The Relationship: Pregnancy, Abortion, Faith, Violence

I attended my first pro-life rally when I was 10 or 11 years old. With my mother on a back breaking smelly bus, we traveled through the night to D.C., arrived, marched with our church group, and boarded the bus to drive home. I barely slept.

The pro-life march was my first trip the our nation's capital and the magnificent sites were shadowed by the thousands of pro-life marchers I walked with. Huddled under a tent from the dripping rain, I listened to stories of guilt-ridden women who'd had abortions and realized their mistake.

I held a sign of some sort. I don't remember what it said, but I'm sure it was something along the lines of "Love them both. Choose life." As I held my mother's hand, I smiled at a group of women in business suits who I thought looked like congresswomen. They smiled at me and gave me a thumbs up sign, my heart soared.

I was ten when I walked down the pro-life avenue and clung close to my mother as pro-choice advocates stood with their signs on the outskirts of the march. As I passed a group of pro-choice ralliers, one said to me and my group of walkers, "You all make me sick. I want to spit on you." I buried my face into my mothers stomach, afraid of what might happen.

My mother whispered into my ear, "You pray."

I thought she meant for my safety so I threw a prayer skyward that sounded something like, "Please God, I don't want to be attacked. I don't want to be spit on. I just want to walk."

* * * * *

I was 25 when I moved in with Katie*. She worked at the local Planned Parenthood and though we went to the same undergraduate university, I'd never met her before. We got along swimmingly. I worked at a university's women's center, she at Planned Parenthood and we mostly talked women's issues, feminism, and the differences that lay between us.

One night, over a tiny wooden table with crowded plates of rice and chicken, Katie asked me, "So, where do stand on abortion? Does your faith steer you pro-life or the women's center steer you pro-choice?"

I slowly swallowed my food, hating that question, and deliberately delayed because I wanted my heart beat to slow before I answered. A shot of adrenaline always pulsed through me when I spoke of issues of reproductive health, abortion, life, and faith.

"I don't think you'll like what I have to say. No one does. I don't identify pro-life and I don't identify pro-choice. I don't think either 'side' has the vision for what women in this world need."

I moved my eyes from her face, knowing the line of questions that were coming.

"But do you believe in a women's right to an abortion?" Katie wasn't eating anymore.

"I believe in women. I believe that all this crap and dialogue is bullshit. I believe we haven't been given the funding, education, and means to even think beyond having a baby or having it terminated. We don't even envision the kind of LIFE women should be given and so we aren't given the options we deserve, the resources we need, or even the chance to consider what else is possible with our lives. So when you ask whether a women has a right to an abortion, all I think of are ALL the things, all the basic things that women don't have that lead to make her choose between 'life' and 'choice.' It's not that simple."

Katie resumed munching on her rice and chicken, "Well, yeah. I mean, women don't have access to the education and resources they need in general, but that's a whole other conversation."

I looked up, "Is it?"

* * * * *
A few months have passed since that discussion and I come home to find Katie watching Desperate Housewives. I made a snide comment about trashy evening programs that do little for our brains and notice she is not throwing back any signature sarcasm. I ask her what's wrong.

Katie tells me a long story. She tells me a long story on the slashed tires she's endured. The man who photographs her car license plates. The daily protesters outside her office. The security measures when she walks into work everyday.

I listen to this woman, my friend, who tells me what it's like working at a Planned Parenthood in Cincinnati, Ohio. I think about the mild harassment endured when I tell people I work at women's center - a non-medical facility - where it is always assumed I provide information and possibly even assist abortion procedures.

It is then I realize that there are several battles going on, but one war. There are different battles of those who fight the front lines of gender equality, those of us who try to raise consciousness and educate about the damning effects of essentializing the characteristics and roles of women and men and ignore anyone else who doesn't fit our expections. And then there are those on the front lines of reproductive rights who go live an almost double life. Katie tells me how she has two resumes she sends out, one that is open about Planned Parenthood and another that softens the position and her role in its function. Katie tells me endless stories of dinner parties gone awry because of political debates, family gathers that bleed awkwardness because of her work, and the silent assumptions of acquaintances when she shares the nature of her occupation.

* * * *
Today in the news there is much talk about the murder of Dr. Tiller and even our normally calm Mr. Obama President expressed his "shock and outrage" about what has been called a"reprehensible act of domestic terror."

According to the Op-Ed in the New York Times, this is the fourth killing since 1993 of a physician who provides abortion procedures. Not to minimize this heinous and unthinkable crime, but let's look at the global picture of abortion via reproductive rights. Four murders in 16 years averages to one every four years.

Every minute of every day, a woman dies from pregnancy-related complications. Approximately 530,000 women and girls die worldwide from such complications every year, including as many as 70,000 women and girls who die from botched abortions, according to Population Action International.
* * * *

But those women dying is not a crime because most of them occur in "developing" countries. All the women who die from botched abortions do not have reactions from our President because...simply because it's women who are dead from botched abortions.

The President from D.C. says it's time to find common ground. I disagree.

It's not time to find common ground, it's time to admit there is no common ground and, still, cease fire.

It's not time to try and say pro-lifers understand pro-choicers or vice versa because the decades of divisive rhetoric has split this country into a segregation deeper than red and blue states.

There's no time to find common ground when so many women are dying from lack of education, resources, and freedom. I believe the access to healthcare, education, and information trumps the rallies and cries for choice. True freedom is full access to the knowledge of health, consequence, givings and sacrifice of our actions. Why are we so damn staunch in our fight for abortion and so up in arms when a physician is murdered? Albeit, it's a tragedy, but LOOK AT WHAT WOMEN IN THIS WORLD ARE ENDURING.

But as so many have reiterated to me, when I speak of vision and freedom in regard to reproductive health and "choice," it becomes "a whole other conversation."

As long as it remains a whole other conversation, it will never be our reality.