The Overturning of Roe v Wade

I know people aren’t in much of a listening mood today, I’m going to share my thoughts on the Roe v Wade decision anyway. 

What I’m about to share is based on my status as a middle aged, white, post-menopausal person with a uterus, who has had 2 kids and 1 ectopic pregnancy, and who is a sexual abuse/incest survivor. 

Bet you didn’t know all that about me, huh?   

Reminder: 

What follows are MY views, and I am entitled to them.  I understand not everyone will agree with me, and that’s ok.  I won’t hate you or even be angry with you for thinking differently.  I understand everyone has strong feelings about this topic, especially with it being announced just today.  Emotions are raw.  But – I am being brave this year, so even though my instincts don’t want to hit “post”, I’m going to anyway. 

Here we go!

I do my best thinking with bullet points, so that’s the format I’ll share. 

What’s happened:

• Roe V Wade was overturned by the US Supreme court today.
• This announcement does not come as a surprise – the decision was “leaked” some weeks ago.
• But today’s announcement made it real. 

Introductory thoughts:

• I am conflicted about this decision, because I understand both sides of this issue.  Or at least I have tried to understand both sides.
• But mostly, I am against abortion.
• Why?  Because I believe that a fetus is “life”.  Science will back that up.  I value life, ALL life.  I don’t believe anyone has a right to end the life of another. 
• Do we have tons of work to do in taking care of lives after they have been born?  You bet we do.  But that’s not what is on the table today.  In my best counselor, conflict-management style, I am going to try and keep us (**me**) on topic!
• Abortion is not a black and white, either-or topic, and it frustrates me to no end when people either try to make it black and white (not racial black and white, but rather cut-and-dried), OR when they try to throw so many what-ifs into the discussion that we lose the thread of the topic altogether.  Red herrings and gas lighting abound!
• I recognize that emotions are running REALLY high today and people are feeling many things:  angry, relieved, scared, misinformed, loud, isolating, judgmental, numb, and the like.

Let’s look at some of the talking points about today’s decision on abortion.

14^th amendment:

“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

• I am obviously not a constitutional lawyer, having only taken some business law classes back in college.  Most folks whose opinions I hear the loudest aren’t constitutional experts either.  However, that doesn’t mean I (and they) can’t intelligently process what this amendment says and have an opinion about its application to Roe v Wade and to us, today. 
• The 14^th amendment, by design I believe, is very subjective; a catch-all amendment to cover everything that wasn’t considered at the time of the writing of the constitution that might get in the way of a person’s freedom.  The authors knew that stuff would come up in the future that they couldn’t imagine at the time of the writing.  That was a wise move.   
• Pro-choice folks use the 14^th amendment to claim they have a constitutional right to abortion because the pregnancy/child would limit their ability to pursue life, liberty, etc.
• But on the flip side, the 14^th amendment could EASILY be applied to support PRO-LIFE, as the unborn child’s freedoms and basic right to life are being denied via completed abortion.

What is “life”?

• The basic problem pro-lifers have with abortion is that they consider that fetus as being human, as being “life”, and they have a problem with ending that life.  For people who oppose abortion, the issue is “is it ok to take the life of an unborn human?”  Yes, the fetus resides within the body of the person with a uterus, but that fetus is individuated from the person carrying it.  Science.  Regardless of how any of us feel about it, the way we reproduce involves the unborn person developing within the body of another fully developed person with a uterus.  Miracle?   Burden?  Blessing?  Inconvenience?  You decide.  But as for right now, this is the way it is.
• When the 14^th amendment was adopted, 75% of states made abortion a crime in all stages of pregnancy. 
• With Roe v Wade, states were prohibited from banning abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy, and their ability to regulate abortion was limited during the second trimester. That structure changed with Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a Supreme Court case decided in 1992, which replaced the trimester framework with a single dividing line: fetal viability.
• We are horribly inconsistent in how we define life/viability.  Plus, as we know more scientifically, the bar moves.  That’s a good thing, but it makes these types of things more complicated.
• Medically, the end of life = loss of heartbeat
• Beginning of life = ??  Viability?  Birth?  Heartbeat?  2^nd trimester?
• Shouldn’t beginning of life also be based on heartbeat, when a heartbeat begins?  If for nothing else, then for consistency’s sake?
• The medical community uses “viability” to determine whether or not a child has developed enough to survive outside the womb.   For very early gestational ages, this will mean survival with the aid of lots of medical intervention.   This is similar to what we do with the elderly as they reach end of life – use medical intervention to help the body “live”.   
• The point of viability within a pregnancy has become earlier and earlier as time goes on, and science discovers more effective ways not only to keep the premature newborn alive, but to increase the odds of stable health ongoing.
• At the other end of the life cycle, family members and society are often incredibly inconvenienced by elderly people who need constant care by others or by the medical community.   Thankfully, we aren’t allowed to kill them for being inconvenient, burdensome, or too costly.  Most of us think that idea is abhorrent. 
• Who gets to determine what constitutes adequate “quality of life” to continue gestation?  Who is to say a person would or would not believe their life is worth living simply because they were born with some disability?  To say that it would be “cruel” to allow a medically compromised baby to be born just to die soon after, or be in pain, and that it is more humane to end the pregnancy is making some pretty big assumptions based on the comfort level of the deciders.  Especially considering the way a fetus is aborted.  If we are concerned with pain and discomfort during a tragically short “life”, perhaps we need to make sure the aborted fetus is not in pain during its last moments in utero.
• Why do we believe it is our right to determine what type of life an unborn child would consider worth living?
• What is life?  What is viability?  Who decides?  This is a complicated discussion.

