Years ago, my husband, our kids, and I were the last ones arriving at an extended family party. When we walked in, the rest of the relatives were in the middle of an argument. Both sides pounced on us, expecting us to be the tiebreaker. The argument was about kids walking to and from school. There were two distinct camps.
One side believed that it was good for kids. Kids need exercise and independence, they said. Especially with childhood obesity rates soaring, kids need the exercise. They also needed to learn responsibility, and make sure that they got themselves to school on time.
The other side believed that it was profoundly dangerous to leave kids unsupervised in public. Letting kids walk by themselves was just asking for them to be molested, or abducted and murdered. No responsible parent would allow it, they said.
Knowing that we had school aged kids, both sides demanded, "What do YOU do?"
"We drive them to school, and they walk home," I said.
Everyone stared, puzzled. They were sure that this was an either/or situation, and we'd given them an "and." They all wanted to know, "Why?"
"We're not really morning people, so nobody would be ready in time to walk to school. But after school, they can dawdle on the way home."
The argument petered out, as no one seemed to be able to process the idea of doing both - and every school day, not even just occasionally.
That certainly wasn't the first, or last, time that I have puzzled or angered people by "taking both sides." I've come to believe that many people see most things as an either/or scenario, and I just don't. I'm not trying to be difficult or controversial. My analyses just often don't match those of other people.
Recently, in our women's meeting at church, the teacher asked how we all personally felt about abortion as part of our class discussion. Most times, when this subject comes up, whether in person or online, there are two sides who are convinced that theirs is the only moral and reasonable opinion. They break into two camps - abortion is murder, and women's choices are noone else's business. I think that both arguments have truth, and falsehoods, in them.
In class, I shared my opinions, and the personal experiences that I think back those opinions up.
Years ago, I watched video footage of some kind of meeting - I think it was a campaign event, but I no longer remember. The (male) speaker on the stage was opposed to abortions, for any reason. A (female) audience member challenged him - "What if the woman is young, and has no support from the baby's father? What if she has no parental support? What if she has no money? What if having this baby means that she will never finish college?"
Even before I met my oldest brother, I had opinions about abortion, but after I met him, I had even stronger opinions. When I heard the woman on the screen asking those questions, I cried, because she was describing my mother.
The year after my mother graduated from high school, she was dating a man that she was serious about; we even have a certificate indicating that she changed religions at the time, so I think that they may have been engaged. Apparently very abruptly, they broke up, she burned every photo with him in it, and she moved 2000 miles away. We always knew this, and knew that she didn't like to discuss it. What we didn't know is that she was pregnant at the time, and just before she turned 20, she placed my brother for adoption.
Despite being brilliant, she never went to college. She obviously was no longer in a relationship, or even in contact, with my brother's father. I don't know what her family knew or didn't know, but I do know that she made the choice to move across the country from both of her parents, any of her friends, and from her extended family.
And yet - my mother died at 84. My brother died at 74. We don't need to imagine what kid of lives they led; we know. I can state absolutely categorically that noone's life was ruined. My mother had a career that she loved and at which she excelled. She married, twice, and raised four children. She had grandchildren that she loved. She traveled, she gardened, she read - she had a great life. My brother describes his forever parents as "perfect." He went to college, served a church mission, married, raised nine children, traveled extensively, had not one but multiple careers that he loved and that he did well, had grandchildren that he loved. He had a great life.
Adoption was the best choice for my brother, his family, my mom. There's no question at all. I know that pregnancy and delivery can be dangerous; three of my childrens' births would have killed me and them a century earlier. That makes me admire women like my mother more. She gave joy to my brother, his parents, his wife, his children, and his grandchildren - and that's without even considering anyone outside of my brother's immediate family.
So, hearing someone opine that such a woman's life will automatically ruined if they carry an unplanned baby upsets me.
Sometimes when I share this story, people assume that I'm a "no abortion ever" kind of person. That's inaccurate. Yes, I think that many women should choose to place babies for adoption. I know too many adoptive families to think otherwise. But I don't think that abortion should be outlawed for a simple reason - when that happens, women and babies are at risk. They die. It's documented, over and over.
Plus, do you want someone who does NOT want to be a parent to be raising children?
I usually explain it this way; I don't drink alcohol. I don't think that anyone should. I can back that opinion up with study after study. There's the physical effects of alcohol - cirrhosis, addiction, and more. It's a depressant. There's all the deaths and mayhem from driving while drunk. There's the fact that the overwhelming majority of people in prison, whether they're there for white collar crime or violent crime, admit to being intoxicated during their crimes. Domestic violence is linked to alcohol consumption. Then there are all the ordinary "I wish I wouldn't have" moments when someone's been drinking, especially too much. There's so many reasons to avoid alcohol.
