A good friend of mine, Peter Walker, who blogs at Emerging Christianity, wrote on the topic of abortion and voting. It resonated with me and opened up a new way of thinking about and framing the debate. i am pro-choice, as i think a woman has the right to choose what to do with her body. Yet, i would like to think i would not seek an abortion if i got pregnant. Most likely, the only way i would get pregnant is through rape. Therefore, i want to have the right to choose whether to have an abortion or go through with the pregnancy.
In college i was staunchly pro-choice. Then i hit my born-again fundamentalist stage and became staunchly pro-life. i was never mean-spirited when i stood outside abortion clinics and never called pro-choice people pro-death as many of my fellow Christian pro-life friends did. i could never stand and hold up those horrible signs of aborted fetuses. They just grossed me out and i never wanted anyone else to experience that.
Now i have come full circle and am pro-choice. i do advocate for lessening abortions but reversing Roe v. Wade will not end abortions. There is more at the root level, like holistic sex education, dealing with poverty and having an all inclusive pro-life approach. For example, many pro-life Christians advocate for the unborn but are in favor of the death penalty. They do not advocate for ending unnecessary wars where there is much collateral damage. They often do nothing about the genocide and human trafficking that occurs around the world. So, reversing Roe v. Wade, in my opinion, is just putting a band aid on a wound or sweeping dirt under the rug. It does not fix anything.
Peter makes a great analogy with a meth addict when he wrote his mom about the subject:
". . . I love you Mom. I understand. Just remember that abortion #'s went down (for the first time since Roe-v-Wade) in the 90s during Clinton's 8 years in office. They began climbing again during both of George W's terms. If we aren't taking care of "the least of these" who are already born, we create a world where the unborn are not only unwanted, but where even those who might want them cannot care for them. The pro-life movement isn't trying to deal with The Problem, it's trying to stop the results of the problem. It's like trying to help a meth addict get healthy without taking away their meth. The problem is poverty, lack of resources, lack of empowerment and lack of hope. . ."
What do you think?