It is argued that Pro-lifers are only pro-birth; they don’t care about what happens to the mom or the baby , or anyone really, after an unwanted child is born; why don’t they fix the foster care, adoption, underprivileged, etc. system!?

• It is argued that Pro-lifers are only pro-birth; they don’t care about what happens to the mom or the baby , or anyone really, after an unwanted child is born; why don’t they fix the foster care, adoption, underprivileged, etc. system!?
• Yes, there are many things that need fixing in our system to properly care for underserved, underprivileged, unwanted humans.  Our society and our system is incredibly broken.
• Those things need attention and fixing.
• But those things are also beyond the scope of deciding whether this unborn baby is “life” or not, and whether or not abortion should be allowed.
• To argue that we should allow abortion because we have a broken, insufficient system to care for those who have been born already is a disingenuous argument. 

We hear this tossed about:  “Why don’t Pro-lifers just adopt all these unwanted babies if they are anti-abortion??”  Or, “how many unwanted babies will you take in your home??”

• As long as we are kitchen-sinking here, I’ll offer a possible snarky answer to that– “pro-lifers have taken in as many unwanted babies as pro-choice folks have (probably) taken in of undocumented migrants, or death row inmates, or elderly people on life support.” 
• How do you know that many pro-lifers haven’t taken in foster kids or adopted?  How do you know whether or not they financially or otherwise offer support to organizations that benefit these very people?  You don’t know.
• Again, this is a lazy, disingenuous argument that isn’t even focusing on the issue at hand.

Another:  “Pro-lifers are also pro-death penalty, so they aren’t really pro-LIFE, just pro-BIRTH”

• I can only speak for myself here, but I am pro-life and anti-death penalty.
• Why?  Same reason as my reason for being pro-life  – I don’t believe it is my right to end someone else’s life.
• We all only get one life.  Who am I to think I get to take someone else’s existence from them?
• Plus, there are just too many instances of people being wrongly convicted of crimes.  Once the death penalty is carried out, there is no going back.  Once abortion has been completed, there is no giving that life back.
• Again, the death penalty is not the issue we are discussing.  We are discussing pregnancy and abortion, not death penalty.  Those are different things, with the common piece being whether or not life can be taken away from another person by another legally in the US.  
• People can and do frequently have different views about different things that have some common thread. 

I understand the life-altering impact a pregnancy and birth can bring when it was not planned and perhaps not wanted.

• Yes, it will dramatically change the life of the person giving birth.  There are many actions of others can have life-altering consequences for us, not just pregnancy.  Sometimes these things absolutely gut us, ruin everything we’ve worked for.  But taking the life of someone (the fetus) so that original plans can be kept – is this really the right answer?  Perhaps you can still have a wonderful, successful – but perhaps different – life without getting rid of the inconvenience, which happens to be someone else’s  life.
• For good or bad, our species procreates by people with a uterus (usually women) carrying these babies until birth and then raising them until these children reach adulthood.
• People without a uterus aren’t burdened with this responsibility.  Only people with a uterus have this responsibility / burden / privilege (choose one that fits).
• That’s the way our species procreates, at least right now, today. 

