The Perils of Pro-(anything)
The United States quaked earlier this week when it was revealed that Justice Samuel Alito had penned a supposedly majority Opinion on an abortion case that is before the US Supreme Court that would essentially overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that enshrined the right of American women to receive a "safe" abortion for an "unwanted" pregnancy.
Defining terms here - "safe" means that the procedure would be undertaken by a doctor in a sterile clinical environment, with nurses attending, clean tools, etc., while "unwanted" covers a vast array of situations, such as the child being the product of rape, incest, a drunken mistake, a foolish teenaged infatuation, a broken condom or malfunctioning IUD, or any of a million other such circumstances. The pregnancy could be ectopic, meaning the egg was fertilized in the fallopian tube instead of the womb - when (not if) that ruptures, it's possible that both lives could be lost. It could be possible that the fetus is developing abnormally and would face a life after birth that would be, in the words of the poet, "nasty, brutish, and short". IVF could have produced multiple fertilized eggs in a body not large enough to contain them all. There are a lot of good and "practical" reasons why a pregnancy might be terminated, and early.
On the other side, though, is the thought that abortion is murder, period. Abortion ends a life that has started, and only God should have the power to make that decision. While the one side is screaming that mothers should have the right to choose, the pro-life side is screaming that the babies should have the right to be born, damn the consequences, damn the outcomes, damn the grief and the loss and the pain that may come with it.
I'm going to use some strong language here, so please forgive me in advance, but "normal" words really can't convey my perception of the extent of the brokenness inherent in the American (and, to some extent, the Canadian) systems of child care.
Let's start with American health care, which is completely and utterly fucked. It's a for-profit system, meaning every doctor visit, every test, every prescription, let alone every day you sit in a hospital bed, costs you, the patient, a small fortune. The test to discover that your child is forming in your fallopian tube and that you might well die when it grows big enough to burst the tube costs a bundle, and even more when you consider that the woman had to take the day off work, which probably means lost wages in addition to the cost of the test... Having a desired child develop normally is an expensive proposition for the modestly well-off families; having one when you're low-income might well break you (especially if it's not your first!).
Pro-life folks, to my understanding, are not pushing for universal health care, nor a reduction in costs associated with bringing a child to term. All they seem to care about is that the child is born. Please, correct me if I'm wrong.
So, now, say the child is born, but the mother is not in a position to raise it. The CAS/foster care/adoption system is completely and utterly fucked, because while there are many good foster parents, good foster homes, and good adoptive homes out there, there are far too many horror stories that come up because folks "interview well" but are just after the money that comes with being a foster parent. 4% of priests from 1950 until 2004 were accused at one time or another of improper sexual misconduct; I'd be curious as to how many foster homes would have such misconduct as well. There are legions of stories of foster daughters raped or abused by their foster fathers, or foster children who get turfed out and forgotten on their 18th birthdays because the money stops. The physical, emotional, and spiritual damage that is being caused in these situations is incalculable! But the system is overloaded because there are too many "normal" situations where fostering is required - as some examples, the epidemic of drug use, absentee parenting, parental neglect, or single parenting failures because Mom is working 18 hours a day just to put a roof (such as it is) over the heads of her children and feed them something on a semi-regular basis. CAS systems are overloaded. CAS workers burn out in droves. CAS cases are beyond counting.
Now, say the mother decides to keep the child. The child care system is completely and utterly fucked. There's no such thing as "paid parental leave" on the books in the US. I read a story the other day about a teacher who gave birth on a Wednesday and on Monday was back in the classroom because if she didn't work, she didn't get paid, and if she didn't get paid, she didn't eat... and neither would the baby! Sitter and childcare services are in such high demand that they can charge whatever they feel is reasonable, but how good is the vetting for their workers? And it's not like the kids are being cared-for in isolation - if one gets sick, they all get sick, and then they carry it home to their families... because the kid that gets sick can't just be kept home by a parent for the day (see above re lack of "paid parental leave", but also the fact that, even in Canada, after a year, mothers still go back to work because both partners have to work to provide a home and a life for themselves, either as a pair or as a plus-one... or plus-two... or plus-however many!).
In other parts of the world, children are actually raised by other children - families cluster together and care for one another, and the children teach the younger ones the basic skills of life, more or less. We can't do that here. Communities are not completely fu... yeah, that word... but we are more isolated from each other than we have ever been in the past. I know the names of my neighbours on other side of me; across the street might as well be on the moon for all I know about them! Once upon a time, some towns where I have lived knew everybody, or almost everybody, because there had been a time when they had all been there for two generations or more, so you just did. Now, there are old farms being sold to young couples moving out from the city with no desire to get to know their neighbours and for whom "life" still takes place in the city. I have friends who had their daughters go to the park one day when the eldest was about twelve, and time was, that was an acceptable thing because the kids took care of each other; this time, though, the girls were frog-marched home and the parents excoriated for not coming to supervise them in case anything happened! The father was trying to give a lesson in personal responsibility; he concluded that such a thing no longer exists when it comes to children, because if you're not watching them constantly, apparently that's negligence. (The same thing happened when he let the youngest one go to school without socks if she didn't leave herself enough time to put them on, or refused to dip into his pocket for pizza money when they were on the way out the door and suddenly remembered it was pizza day - got CAS called on them for that (see above for why THAT turned into a nothing, in addition to there literally being nothing to worry about! Personal responsibility! Foreign concept, apparently!)
But getting all the way back to the potential of Roe v. Wade being overturned (since if the SCOTUS rules in favour of the anti-abortion side in the case that is before them, Roe v. Wade would sunset and thirteen states already have "trigger laws" that will instantly come into play that ban abortions outside certain very narrow parameters (and in some cases, utterly and completely, which is fu... there's that word again!).
