if I were a rhetorical question, I would look like this

[the_siobhan]

Is it possible for somebody who is pro-life and somebody who is pro-choice to be friends?

Is it simply a matter of difference of opinion? Or is it more than that? Is there an underlying difference in values that makes it impossible to be friends?

What do you think?


What I'm listening to right this second: Stromkern

Comments

can I jump in? It's a two-parter!

[thebigbad.livejournal.com]

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.

Re: can I jump in? It's a two-parter!

[thebigbad.livejournal.com]

ow here's what I have since found out about abortion:

- A coworker of mine had an abortion. First person I ever knew who had one. She spent some time after that in terrible grief. She would call the father - another coworker - constantly, in the break room, in front of everyone, sobbing into the phone, calling him names, screaming. As for myself, well I have to be honest and say I wanted to see how it would effect my views. We would still talk just like always - not about abortion, of course - and it was still pleasant, we were still nice to each other even though I was conflicted about my views on abortion - well, she probably still was, too. I would talk to her and I would think about how if abortion is the termination of life, was I talking to a killer? She was the same person as she was before. There wasn't anything different. No scarlet letter, no muderous rampages. She grieved, she moved on best she could, found a new man, married him, had his baby.

- When I was 23 my girlfriend, my first real love, and oh I fell for her hard, she was taken into an alley, beaten nearly to death and raped by four guys. Twice. If she had become pregnant because of that, I would have stood by her choice, whichever it would have been. Because I loved her.

- If my wife becomes pregnant with our offspriing I would express my hope that she would keep it. She would anyway. She wants to have a baby. But if she wouldn't, I can say that would be hurt. How she would feel and how it would effect our marriage, our relationship, is too hypothetical and I can not speculate. That's just my view. If anyone feels it's irrelevant, that I'm unenlightened, weak, hypocritical, full of shit (respectfully or otherwise), or ultimately displeased, they wouldn't be the first or last, so no harm done.

Re: can I jump in? It's a two-parter!

[thebigbad.livejournal.com]

that should start Now not ow, but because my comments have been such an agonizing experience, it's a humorously appropriate typo. shit, I can't type yet this morning.

Okay, there's a third part

[thebigbad.livejournal.com]

because I was talking to my wife just now and she reminded me of this. We've discussed this before, and if we have a baby and it turns out that it would have Down's Syndrome (Colleen is 40 and we must be realistic), or deformed or something, we would terminate it. So I guess I do take a firm stand on one aspect of it after all.

Re: Okay, there's a third part

[siani-hedgehog.livejournal.com]

i'm planning on paying for private testing for Downs, and having an abortion if my offspring has it when we try for a baby. my cousin has just had a baby with Downs. i really don't want to take the chance if i can possibly avoid it.

Re: can I jump in? It's a two-parter!

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Thank you for contributing. Seriously.

Re: can I jump in? It's a two-parter!

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

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.

That's the part I've always found interesting about the entire debate. There always seems to be such emphasis on protecting the fetus, but it's life beomes so much less valuable, or at least so much less noted once it's born. (Speaking about the vocal and radical anti-abortion stance of course. Individuals have views that are so much more complex than that.)