My health class my senior year in high school was about family. We had fake marriages with doll babies, talked about household budgets, and we had one debate about abortion. If you supported the right to choose, you sat by the door. The right side of the classroom for the students. If you were pro-life, you sat on the students left side of the classroom by the windows. It's northern NJ, most people went with the right to choose. That included me.
As we debated our sides, I found myself saying "you don't have to get an abortion you know. It's just about the choice being there." My classmates looked at me like I was an idiot. It was one of those hard-to-process moments for me and I sounded like I was stating the obvious. Some of my teachers didn't know how to handle moments like that. My health teacher did. She reminded everyone that the debate is really about should abortion be an option or not. It led to a discussion about how complicated the question really is. Something the Supreme Court forgot.
A lot of people have opinions on the ends of the spectrum. "My body my choice!" verses "Abortion is murder!". Those are absolutes. The same absolutes I was hearing from my classmates. So, I am doing for America what I did for my classmates. I'm asking about what happens when you consider the middle gray area. What about if abortion were legal but with reasonable rules like only for if the mother's life is in danger, the baby won't survive, or the pregnancy was the results of sexual violence? What about if abortion was legal but only until 15 weeks?
What about if the mother's life is in danger? Isn't it murder to force her to continue a pregnancy when she will die? A baby conceived through sexual violence is forever a reminder, revictimizing the mother. That's a form of abuse. If the baby has a rare condition that means they can't survive outside the womb, it is continued abuse and emotional torture to force the mother to carry full term.
But abortion is not a sick form of birth control. It can't be your backup plan for if you accidentally get pregnant. That's what contraceptives are for, to prevent unwanted pregnancies. The pregnancy never happens. That's the confusing part for me about the strictest pro-life people. I would assume they would support contraceptives because the easier to get and use, the less people looking for abortions in the first place. Birth control actually helps them reach their goal. It's not ending a life it's preventing the creation. This one they have to explain to me, being against contraceptives. I have yet to hear a reasonable argument against that. It's a good time to note that there is a higher rate of parents killing their kids in anti-abortion states then in pro-choice states. These are the same states that don't teach about contraceptives.
The hardest part in all this is at what point in the pregnancy is abortion murder. The heartbeat laws are unfair. It takes a while to get the abortion so no one can possibly meet that standard. But babies can survive at 22 weeks. At 16 weeks you can see the gender in an ultrasound. What's reasonable?
Asking someone if they are pro-life or pro-choice is more complicated than it sounds. There are some pro-life people who do support birth control, others don't. There are some pro-choice people that do believe in a pregnancy point that is too far along (15 weeks for me). Choosing a side in this takes some serious research and consideration! The recent Supreme Court ruling is likely to have some pre-life people asking themselves about those gray area questions. It's time to bring the gray area into the conversation.
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