Pro-Choice or Pro-Life?

Can’t I be both?

Let me begin by saying that I used to be an active pro-choice believer. Yes, I used to be.

A woman’s body is a woman’s body, and no one should be able to deny her the right of doing what she wants to do with it. How people can even consider making abortion illegal in countries where rape is a tactic of war, I don’t know. Is it fair for a generation of mothers and children to carry the history of violence that created them?

If we say that war is legal, how can we condemn abortion?

If we make sexual education illegal/immoral (as it is in many countries), how can we condemn abortion?

If we don’t help people who need help, how can we deny them the right to decide what is better for them?

Abortion should be made legal until every single person in this huge world is not only sexually educated but fully educated. How can you tell a single mother of five living in the slums of say, Port-au-Prince, that she has to carry, give birth to and provide for a child that was the result of rape and violence?

If you want to condemn abortion, then first condemn poverty, violence, sexism, ignorance, health systems, religious oppression, neocolonialism, war, capitalism and all the other myriad of factors that make our society what it is.

But… I did say I used to be pro-choice.

What happened?

Well… today, back home, I have a sister that is turning three. She is what made me change, teaching me to love life more than anything else in the whole world.

I’m not proud to say that I had to live the birth of a baby to understand the infinite beauty of life. But it’s true.

I am now pro-life. But that doesn’t mean I am not pro-choice.

To answer my own question: yes, I can be both. I can be pro-life and pro-choice at the same time. And I am.

In fact, I believe that no one can be only pro-choice or only pro-life. You can’t be completely pro-life until you understand what it means to be pro-choice and you can’t be completely pro-choice until you understand what it is to be pro-life.

And while I applaud the people that were protesting by the knoll today, some pro-choice and some pro-life, I urge them to put themselves in the shoes of the other ones.

If you are pro-life, take a moment to imagine yourself raped, not only physically but mentally. Raped not only by a man who forces himself into you, but also by all the people who think they can tell you what you have to do with your body. Is that the life you are pro-life for?

If you are pro-choice, experience pregnancy, and childhood, think about what it means to create life, to give birth. Maybe go to a school or an orphanage and live the happiness that children bring to our world. Think about what the choice in pro-choice could have meant for many of those children.

You’ll soon see that you can’t be pro-life without being pro-choice. And you can’t be pro-choice without being pro-life.

Which one are you?