I am Pro Life AND Pro Choice

 I have thought long and hard about this blog post because it is very personal, and controversial, and probably going to be very unpopular with a lot of people who I respect, but it seems everyday I am reading or hearing something in the news on this topic and everyday I think about writing but I haven’t, because I'm scared to. I’m scared to talk about my own secrets. I’m scared to offend people I respect. I’m scared to speak out in an unpopular way, but here it is. I am pro life.

Now before you tune me out or cast me as a right wing, religious, judgemental, do gooder let me tell you my story. I am not religious, I consider my self a christian but don’t attend a church. At 16 I was a good student from a religious home with a bright future ahead of me. Then I was date raped. I did NOT get pregnant, but I felt worthless. A few months later a met a different boy who was wonderful gentle and caring. When this boy came along I felt like he deserved sex and thought that if I didn’t give it to him I would lose him, so I did and got pregnant the very first time. The next day we talked and agreed it was stupid to have not used protection, we did every time afterwards. If there would have been a Plan B pill available I wold have taken it I am sure, Who knows where my life would be right now, 24 years later? I can never guess, but I do know that this summer that wonderful no longer a boy, man will walk a beautiful amazing young woman down the aisle at her wedding. She is brilliant, lights up the life of everyone she knows and is about to become a teacher. I thank God everyday that my government, my society, took away my right to choose. I didn’t have to raise her and for the first few months that I was pregnant I was sure that I wouldn’t but I know that I am better for having done it. I'm the lucky one. If I had given her up another family would have loved her and raised her and if anything she would probably be even more amazing than she is right now (if that is possible).

I don’t even like the title pro choice.. it seems that if you are against abortion you are against women, against freedom, against feminism and I am for all of those things. I truly believe that in 2014 abortion should be unnecessary except in the rarest of life threatening circumstances. Women do have the right to choose, we have the right to choose to use birth control, we have the right to choose to have sex or not to have sex and we even have the right to choose to parent or not. We can do all of these things with impunity and we do every day! We have access to healthcare and social support. When my grandmother got pregnant out of wedlock at 17 in the 1930s it almost cost her her life. She was kept hidden inside and almost died giving birth because no one would get a doctor for her. The baby eventually died because of the terrible birth. Then she had to get married because there was no way for a woman to provide for a child at that time. That is not the world we live in in Canada in 2014. We have universal health care, we have social assistance programs that are there to help women young and old. We have the right to work at what ever we want. We also have the right to be single parents, choose open adoption, or closed adoption. I am pro all of these choices!! I am just not pro abortion.

Instead of talking about and rallying for publicly funded abortions, lets focus on better access to healthcare so that when a young woman finds herself unexpectedly pregnant she has a network of support in place right away to help her make the right choices. Lets focus on programs like universal childcare, Min-come and publicly funded university. If we had all of these things would people feel the need for abortion? A lot less I'd imagine.

Now I'd like to talk about myths “abortion doesn’t have negative health consequences”. It has many negative health consequences to the mother including depression, suicide and accidental death due to extreme risk taking.  It also has one major huge health effect to the child, to the child abortion it is fatal every time. Neonatology has grown by leaps and bounds over the last 30 years. We know that even at the early cell stage these embryos have their own unique DNA separate from their mothers. By 5 weeks gestation that child’s heart is beating. I am no doctor, but when a heart stops beating that usually means the person is dead. Children are viable outside of the mothers womb at earlier and earlier stages, but yet we persist with the myth that a fetus is only a nonviable blob of tissue despite mountains of scientific evidence that shows they are feeling sentient beings from early weeks of development! We persist in the myth that women who choose abortion are making the best choice for themselves because they are just not ready to parent. I’ve got news for you.. most people aren't ready to parent, even when they think they are! The only thing that makes you ready to parent is being one! By making the choice for an abortion you may be making the simplest choice for you, but what about the life of your child and all of the people your child could grow to impact? We also persist in the myth that once a woman gives birth she wont be able to give that baby up for adoption. I can tell you from knowing numerous families who have adopted children it was the best thing in their lives ever. From knowing adopted children, they have felt loved and special and nurtured and cared for their whole lives. What a gift that must be for the birth mothers to be able to know that even though she wasn't ready to raise you she was able to give the greatest gift ever to someone who was.

I don't want to be judgmental and I respect a woman's right to make fully informed choices about her life and her health. I just hope that any woman considering abortion can hear my story and others like mine. I am not glorifying single parenting, or pregnancy at all. It was hellish hard. I have stretch marks, and had hard childbirth. I was poor, made mistakes parenting and I didn't graduate from university until I was 35 but for the life of my child, I'd do it all again a million times. A pregnancy is a life, not a choice.