I agree, the limitations on this particular bill sound troubling. Particularly the retaliation against doctors who, it sounds like, are acting in good faith that they are working within the law. This troubles even me, and I am firmly against abortion in almost all cases (rape and Mom’s health being the big exceptions). I agree, that is a terrible burden to place on a woman who’s just been savaged. There are clearly some serious problems with this piece of legislation as you have explained it.

One thing that I struggle with in regards to abortion is the questions of liberty vs. life. As I have done my best to be a responsible voter in this election I’ve come to realize that we are no where as free as we think we are and our federal government is something of a bloated tick. It’s grown way past the size that it was intended by the framers. This bothers me immensely. When you cherish freedom for yourself you have to recognize that others will use their freedoms in ways you find offensive. And their freedom is still just as precious as your own. Any less than that and that precious freedom slips away little by little.

On the other hand, there is no doubt in my mind that a child is a child is a child. The decision to abort a pregnancy is a decision to end a life. A helpless, innocent life. And so often this is ignored or denied by those who insist that abortion is necessary for choice. Killing a newborn is punishable by law. I don’t know of anyone (other than Mr. Obama, but as you say that’s another conversation) that is for killing a newborn. It’s morally wrong, no matter how you approach it. I just don’t see a lot of difference between the new-born and the pre-born.

The adoption issues are interesting. If the same resources that go into making abortion easily available went into making adoption easily available I think that a lot of the obstacles that you talk about would evaporate. If Planned Parenthood would do more than just pay lip-service to alternatives other than abortion (and I’ve looked at their statistics), it would be a huge start.

At the same time, I find the argument that adoption is not available, not workable, to be disingenuous. I suffer from infertility due to PCOS. It took us 8 years to achieve a winning pregnancy, for a variety of reasons. In that time one of the things that we did was look very seriously at adoption. For infants, which is what we’re talking about here, there are more adoptive parents than infants. The problems that you talk about with foster care, wait times, ect., seemed to mostly apply to the older kids. It’s much harder to find a good adoptive home for an older child. But infants, the parents wait in line. If one wishes to avoid the public systems then I know that the Catholic church, the Lutherans, and the Mormons all have adoption services. I’m Mormon myself, so I know the most about LDS Social Services. I believe that the birth mothers have a great deal of control over the process, up to and including choosing the adoptive parents. I also believe that pretty much all the states have a period of time where the birth mother can change her mind about going through with the adoption. Sometimes even after the child has been placed with the new family. That’s why we didn’t go too far with the idea of domestic adoption: we weren’t willing to risk loosing a baby that we’d already accepted into our family & hearts. How much of the “unavailability” of adoption services comes from the knee-jerk reaction of providers offering abortion and glossing over adoption? Sure, adoption is more work. But at the end of the 9 months you’ve saved a life and added immeasurable joy to a family.

I think that my feelings about adoption are nicely summed up by some lyrics from one of Michael McLean’s songs:

“But then, the gift is given,
There’s a phone call straight from heaven.
There’s a child that’s nearly due
That a young girl’s giving you.
She gives more than just one life
When she makes of this man and wife
A father and a mother.
When she gives the gift
We could not give each other.”

He’s got another one celebrating birth mothers, but this one has always resonated more strongly with me. The reasons should be pretty obvious.

With the infertility numbers that we have, the idea that adoption isn’t a viable option seems ludicrous. I’ve mourned strangers aborted babies nearly as strongly as I mourned my own loss when I had an early miscarriage. They CHOSE to stop being pregnant. I would have given anything to finish for them!

Again, quoting the Daily Kos, look what a woman would have to go through to prove that she was raped and satisfy the demands of the law under this referendum:

“Under the ban, even a woman pregnant because she was violently raped can obtain an abortion only if she or her doctor immediately report the rape and, subsequent to the abortion procedure, submit a “buccal or other biological sample from the woman, and a tissue sample from the remains of the embryo or fetus, each sufficient to perform forensic DNA analysis” to law enforcement. In other words, in order to obtain medical care, a woman who has just been violated needs to provide the police with her DNA. So that they can, conceivably, investigate if she’s lying.”

