Blog for Choice Day

Prompted by Helen Boyd at her (En)gender blog .....This year, NARAL, the organizers of Blog for Choice, have asked us all why we vote pro-Choice.

Like Helen, I was raised Catholic. Not just a Sunday morning catholic - I had 12 years of catholic education. My father was a lay eucharistic minister, as was I. Dad's bridge partner was the Monsignor. I was a folk mass musician (with Birthright stickers on my guitar case). Alter server. CCD teacher. Married by a bishop. You get the idea. I was the kind of kid that the nuns and priests had in their sights on vocation day.

My younger brother is adopted - and is an important part of the family. So the topic of teen pregnancy, adoption, etc. was part of the family dialog from the earliest days. Of course we were an "Adoption, not Abortion" kind of family.

But, as I entered adulthood, I became aware that many of my catholic friends had had abortions. And it became clear to me that the church and pro-lifers were not so much against abortion as they were anti-sex. A truly pro-life movement would promote birth control and sex education. A pro-life movement would provide loving and supportive structures for women who found themselves pregnant, to carry the child to term, to assist with a decision to keep or give up the child, to work to remove the stigma that came with being an unwed mother.

I'm still not a fan of abortion, and would happily work towards the day when such procedures are minimized. But that involves a lot of things that the anti-sex folks (hiding under the pro-life umbrella) resist. When birth control is widely available and promoted, when men are held to the same standards of responsibility for pregnancy, when young mothers are embraced by society and not stigmatized and povertized - well, then I might consider restricting abortion. When the pro-lifers come from a place of loving the unborn child, rather than punishing the pregnant woman, I'll listen. But until that day comes - I'm pro-choice.

And I vote....