The big argument is that it removes autonomy from women over their own bodies - if something happens, willingly or unwillingly, that results in them becoming pregnant, they lose the ability to choose whether to keep it or not by having the "safe" medical option removed from them. I haven't read the current proposed laws, but my understanding that point one becomes something like "any doctor who performs an abortion shall be charged with murder, with the state acting on behalf of the unborn child", while point two becomes, "any mother who has her pregnancy terminated shall be charged with murder, again with the state acting on behalf of the unborn child." Never mind her grief at having made such a decision, never mind the fact that she will have to live with it for the rest of her life, never mind the fact that the procedure, while "safe", may still result in her being unable to conceive and bear children when she gets to a point in life when children would be desirable, no let's charge her with murder and lock her up for it! I mean, it's not like the US has a dearth of spaces in their federal penitentiary system (largest number of incarcerated citizens per capita in the world, so that last comment is sarcastic), because the US penal system is utterly and completely fucked, and I'm not backing away from the word this time! Point three would come when women would seek to cross state lines to have an abortion performed in another state - at that point, I'm sure laws will come into effect forbidding that as well, seeing as one is a resident in a state that bans such action.
Part of the cry is that men don't have similar restrictions on their lives. If a law was proposed that men be chemically castrated and that they had to apply for a permit for the antidote so as to become fertile in order to have children... well, that would never happen! Many fathers walk away from the women they impregnate, for a variety of reasons (some of them very deep, very valid, and, believe it or not, very "reasonable" in retrospect), while others impregnate multiple women seemingly without consequence - it's the mothers who bear the children, and the responsibility for raising them devolves upon mothers as a default. I know of cases where mothers were completely unfit to be caring for their children in, say, a case of divorce, but got visitation or even custody rights simply by dint if them being the mother and the precedence of mothers over fathers. And yet, men still tend to be dominant in politics, and the appearance is that men (especially old white men) are making decisions that effect the bodily autonomy of women (and often women of colour and of lower socioeconomic status than the lawmakers).
What's getting me, though, are the number of women who rail against abortion - again, it's murder, it's against Christian principles, it's wrong, think of your other options, etc. Do they want to care for the baby of an addict, as the child screeches in withdrawal pains? Are they going to pay for the health care of a child born with only a brainstem? How many funerals for stillbirths will they attend? Sorry, but the stance they take makes me angry (if you couldn't already tell!)!
If you're pro-life, IMHO, you need to be pro-life! If you're just pro-birth, say so. But if you're pro-life, then you should be pro-free-health-care for expectant mothers, pro-paid maternal leave by employers and governments, pro-assisted child care, or, alternately, pro-minimum living wages for individuals with families, so that one parent, father or mother, can work and support the family while the other stays home and cares for the house and the kids and perhaps works out of the home.
I read a fascinating article the other day about a Vietnamese woman who is returning to Vietnam for the birth of her child, despite having been transplanted to America to pursue "the American dream" decades ago. Her family in Vietnam is aghast, as moving to America and making money by the fistful has been the dream of most Vietnamese since before their civil war, but she tells them that, having lived there, Vietnam is actually a better, more caring, more loving, more compassionate environment in which to raise a child, and she wants her child to be rooted there. It was a scathing indictment of America, but in many ways the West as a whole.
We in Canada can't be so high or mighty, you see. We may have a slightly better grasp on a few things than our cousins south of (most of) us, but our CAS system is similarly overloaded, our health care system as well, and our anti-abortion protestors almost as shrill as the ones in the US. Some of us wear a status of being "pro-life" as a badge of honour, and no argument can move the needle away from the desire for an absolute ban, no matter the circumstance.
Do I believe God wants abortions?
Absolutely not.
Do I believe God wants unwanted pregnancies?
Ummm... that takes me into a bit of a grey area.
Do I believe God can teach us through difficult births, children with birth defects, childhood cancer?
Yes, but I can't be certain as to what. It would be a different "lesson" for each person.
Do I believe God causes childhood cancer? Or, at least, allows it?
Causes, no. Allows, yes. Why? I don't know.
Do I believe that the product of rape should be allowed to be terminated?
If the woman so chooses, yes, and not because I believe that the child is going to grow up to be the next Freddy Kreuger (as was implied in the movies).
So am I pro-choice or pro-life?
Ummm... would you believe "neither"?
Pro-choice has a whole whack of implications that I don't fully support either, any more than I support the whole package of implications with being pro-life. This is what is called a non-binary proposition - the options are not just black and white, yes and no, one or the other.
I'd rather couples wait until marriage (or at least long-term stable partnership) before having sex, but I'm not so foolish as to expect that this be the norm. I oppose using abortion as a form of contraception - "Oops, I got pregnant again; let's do this one more time, doc!" If you're going to have sex before marriage, use something else as contraception, so that if your relationship breaks down, you're not bound by a child who is then resented and unwanted (which is a crappy way to live!). You could postulate a whole bunch of situations to me for which I would be in favour of the abortion if the woman so chose, and others for which I would be tempted to say "Sorry, you have to deal with the results of that choice!" It would not make me popular in either camp, for whom all or nothing is the only acceptable orthodoxy!
And there is how we get back to the title of this piece - being "Pro-X" is always a dangerous proposition because it paints you into a corner, especially in the eyes of those who are "Anti-X / Pro-Y". The world has a few binary choices, but most others have a range of grey between the black and the white on either end. We live in the grey. Demanding black or white is a recipe for disappointment and disparagement, in my opinion.
But that may just be me...