To be or not to be?

I did not come to Christ as a child; I was saved as an adult. I grew up in a household that was not atheistic, per se---no one denied the presence of a God and no one, that I remember, denounced religion. But my parents were certainly agnostic at best, and there was absolutely no religious teaching or discussion in our childhood. As kids, the few times we attended church were courtesy of an elderly neighbor.

I can remember when abortion became legal in 1973. I turned 14 that year and was very concerned with several issues, including women’s rights. So of course I thought that the Roe v Wade ruling was a step forward for women. Since the ruling had no direct bearing on me or my experiences, it was easy for me to declare it a positive step. Like I said, I was 14...

Ok, fast forward several years. I am married and pregnant with my first child. The pregnancy was not planned ("A" was a “Navy brat” in the most essential sense of the term---he can thank the Navy that they screwed up on my birth control prescription so I went to Italy without any—har) For the first time I realize the actual consequence of abortion and the mindset that supported it. It was patently obvious to me, even early in pregnancy, that what I was carrying was a CHILD, not a ‘pregnancy’ or ‘tissue’ or any of the euphemisms used to describe the unborn. Logically, the entity inside of me had to be ‘either/or’: either a non- human or a human. It could not be both human and non-human.

If the child was human, and biologically that was the only thing it could be, then how could one woman decide to keep a ‘baby’ while another woman could decide to abort ‘the pregnancy’? Or, turned around, if all pregnancies were somehow less than human, then why did the medical community fight to save risky pregnancies, or any pregnancies for that matter? If the outcome of pregnancy was human only after the process of pregnancy was over, then what difference did it make if the process was interrupted, either naturally or through abortion? How could two women in the same month of pregnancy walk into a doctor’s office and woman A say, “Doctor, save my BABY!” while woman B says “Doctor, end my PREGNANCY!” The “thing”, for lack of a better word, being talked about is the same, so it can’t be human or non-human based on the whim of the mother. It either is or it isn’t. If it isn’t, then it should be afforded no protection under the law, including the ‘right’ to prenatal care. If it is, then it should be protected under the law, just as every human is supposed to be.

I wrote the above to make the point that even as a non-believer, with a scientific background and with no religious background, I understood there was a flaw in the whole abortion rationale. I understood that either it didn’t matter at all or it did matter enormously. Even from a scientific/biological point of view, there wasn’t a whole lot of wiggle room. You could possibly make the case that a blastocyst and the early embryo were the makings of a human, not a human entity in itself, and therefore could be disposed of, but what did one make of a living organism that had a heartbeat, movement, and other signposts of sentient life? Did you just arbitrarily assign a point at which this living thing became a human living thing? These were powerful arguments alone, without any religious underpinnings.

Books

Read Same Kind of Different As Me

Read An Infinity of Little Hours

the unblogger

I started a blog in order to write regularly, but instead I have posted nothing of my own!

going under

Not Waving but Drowning

by Stevie Smith

Nobody heard him, the dead man,

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought

And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking

And now he’s dead

It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,

They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always

(Still the dead one lay moaning)

I was much too far out all my life

And not waving but drowning.

casting off....

SONG

You're wondering if I'm lonely:
OK then, yes, I'm lonely
as a plane rides lonely and level
on its radio beam, aiming
across the Rockies
for the blue-strung aisles
of an airfield on the ocean.

You want to ask, am I lonely?
Well, of course, lonely
as a woman driving across country
day after day, leaving behind
mile after mile
little towns she might have stopped
and lived and died in, lonely

If I'm lonely
it must be the loneliness
of waking first, of breathing
dawns' first cold breath on the city
of being the one awake
in a house wrapped in sleep

If I'm lonely
it's with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore
in the last red light of the year
that knows what it is, that knows it's neither
ice nor mud nor winter light
but wood, with a gift for burning

Adrienne Rich