as small as a world and as large as alone

10:06pm May 14, 2014

lotrlockedwhovian:

baby-dahlia:

Here’s the thing about being pro choice that people don’t get…
You don’t have to morally agree with abortion to be pro choice. That’s why it’s not called pro abortion. It’s an understanding that you can’t make that choice for someone else and they have full control over that not you. It’s pro I’m not the boss of everyone else.

This is important.

All of that and more:   I believe that abortion does kill a child, just as I believe that parents suffering a miscarriage have lost a child.  I don’t believe that the argument about when a child is a child and when a child is a clump of cells, is helpful.  I don’t believe that asking “when is this life” is helpful, because it’s always life of some kind, and abortion always involves the taking of a life unless the fetus is already dead.  I do say fetus, but I also say child, interchangeably.

And I’m completely pro-choice.  Because I believe it is up to the pregnant person what goes on in their body.  Up to and including whether to harbor a life inside that body.  And that if they choose to get rid of that life, then that is what they choose, and that should be perfectly legal and without shame.

But I also think that the pro-choice movement has gone through a lot of contortions to make this process more palatable to a wider range of people, and I think that’s wrong.  I think it should be up to the individual person whether they believe they are taking a life, and where they believe life starts.  It shouldn’t be forced on us all like some kind of Pro-Choice-Dogma-Thing.  Because I don’t believe the dogma, and even if I did believe the dogma I’d never be able to keep up with the language…

…in a discussion of selective abortion I’ve been silenced instantly, for no other reason than I said ‘child’ instead of 'fetus’, and people thought they knew what I meant by that, and that I was pro-life and just pretending to be pro-choice.  And that’s bullshit, you can’t tell all that from a single word.

I believe abortion usually takes a life, and I am as pro-choice as it is possible to possibly be, and these things are not at all in contradiction.  Even on a personal level… I’ve been told I wouldn’t survive a pregnancy.  People like me need a way out if we do get pregnant.  But even people who would survive physically, need a way out if they don't want a baby.  Carrying a baby is hard work, dangerous work even, and should never be forced upon anyone.

So I’m pro-choice but minus the usual dogma, I guess you’d say.

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