I can easily point out the day, date and time when I started calling myself a feminist. Two years ago I read a newspaper article about how a fourteen-year-old girl had been raped and then denied an abortion. This story angered me, it gave me shivers to know that I live in a world where people so casually deny women the right to their own bodies. It was at that moment that I decided I was a feminist, and that I hated people who wanted to take away my rights and give it to a fetus who was using my body to survive without my consent.
From that point on, I lived under a canopy of my staunch belief that people who are anti-choice do not deserve my respect. It is so easy to fold your arms across your chest and pass judgement in your mind, dividing people into two groups: for/love and against/hate. The people who do not agree with something you passionately believe in go on the side of people you detest and the ones who agree with you become your new best friends.
Then something unexpected happened. I found out that my best friend was against abortions.
She was against women having bodily autonomy and having a right to decide what they wish to do with their own bodies. This news both vexed and confused me. This was the person who always stood by me, even when I made terrible mistakes. The person who was my very first friend on my first day of elementary school. The person who would commiserate with me after each bad date.
We now stood on the opposite side of one my biggest battlegrounds. How could I simply drop this person into one of the well-divided sides in my mind? I couldn’t.
She called herself ‘pro-life’ for a reason. She was against abortion for a reason. And I hadn’t realized that everyone had a life experience, beyond what I could superficially see, that created the path to their current beliefs. When my best friend’s mother had a miscarriage, she lost her unborn sister, whom she had already started to love. I have never gone through anything like this, but I can see how it could change a person’s opinion about things.
I am feverishly against people dictating what I should do with my life. So how can I expect someone else to do what I want them to and to believe in what I think is right?
We can learn something priceless from everyone if we’re open to it. Because of my best friend’s story, I learned the power of acceptance and respect. I learned to respect the people who held beliefs that did a poor job of aligning with mine — as long as their views aren’t based on fear or hatred. I learned to ask, and learn from, the question: why?
It is because of the existence of contrasting people that the world can paint beautiful, abstract images of life. I know it’s a cliché, but life is truly lived in the gray. I do not want a world where symmetry is the only route to a good life, I do not want a world like Paris under Napoleon III. I want a world where we all can have our opinions heard, and where we all can paint the pictures of our choice.
So here are a few words to my best friend, and all those who call themselves pro-life: I respect your belief and I hope you respect mine too.
Others think that it’s about morality and values when it comes to abortion. First and foremost, if you were raped, you can literally take your morality and values elsewhere because apparently, no one respected the victim’s values and morality.
EXACTLY! She’s a victim. Go give her all the choice that she needs on what she wants to do. It’s her life, not yours.
I was going to be a teenage mom and I wasn’t ready for that. Not only that, the father of my child was denying the fact that it was his. He knew it was only him that I was with, yet he was saying that it was someone else’s. Eventually, I just gave up on trying to convince him because I knew that forcing him would only create an unstable family and that’s not what I want for my unborn child. At first, I said I firmly didn’t want this baby and I even told my mom directly that I don’t want it and that I wanted to get rid of it. My mom didn’t agree to that, of course. She said that if that’s what I decide to do, I’m on my own. I hated this and I would even move around carelessly, wanting this baby to just stop clinging to my womb. Then, it was time for my first prenatal check-up. I heard the baby’s heartbeat and I felt tears running down my face. I was going to keep this. I knew I was and I really did. I love my daughter so much and no words can express how much I’m thankful that I didn’t do anything irrational that day. I’m a single mother and I don’t regret the choices I made in the past. I honestly think that giving birth to this little angel was the best thing ever.
We’re all adults here. I think it’s no longer a matter of being a pro-life and pro-choice. We should be both and that will make us better stewards of life.
Learning to respect the opinions of others whether it aligns with ours can help you live a better life. It broadens your views and helps you be a better person in general. We need more of people who are like that instead of always trying to force their opinions to others no matter what the cost.?
I call myself a pro-life with the reason of loving anyone that has a life. This includes all the girls that decide what they want with their bodies because– well, they have LIFE! Being pro-life doesn’t mean that I hate the general act of abortion. I think it’s purely subjective and it depends on the situation. Some would argue that life is life, yes, but let’s just say that when a mother is dying from childbirth and she decides that she wants to live instead of her baby, let’s respect that. Because what if she has 3 more children that she needs to go home to? Will we judge her because she chose her life more than another? When in fact, she loved her unborn baby but she could not bear to leave the other 3 because they still need her. I think it’s not for anyone to judge and it’s none of our business. Women have the right to their own bodies but having an abortion just because you forgot to tell your man to put a condom in it doesn’t give you the right to kill an unborn child. Meaning, we also have to take note of our actions and act accordingly, not selfishly.
Now that you said this, I think I’m caught in the middle of being a pro-life and pro-choice. We just have to make use of that choice responsibly.
Other people hate abortions just because it’s generalized as killing unborn children. We forget the reasons behind why the child was even conceived or brought about to this world. I’m pretty sure that if we open up to them about the cases like rape or incest, they would detest the idea as well. We just generalize abortions as simply killing unborn children and it’s not a a very simple thing at all.
It’s a strong thing to say that those who say that they’re anti-choice doesn’t deserve respect. They have their own reasons as much as we also have our own reasons.
People are free to believe as they wish. However, while I think the love for your friend is touching on some level, would she truly be as respectful of your human rights if, say, you were raped, conceived from that rape and chose your to exercise your human right to have an abortion?
While I respect a person’s human right to their own personal views, I do not respect everyone’s views themselves or the person who has views that violate a person’s human rights. In this case, bodily integrity. You may as well be saying I should respect people who want to reinstitute slavery, as that is precisely what criminalizing abortion would do – force children and women to continue pregnancies against their will, enslaving them to their pregnancies. That is immoral and I cannot respect anyone who would threaten someone with imprisonment or death for terminating a pregnancy acting in their own body.
I completely understand how you feel. I used to feel the exact same way (and I guess I still do, to some extent), but I realized that hating on anti-choicers wasn’t really getting me anywhere. It was only making me emotionally exhausted and leading me to make extreme judgments on people.
I feel since I started trying to accept their belief and understand it, I have started feeling much better about the pro-choice movement as a whole. I no longer feel the need to hate on people who have opinions different from me.
And I do agree with you that people shouldn’t be exercising their rights if it compromises the rights of others, but at the same time they are allowed to hold their belief. I feel like it’s okay to believe in something just as long as you aren’t forcing your belief onto other people.
But overall, my choice to accept the “pro-life” side of the movement was based on consideration of my mental health and the status of my relationship with other people.
I wish more people were writing about how to have compassion, instead of focusing on extreme opinions. People need to be softer if the world is going to get better.
As a catholic, I can’t imagine having an abortion. People who would do that are evil to me — it’s murder!