What Do We Make of the Abortion Issue Today?

What do we make of the abortion issue? This is one topic you better stay away from at that cocktail party.

Is one side right and one side wrong, really? If so, which side is right? It depends on many factors; how it is perceived by an individual: including but not limited to their faith, beliefs, cultural conditioning, experiences, role model’s views, politicians’ arguments, party affiliations, etc. etc. These all have play into an individual’s response to this subject.

Neither side is trying to be divisive, authoritarian, judgmental, or elitist. Individuals, if we really care to dig deeply, are thinking and deciding out of an abundance of care.

Each side has explored an issue that is quite unsavory, an action that is irreversible with unknowns as to how a woman, or the potential father, will look back and feel about it.

When I was a young mother in my 20s, a friend asked me to drive her to an abortion clinic to get an abortion. She already had three children and found herself pregnant. As I sat in the waiting room, the atmosphere felt thick with tension, with women sitting around staring into space, some softly crying, most very quiet. A sweet looking young girl, maybe 16, sat beside me. She seemed confused. She kept glancing sideways looks at me. Finally, she spoke.

“I’m scared,” she said turning directly to me, her face pinching up. “I’m not sure this is right thing to do. How do I know if this is what I should do?”

Then the tears she'd been trying to hold back came in a downpour, wetting her reddening face. She was alone. I couldn’t imagine how frightening this must be for her. I feebly told her they would take her in first to talk to a counselor, pointing to a door down the hallway, who will help make sure she had all the information to make a good decision. They will help her, I said. I didn’t really know what else to say to her. I felt totally inadequate to counsel this young, distraught girl.

I, myself, didn’t have a strong leaning for or against abortion rights. I just know I found the topic dreadful.

A few years later, with a little more maturity in me, and more medical and spiritual knowledge under my belt, I had a liberal attitude toward abortion ‘rights’. It was 1981. Sandra Day O’Connor was just sworn in as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. I wrote her a long letter explaining my view on the abortion issue. I was for the government staying out of the decision making. Not making it a right or a wrong, but a decision between the physician and the woman.

That’s one thing I've never quite understood; why or how the government became a party to making this difficult decision for a woman. How does a governing body mandate a healthcare decision? An extremely personal, even heart-wrenching decision?

So, I watch the sides once again bringing this to the fore, adhering to their playbooks. One side telling us the opposing side is trying to take women’s freedom away, one side telling us the other side doesn’t care about these tiny human beings.

But in the nut of it, at the core of it, it is all out of love.

There are those who want to make sure a woman is able to do what she thinks is right for herself and her own life. Their mantra is, "Those against abortion want to take your choice away and control your bodies. We want to protect  a woman's freedom." They care about these women. They don’t want them to suffer. It is out of love.

There are those who want to protect the innocent. Those beings not yet born. They value and hold these lives as every bit as important as you and I, with all the rights we have. Their mantra is, "Those for abortion want to kill babies. And many of them are the poor and uneducated. They don't offer better solutions."

But this too, is out of love. 

Yet this stops any communication and problem solving in its tracks.

It is more important now that we work harder on creating a society that has reduced unwanted pregnancies to the lowest number possible. That we don't give our young girls the idea that casual sex is fine, and no worries if you get pregnant because it's an easy fix.

Do we really know how that will affect a woman or a young girl down the road?  I've had friends who seemed to manage fine post-aborting, and others who experienced a gnawing regret. I'll never forget one woman who had an abortion when she was young and single; then years later, after marriage, she found out she couldn't conceive again.

Neither side is evil. They care very much. Let's be more grown up about this and admit there is a lot of pain experienced around this topic and the procedure. How about working together to reduce the need?

This is serious stuff. Which is why, I think, people get so emotional on both sides. It isn't a frivolous topic. Some see it as a freedom issue, and some see it as a life and death issue.

Can we open our minds and hearts to understand both sides?

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