I support abortion on demand. But I didn’t always.

I was raised Catholic and was vociferously pro-life throughout most of my teenage years. I believed everything the youth group leaders taught me about a woman’s responsibility to carry a child and to sacrifice her life for it if need be, about abortion being a “Holocaust,” all of it. I wore the ABORTION IS HOMICIDE t-shirt to school and believed myself a crusader for those who had no voice. I twice attended the March for Life in Washington, D.C., with my youth group, shouting all those cheers (Hey hey, ho ho, Roe v. Wade has got to go . . .) and praying for the little babies unfairly robbed of their “right” to life, “the lost generation” they called it.

I moved away from home for college and tried to attend church on campus with a new friend but immediately realized I’d only been going for so many years to spend time with my friends from the church youth group. Then I understood that I only believed what I’d been taught and had no idea at all what I really believed. I stopped attending church and started exploring other faiths.

About the same time, I had a revelation: because abortion is a really hard choice and an unwanted pregnancy a tough position to be in, I couldn’t help but respect and admire the women who made the right decision for themselves in that situation, no matter what their decision was. As I became a woman, other women suddenly became humanized to me; more than mothers, martyrs, and murderers for the first time ever.

It was a few years more before I adopted a pro-choice viewpoint, and even then I thought I should advocate for “reasonable restrictions” and oppose late-term abortions because I still thought of them as barbaric as the pro-life movement had taught me. But when I tried to reason with pro-lifers, certain there could be a middle ground; I’d been wrong. They had no interest in being reasonable; I was only ever a baby killer to them.

In early 2013 I sat in a presentation by a woman who explained how becoming a mother moved her from pro-choice to pro-abortion, and I adopted the pro-abortion identifier, too. She loves her kids and being a mom, but she spoke about the realities of the pain and dangers of pregnancy and childbirth and how experiencing them herself helped her understand that no one should ever be forced to go through that. She also explored our culture’s weird fetishization and glorification of motherhood and the silencing of any negative feelings anyone has about her own pregnancy, birthing, and postpartum experiences. And how this culture is a lie designed to pressure more women to bear children without their fully informed consent.

I’ve also learned that restricting and criminalizing abortion does nothing to decrease abortion rates but does cause more deaths of people with uteri. It doesn’t matter if one believes life begins at conception. The ways proven to decrease abortion are to increase access to contraception and comprehensive sexual education.

I’ve learned to accept that I was indoctrinated and brainwashed as a child. I try not to dwell on the harm I caused during my pro-life days, and I’ve learned to embrace the challenge of spending the rest of my life atoning for that. I enjoy doing advocacy work: writing, donating, debating, educating, and fundraising.

I support abortion without restrictions. I support abortion on demand. I support abortion for everyone who wants one for any reason at all. Abortion is a social good. Humans have a right to bodily autonomy, even and especially if they have a uterus.

Same old anti-choice lies

Yesterday a friend asked if anyone would be available today to crash an anti-choice event on a nearby college campus. I took a long lunch to sit in on the “Pregnancy on Campus” discussion, which was just a pro-life lecture and spent only a few seconds discussing pregnancy on campus.

I know little about pregnancy and felt unequipped, so I printed out NARAL’s 11 Most Common Lies Told by Crisis Pregnancy Centers to bring with me as well as a careful ear for what services the speakers’ organizations actually provide to women. Representatives from a nearby “women’s center,” Project Gabriel, and Project Rachel/Rachel Ministries came to speak to an audience of about 17, nearly half of them members of the hosting organizations.

Project Gabriel uses a mentor program to provide pregnant women with emotional and spiritual support and has a discretionary fund to provide financial support as well, seeking baby items online for women who need them. The Rachel group focuses on post-abortion counseling services and retreats for men and women of all ages but requires guardian attendance for teenagers. So kids who need help but whose parents would beat their asses for getting knocked up are clearly SOL.

The speaker from the women’s center had a pretty good presentation, from a PR standpoint. She declared, “There is no war on women” and said her organization is “pro-women and pro-choicES,” using Wendy Davis as a role model of a successful woman who had an unexpected pregnancy at 19. At which point someone from the gallery shouted out, “AND SHE’S PRO-CHOICE!” I smiled to learn there was someone in the room who shared my views, and at the end of the presentation, two of the people in attendance who were affiliated with some of these groups rushed out to stop and thank me effusively for my attendance and my respectful questions.

The women’s center offers free pregnancy testing, STI testing and treatment, and sonograms, as well as referrals to pro-life health care providers as needed. Their speaker emphasized that their goal is to support all women regardless of what choice they make, “no pressure, no shaming,” though not without a strong statement about everyone’s constitutional right to life. Most of her presentation was a slideshow of Reproduction 101: How Babies Develop.

She said fetuses feel pain at 20 weeks, and in the question and answer session, I asked if she had a source for this statement because it was my understanding that this is widely contested. She said the evidence was presented at the Capitol this year and influenced lawmakers’ decision to ban abortion after 20 weeks. (It didn't.) So that’s a NO. There is no science to support the fetal pain assertion.

The Gabriel speaker was quick to tell us about the breast cancer risk and imply that the media gatekeepers are hiding this from us in some conspiracy. I asked, “This question may be a bit out there, but can you speculate why the American Cancer Society, the American Medical Association, and the National Cancer Society all assert that there is no link between breast cancer and abortion?”

'Well, I can’t speculate why SOME organization would say that, but there are real research studies out there that show this is true.'

The AMA has made some boneheaded choices this year, but the correlational studies that suggest a link are poorly designed to say the least.

I got a creepy squishy fetus from the event demonstrating the features of a 20-week-old fetus. It’s the same material as real-feel sex toys. I also picked up a few brochures: The Pill Kills, which explains that the hormones altered by birth control cause women to choose abusive mates. And: Planned Parenthood Exploits Teens (for PROFIT!) A: Provide low-cost health care to disadvantaged women on a sliding scale payment plan. B: ? C: PROFIT!

Same old anti-choice lies with a friendlier face.