Yet, we know from experience that when alcohol is outlawed, bad things happen. People don't stop drinking, it just becomes entangled with crime, often violent crime. We, the country, tried it, and it doesn't work. People should make the decision to avoid it (or not) on their own.
Whether or not to have a baby follows the same pattern. People should be allowed to make their own choices. Otherwise, bad things happen.
My religion tells me that free will is the most sacred gift that God gave us.
As with adoption, I have had personal experience that has solidified for me that my opinion on abortion is the correct one.
Between the births of my younger two children, I had what I usually describe as a miscarriage. It was actually an ectopic pregnancy, one where the embryo implants in the Fallopian tube instead of in the uterus.
I was in a play at the time, and we had a fairly extensive stretching routine as part of our warmups. I grumbled a bit, since I'm not very flexible. When I woke up on a Sunday with a sore lower back, I figured that I'd pulled a muscle. It was the last day of my period, so I was already uncomfortable. All through church, the pain got worse. Medicine didn't seem to touch it.
Through the day, it got steadily worse. By evening, I was lying on the couch, unable to concentrate. My husband fed the kids and put them to bed. I tried to watch TV, but I couldn't. The pain just kept getting worse.
I went to bed at bedtime, but I couldn't sleep. It hurt too much. Even more worrisome, the pain moved from my lower back to my abdomen. It occurred to me that pulled muscles don't move. Just after midnight, a lightbulb went off in my head. I remembered one of my best friends describing his wife's ectopic pregnancy, and how she almost died on a camping trip.
At that point, I woke my husband, and said, "We need to go to the ER."
The hospital asked if I was pregnant, and I answered truthfully, "My period just ended yesterday," but I was not surprised at all when the pregnancy test came back positive. They did a scan and told me that the pregnancy was ectopic. I found out in a single hour both that I was pregnant, and that I could not have the baby. "We can't handle your treatment here," I was told. "We can't touch you if you're pregnant." They sent me by ambulance to a hospital across town, while my husband followed in our car.
Once there, they impressed upon me the seriousness of my condition. "If this ruptures, you will bleed to death before we can get you to the OR," they told me. This was a Catholic hospital, and there was no hesitation or discussion about what needed to happen. They informed me, not asked me. I would be having surgery. The entire Fallopian tube would be removed. And this, they impressed upon me, had to happen quickly.
I feel the need to point out that detail again. A Catholic hospital did not hesitate to perform my surgery, surgery that meant the death of the embryo. They also told me that the other Fallopian tube was almost completely clogged with scar tissue, so even with only one, my chances of having this happen again was astronomical. "Do NOT try to get pregnant again," they said. When I asked if they could "tie off' the remaining tube during the surgery, they recoiled and assurred me that that was not possible. "That's birth control, and we do not perform that procedure here." Yet with the ectopic pregnancy, there was no question. It had to be done, or I would die.
If a Catholic hospital had no question or hesitation, then there really isn't much reason for anyone else to be unclear. I have occasionally heard people say that the "life of the mother" consideration is a smokescreen argument instead of an actual reality. This is wrong even in healthy pregnancies, but it's not only wrong but deeply insensitive to say to someone like me who has lost a pregnancy.
I was placed on the maternity ward after my surgery since I had "female issues," the only woman in the ward who did not have a new baby. They wheeled me past the waiting room where an OB was giving the news of a birth to the waiting relatives, who whooped and cheered. Even one of the doctors who checked on me while making his rounds started his conversation with me by saying, "How's the baby?" If you haven't experienced that, especially experienced that after having fertility problems, you have no idea what it feels like. And telling me that I should have accepted dying, and leaving the three children that I already had, strikes me as deeply immoral.
I told these two stories in my church meeting. Occasionally in moments like that, I'm told that I'm trying "to play both sides," or avoiding "taking a stand," which is so annoying. I'm actually analyzing situations on their own merit, instead of indulging in the groupthink of assuming that all I need is one piece of information, and all choices after that will be made for me. I'm used to making both "sides" angry. I have no patience for being told that I have to adhere to either a "liberal" or "conservative" philosophy. None of the women in that room said anything of the kind, or criticized me, at all. That was refreshing and appreciated.
I am aware that my medical chart says "medical abortion" (as opposed to "spontaneous abortion," the medical term for a miscarriage). As I said, in my head I classify the event as a miscarriage. The exception is when someone tells me that there's no excuse to end a pregnancy, ever. Then I have a lot to say.
My middle daughter is even more blunt. "So, you're OK with my mom dying?" she asks.
I'm bracing myself for the chance that I'll be inundated with people telling me how wrong I am, in one situation or another, because I'm putting this out on the Internet. I hope that I'm wrong about that.
But I still think that I'm right about there being two valid sides to this issue, not just one.
