fiercest Abortion Opponent
Published in NakedCapitalism.com
Yves here. This personal abortion account is from a known reader and is accurate.
By Jane Doe
Dear person who believes abortion is murder,
I write to explain why I don’t, hoping you will listen and understand. I accept I cannot persuade you. I understand your beliefs; I want you to understand mine.
We Americans must try harder to understand each other, even as we disagree. Abortion discourse became slogan screaming long ago, and I do not have confidence you understand my position.
Please, do me the courtesy of hearing me out.
I had a first trimester abortion in my late 20s because the pregnancy was accidental and the father, my boyfriend, was a substance abusing pathological liar. I had not yet earned the degree that led to my career; I was adrift, working a meaningless subsistence job while auditing classes at UC Berkeley to audition potential degrees, figuring out what I wanted to study. Tethering myself to that man, and centering our child in my life, would have permanently set my life in a mold crafted by my worst mistake.
(No, I could not have given our baby up for adoption. People can, and do, and that’s great. I couldn’t.)
Today I’m very happily married and we have two kids we love desperately. I have a job I love that enables me to help support my family. My life was shaped by my best decision, to become a mother with a great father in the 2000s, after I got my head straight, instead of in the 90s at the nadir of my life, partnered with the antithesis of my husband.
But for my abortion, my two children would not have been born. I’d have had one kid I could not provide for with a bad dad.
In fact, had my mother not had a pre-Roe abortion during her first marriage, I would not have been born, nor my brother, because she would never have married my father.
For that matter, my brother would not be happily married, raising two beloved children, with a successful career, if one of his pre-degree girlfriends hadn’t chosen abortion (not the woman who became his wife a decade later). Our mother’s pre-Roe abortion led to six well loved, well cared for children.
Women take their autonomy as seriously as men do. We try to live the life we want, despite the obstacles and in spite of the odds. As a result, as many have said: you cannot stop abortion, only safe abortions.
Roe drew the correct federal constitutional right boundary at viability, because a life in the parasite stage of human development—a nascent human inside a woman’s body, feeding on her to survive and develop—is not equal to the fully autonomous woman.
Although I believe that personhood begins at birth, I can live in a country with states that limit my freedom to have an abortion once the nascent human is viable. I recognize that for a substantial number of people, probably including you, the nascent human is a person from conception.
That said, my body didn’t grow a button I could push to remove the nascent human from my womb at viability. The two times I chose to be a mother, I welcomed the connection, choosing what I put in my body for the good of my nascent human. But my loving attention doesn’t make the connection any less parasitical.
As to after viability, well, as a woman who carried to term two children, I cannot imagine having a late term abortion. Which means, to me, that any woman who has one has a very good reason. That reason is none of my business, but I’m sure she has one. Unsurprisingly, late term abortions are very rare.
In short, I believe that all women have the right to choose to abortion up to viability without justifying that choice to anyone, not even her doctor. We have that right because women are people, and nascent humans living inside our bodies, feeding off us, are not.
Because I believe a pregnant woman is only one person, I do not believe abortion is murder.
Because you believe abortion is murder, I am willing to accept abortion restrictions at a nascent human’s viability as the federal constitutional guaranty of my autonomy. No state in America should be allowed to offer less, because anything less substantially impairs my personhood relative to all non-fertile female or male Americans.
Without Roe, I as a fertile woman do not have an equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I do not have the same Freedom of Association.
I am Pro Choice, pro- women choosing if and when they will become mothers.
I accept that you believe abortion is murder, and that when you see a pregnant woman, you see two people. Now I ask you: Please own the logic of your belief that abortion is murder.
You name both me and my mother murderers.
The people who helped us were merely accessories; we chose to have the abortions. Stop infantilizing us; the doctors were our agents. If abortion is murder, then my mother and I are murderers.
You name my brother an accessory to murder or perhaps a murderer.
My brother supported his girlfriend in her decision to have an abortion; he wasn’t ready to be dad just as much as she wasn’t ready to be mom.
Murderers are imprisoned for life and/or executed. Sometimes accessories too.
Call abortion evil, a mortal sin, an abomination, or any other immorality you like. Try to persuade women to choose not to have one. Work to support women with accidental pregnancies, both during her pregnancy and after—after is much more expensive. Morally motivated people can be compassionate and problem solving; most religious leaders don’t jail people for sins.
(Though they should help jail people for their crimes, like all the raping and sexually assaulting religious leaders who were hidden and protected instead.)
You call abortion murder. So stand up straight, and look me and my mother in the eye, and say that you believe we should be locked up for life, and/or executed. Say it in front of my children and my brother and his children. Say it in front of everyone, loud and clear. Unless you can do that, stop calling abortion murder. You can’t have it both ways.
Sincerely,
Jane Doe