I think I have something to add to this conversation, my own perspective, I mean, which I think - I hope - you'll enjoy.
First - sorry for the background bit I'm going to give you, but it is necessary. See, I grew up in a sheltered environment, both because my parents felt that they should protect their children from life and because we had moved when I was almost 10 to a rural southeast Kentucky small town where everyone was white, baptist, right-wing conservatives. As a consequence, when I was young I was conservative, but strangely not in those fierce convictions I saw on either side of the fence. I was rebellious (maybe coming from living in the city earlier, where I had been heading down a thuggish path), ultimately rejecting my beliefs because I didn't know enough to form justifiable opinions. I was - and often times still can be - incredibly naive, and I wanted to experience everything life had to offer, the best and the worst. So life pretty much didn't begin for me until I was 21, when I moved out into the city on my own, far away from family and home as possible.
So here's what I knew about abortion:
- Men don't have a say in it. It's not a man's body, not a man's decision, not his place to say shit. - Life begins at conception, so abortion terminates life. - Pro-life means you have to choose life and be against abortion. - Pro-choice means you have to choose abortion and be against pro-lifers. - There's a lot of "I understand where you're coming from, but respectfully, I think you're full of shit." This is the one that troubled me from both sides, because how can you be respectful when you say someone's full of shit?
Just to be clear: my views? Conflicted. Taught that they didn't count anyway. The whole non-uterus-having thing. The conception = life part has always haunted me, though. Why? Men go out to the battle field and take lives all the time. My mother ended her mother's life because she was never going to wake up, she was brain dead, and she was dying slowly and painfully. Are those instances so different? People take lives. Then they either learn to live and love again, or they're haunted. My own opinion about aborton has been based on my being deeply romantic.
can I jump in? It's a two-parter!
First - sorry for the background bit I'm going to give you, but it is necessary. See, I grew up in a sheltered environment, both because my parents felt that they should protect their children from life and because we had moved when I was almost 10 to a rural southeast Kentucky small town where everyone was white, baptist, right-wing conservatives. As a consequence, when I was young I was conservative, but strangely not in those fierce convictions I saw on either side of the fence. I was rebellious (maybe coming from living in the city earlier, where I had been heading down a thuggish path), ultimately rejecting my beliefs because I didn't know enough to form justifiable opinions. I was - and often times still can be - incredibly naive, and I wanted to experience everything life had to offer, the best and the worst. So life pretty much didn't begin for me until I was 21, when I moved out into the city on my own, far away from family and home as possible.
So here's what I knew about abortion:
- Men don't have a say in it. It's not a man's body, not a man's decision, not his place to say shit.
- Life begins at conception, so abortion terminates life.
- Pro-life means you have to choose life and be against abortion.
- Pro-choice means you have to choose abortion and be against pro-lifers.
- There's a lot of "I understand where you're coming from, but respectfully, I think you're full of shit." This is the one that troubled me from both sides, because how can you be respectful when you say someone's full of shit?
Just to be clear: my views? Conflicted. Taught that they didn't count anyway. The whole non-uterus-having thing. The conception = life part has always haunted me, though. Why? Men go out to the battle field and take lives all the time. My mother ended her mother's life because she was never going to wake up, she was brain dead, and she was dying slowly and painfully. Are those instances so different? People take lives. Then they either learn to live and love again, or they're haunted. My own opinion about aborton has been based on my being deeply romantic.