What a terible burden of proof to lay at the feet of a woman who’s just been brutally traumatized, and doesn’t want to have to bear the results of that trauma for the rest of her life! Similarly, the provision for medical exception is so vague that it will never be a useful tool:

“Likewise, a woman seeking an abortion because of an imminent threat to her health has little recourse. The “health exception” touted by anti-choicers is fantastically vague, clearly does not cover certain serious threats to the well-being of women which can be caused by pregnancy [oh, say...like severe preeclampsia?], and provides no safe harbor to physicians. Doctors facing ten years in prison if they violate the ban will be loath to test the health exception provision.”

These exceptions are thrown into the bill only to try to sugarcoat the totalitarianism of it.

You’re right: sex IS a choice, and under ideal circumstances, it happens in a loving, supportive realtionship with the intent of making a baby. But life is messy and complicated, and an incontrovertible aspect of life on this planet is the fact that there are thousands…millions…of unplanned pregnancies each year. People may have sex while using birth control (i.e. taking responsibility for their decision to have sex), but birth control is never 100%, and can sometimes fail. Or sometimes people just have accidents, like a married 46 year old woman with 4 grown children who’s now pregnant again, and feels it in her bones that she just doesn’t have it in her to raise another child.

Accidents happen, but children should never be brought into this world unwanted. Every child that’s born should be born into a family that wants him or her, and is prepared to raise and nurture that child. If a woman becomes accidentally pregnant, I don’t feel like she should be forced to have and raise a child she doesn’t want. And sure, adoption is an option, but again, the red tape and severe lack of resources makes this a difficult choice to pursue, and many women don’t even know how to initiate it. It’s not like there’s an adoption agency on every corner willing to take every unwanted child into it’s loving arms. The system is overburdened, resources are scarce, the wait times are unbelievable, and growing up in foster care can sometimes be a very damaging environment to children (sometimes…this is not to say that there aren’t amazing, loving, fabulous foster parents out there!).

I’m not pro-abortion, I am pro-CHOICE. I am by no means suggesting that all women who accidentally become pregnant should have an abortion. Many women decide that they can and should keep the baby, and that they have the love and resources necessary to raise and support the child, and in that case, their accident becomes a blessing. So that is the other side of the choice, and not every choice made is a choice to kill. But the key to choice is that it is the woman’s CHOICE. As a supporter of choice, I firmly believe that I can’t make this decision for anyone else other than myself. I haven’t walked a mile in the shoes of the woman who chooses to keep her baby against unbearable odds, or the woman who feels like she absolutely, under no circumstances, can have and raise a child, for whatever reasons. I feel like I can’t make that decision for them, and therefore I can’t judge other people’s decisions, and that’s why I believe in choice. Women need to have this choice so that they can judge for themselves. Isn’t that in the bible too? Judge not lest ye be judged?

Making abortion illegal removes that choice, and basically says that women are not fit to make their own decisions and judgements regarding their own bodies. If this referendum is passed, the law will say: you will have this baby, whether you want it or not. The law doesn’t have to walk in that woman’s shoes, and it doesn’t have to figure out how to feed or clothe that baby, or how to love a baby that wasn’t wanted. The law just says it’s illegal, period. Unfortunately, women aren’t going to suddenly stop having accidents just because abortion is suddenly illegal. The only thing that will change is that instead of having abortions in clean facilities with medically-trained staff, they will be taking pills and poisoning their bodies and using coat hangers. That’s why I want abortion to remain legal in this country. Not so that more woman will have abortions, but to prevent desperate women from doing desperate things.

And in the meantime, as a midwife I am doing everything I can to teach women about their bodies, to teach them about safe sex, to educate them about birth control and their options and to prescribe birth control so that there are fewer accidents, and most importantly, to listen to them without judgement and to accept their decisions without judgement. To me, that’s one of the most important aspects of being a health care provider, and that’s why the Department of Health and Human Services latest regulation on conscious choice has really gotten under my skin…but I’ll save that for a seperate post.