Let’s Leave The Coat Hangers Where They Belong:  In The Closet

I once had the opportunity to work with a fellow musician who happens to be an evangelical Christian.  I say opportunity, because I personally lean so far to the left that it’s a wonder I don’t sometimes fall over, and getting to really know someone who shares beliefs so different from mine was educational to say the least.  We went a good round on the abortion issue on more than one occasion, and every time we were both left intellectually blue-balled, because nothing puts the kibosh on a heated debate faster than evoking the word of God.

That said, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard someone make a case against abortion that wasn’t somehow rooted in religion. Likewise, I’ve heard few arguments for the right to choose that really address spirituality to any degree at all.  As a result, two things happen:  Not only is there the obvious problem that two disagreeing factions are arguing a point when they don’t even speak the same language, but also those of us who believe in a woman’s right to choose are walking around in our “Our Bodies/Our Choice” tee-shirts and, in my opinion, missing the point entirely.

There are plenty of good, secular arguments for the legal right to abortion.  However, in writing this piece I’m finding it difficult to define them without first thinking of why someone thinks women shouldn’t have the right, and going from there.  As is often the case for the political left, I’m resigned to the defensive: The right says a fetus is a human being, I’m left to contend that it isn’t.  The right says that abortion is wrong because God says so, and I’m left to conclude that God either doesn’t say so or that the God they believe in doesn’t exist.  I think the reason for this is because as much as we would all like to believe that we can make our arguments on this subject with facts and bullet points, the truth is that equally - on both sides - the bulk of our perspectives is based on feeling, on gut, and on spiritual belief.

I could sit here and spout out stats.  I could go to Planned Parenthood and write a research piece on the number of deaths that continue to result annually from back-alley abortions (80,000 estimated globally) or I could wax on about all of the children in this country who live below the poverty line (12.9 million according to the 2003 US census), but those articles have been written a million times over.  Those statistics aren’t going to change anyone’s opinion, and they have little if nothing to do with my belief about a woman’s right to choose.  Like those on the religious right, my belief is based on my personal feelings and life experiences. 

I believe that a woman should have as much control over her body as science and technology allow.  I believe that because as a woman I know that every act of mutual intercourse I participate in could potentially result in a pregnancy, a pregnancy that I and I alone would be responsible for.  I believe it because every time I get my period I’m reminded of what my body is capable of, every wave of a menstrual cramp serving as an echo of what the trials of labor would feel like.  I believe it because I am a single woman who wasn’t raised with a God who told her that exploring her sexuality was wrong.  My parents and my God raised me to believe that I could do and be anyone or anything that I want.  They also raised me to not be naïve enough to think that I can do those things and simultaneously accomplish life’s largest task: the task of raising and nurturing another human being.  I believe it because I am in no financial position for that kind of responsibility, and I live in a state that would not support me if I chose to follow through with the pregnancy.

I believe in the right to life - I believe that I have the right to my life, and to live it as best as I see fit.  Which brings us to the only objective truth behind the argument for the right to choose:  The fact that equality for women unquestionably depends upon it.  It is not a coincidence that, after millennia of domesticated oppression, our gaining the legal right to the pill in 1960 and the victory of Roe v. Wade in 1973 marked the beginning of true equality for the sexes.  My freedom as a woman is inexorably linked to my ability to create a family how and when I choose.

My assertion is that any argument to the contrary will be somehow rooted in religious belief, i.e. that which cannot be proven or backed with fact – and that includes the debate about when life really begins.  My personal belief, as a progressive individual who values freedom and equality for everyone, is that we cannot afford to sacrifice the liberty of an entire class of citizens because of the religious convictions of a small (albeit vocal) minority. 

Which brings us back to the evangelical.  Getting to know him as I did I got an inside view of the religious perspective on abortion that I probably never would have otherwise gotten – and it put a face to an extreme belief so abhorrent to me that I was forced to open my mind in order to comprehend it.  You see, my evangelical was of the rare variety who believe that even in cases of rape and incest that a woman shouldn’t have the right to an abortion.  This was a tough pill to swallow for me, because if I were ever raped the thought of it resulting in a pregnancy and being forced to carry it to term is beyond barbaric to me; if I thought that it were within the realm of possibility it would serve as my worst fear.  But the evangelical isn’t a bad person.  He isn’t the white supremacist I‘ve always conjured as having that kind of dark thought.  He’s just a 24-year old Brooklyn native whose spiritual convictions run so deep that he believes that nothing that happens in this lifetime holds a candle to the life that comes after it.  This is all a test, a dress rehearsal for the hereafter.  He feels compassion for a rape victim, but believes that her attacker will get his karmic due.  He believes that she will be rewarded for the burden she’s been forced to bear.

It’s a beautiful theory, but it’s not one I share.