I am not sure about abortion. When I was a middle schooler, I would categorize myself as pro-life. And left-wing, and Catholic to boot. An unusual position, and you can't really point to any famous people with those traits.
Oddly I never got politically active, preferring to read others opinion and try and figure things out. My confirmation class was going on a March to Life, but my mother opted to not have me, because of the possibility of arrest. I wasn't sure if I agree with how they framed the issue, even though I agreed.
Even though I believed life began at conception, and that it was this horrible thing, I worried often about the children born. I know that a lot of people had rotten childhoods, filled with poverty and abuse. Some survived due to the aid and help of others, some did not. Either became dead or broken and dead souls, serial killers or just minor tyrants.
Probably the most frustrating thing about pro-lifers is that most of them focus more on slamming women who had abortions or who *gasp* had sex than changing attitudes that make abortion a better alternative. How about changing the idea that rape victims 'asked for it?' That the disabled are forever doomed to do nothing interesting or productive? Change in work place attitudes? Honest discussion of teenage sexuality, with emphasis on values and information on pregnancy and STDs? I mean, did you know that a comprehensive study of teenagers who have taken virginity pledges also show them engaging in anal and oral sex, because hey, it's not really 'sex.' Never mind the possiblity of contracting STDs. And it would be too much of a tangent to discuss the definition of sex and abstinence, and the idea that abstinence is the only protection against disease and pregnancy, and that marriage suddenly makes sex perfect.
No, no, it is much easier to rail about the awful morality of all those awful women having sex.
And then there is Roe vs. Wade. I remember reading stories of the deaths from illegal abortions and the subterfuge required to get one. Stories of pro-life protesters bringing themselves and their daughters for an abortion abound. When I asked my confirmation lecturer about if she could give her opinion about the after-effects if Roe vs. Wade was overturned, she said that no changes would happen, that there would be fewer abortions. And what would replace it? RU-495 smuggling? High rates of teenage marriage and divorce (the reason there were no single moms in the 1950s was all the teenage moms were made to marry)? Death? It's like they have this a priori model, isolated against the possibility of people messing up. There had to be a better way.
I still working it out. I am not sure if the question of humanity is the right question to ask, but I think that a person's soul, spirit, personality, is what makes them essentially human. That can come from two things: God and life after the birth.
I think that abortion should be safe, legal, rare, and that if people rather not have schools handle sex education, they better get over their squeamishness and self-righteousness to do. I don't think everyone should be a parent. I know that I am too impatient and high strung for that task. I think 'abstinence plus' education along with an honest discussion of sexual practices (you know, like masturbation, that thing Jocelyn Elders got into so much trouble for) and ethics. Why are you dating? What do you expect from a relationship? What effects do you think sex has on a relationship? How can you make a loving relationship based on trust, equality, and empathy? What of the love life of gay, lesbian, bisexual teenagers? Disabled teenagers?
Do I think abortion is murder? The embryo is a living being, and so are enemies in war, chimpanzees in lab experiments, and the germs in my toliet. When should others die so that others might live? I still don't know. Would the worst kind of parent getting an abortion and killing something be better than them raising the child? I don't know, would injuring or killing animals to find about disease be ultimately beneficial?
*sigh* The Ashcroft hearings are really setting off a verbiage. At least I did not get into his
desegration record, the sore loserhood of some Southerners, the interesting Beliefnet article on Pentecostalism and how it may influence his rulings, or if the Jesse Jackson story breaking around that time is some sort of conspiracy or lazy journalism. At least no news story on school violence happened. I could rant for days and days on that subject.
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