How about this situation:  What if the women/person with a uterus was raped?  What if it was incest

• If we are truly a people who value life, how can we say it’s ok to abort a fetus who had no role in how the pregnancy came about? 
• Punish the perpetrator, but kill the fetus? 
• Yes, we can value the life of the pregnant person AND the child, if we decide that both are important.  It doesn’t have to be either/or.
• As an incest/sexual abuse survivor, I’ve actually thought this through for realz… 
• I understand that some people can not fathom carrying such a pregnancy through.  I have extreme compassion and empathy for that, and I understand if someone else would make a different decision.  I see you, and I love you.

But, what if the woman’s life is truly in danger

• I have to believe that in cases like ectopic pregnancy, spontaneous miscarriage, and conditions that truly jeopardize the life of the person with the uterus, there would be appropriate medical care given.
• If not, then we need to have a different conversation, because there is no viable pregnancy in these cases.
• I had an ectopic pregnancy (my 1^st pregnancy).  Neither baby nor I could have survived that situation if they hadn’t taken the embryo/fetus (not sure exactly how far along the pregnancy was) out of my fallopian tube.
• We tend to fall back on this argument (the woman’s life is in danger) as the normative one, when it really isn’t.  In actuality, there are way too many abortions that are performed out of convenience or as a birth control method.  

What about “My body, my choice”?

• Generally, the people who a say “my body, my choice” about abortion are the same who do NOT believe this about other things, like COVID vaccinations.  Is it “my body, my choice” when we’re talking about vaccinations?  Or we are in favor of forcing people to be vaccinated when WE think that’s what they should do, even when they sincerely do not believe it is in their best interests to do so?  I am pro-vax, by the way, but not militantly so.  I have heard accusations of selfishness thrown at those who won’t get jabbed, spoken by the very ones who don’t believe it is selfish to abort their fetus.
• Also, who said you get to choose what happens in your body when the thing in question is NOT you?
• That fetus is NOT you, although it being supported by you in utero.  Reminder:  that’s how it works with mammals.
• What about the guys who contributed their DNA to that developing human?  Why do they not get a say?  Because they don’t have a uterus?  Because the baby isn’t growing inside their body?  Using that logic, women shouldn’t have opinions about things like husband’s vasectomies and circumcision of their sons.  Stay out of my penis, right?

“They just want to control (women’s) bodies”

• The people I know (yes, anecdotal…) who are pro-life, hold that view because they see that baby/fetus as a life worth saving, a life that has no voice in utero.
• Maybe some people do, still, want to control women.  But mostly, I don’t think this is accurate as a general statement about the pro-life folks.  At least no more accurate than stating that women want to control men.
• It certainly becomes about women because our bodies are the ones that carry the child in utero, and thus it is by definition women we are talking when discussing abortion. 

Final thoughts:

There is still so much to figure out with all of this.  Many questions need asking and answering.

My wish is that we’ll stop throwing accusations and hatred at people who see this topic differently.  Stop saying you can’t be friends if you hold a different view, that they aren’t just “wrong”, but are “evil” for holding the view they hold.  Stop saying that people can’t really be Christians if they hold the view you don’t. 

How have we gotten to such a hateful place??

Love is love is love – except when there is strong disagreement, I suppose…

You aren’t a better person for holding your view.  You don’t get points for being hateful and refusing to discuss hard topics with the “other side”.  No REAL solutions will be found if we keep going to our respective corners and lobbing hatred at each other, accusing the other side of being evil and just wanting to control us.

If you find yourself saying “I can’t understand ANYONE who sees it that way!” then you haven’t tried hard enough yet.  You have some work to do.  If each side can stop yelling for a sec and listen to each other, listen to understand instead of to hate and condemn, maybe we can make some progress and solve the problems.  Otherwise, probably not.

So there you have it.  My attempt at making sense of all the stuff in my head and heart.  It’s a rough, not-very-well-edited post, I admit.  But I didn’t want my fear of being disliked or unfriended or judged keep me from sharing what’s in MY heart.  There is really no “winning” when we have to talk about abortion. 

Again, these are my views. 

My middle aged, post-menopausal, white person with a uterus who has had 2 kids and 1 ectopic pregnancy, who is pro-life, anti-death penalty, pro-vax but nor militantly so, and who is a sexual abuse/incest survivor.

Who wishes life wasn’t so gut-wrenchingly difficult sometimes.

God help us all.