As in a tasty mix of talk

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Stopping a Beating Heart

Last Sunday while waiting at a red light, I noticed this bumper sticker on the car ahead of me: “Abortion Stops a Beating Heart.”

The ad copywriter in me thought, “Wow, what an emotionally powerful slogan.” Then my feminist brain kicked in. At exactly what point, I wondered, does the fetal heartbeat begin? (40 weeks from conception, I learned today.) And what about the mother’s heartbeat… what about her future, her feelings, her life?

Equivocation aside, in most cases an abortion does stop a beating heart. So why, when I can’t go to an animal shelter without agonizing over the puppies I leave behind, when my heart swells with tenderness at the sight of a baby’s face, related to me or not, do I stand so firmly as a pro-choice advocate?

Another way of phrasing this conflict: Can I preserve a choice I believe is fundamental to a woman’s freedom without sacrificing that part of conscience that instinctively protects the small and helpless?

Yes, I can.

Pro-life supporters often use abortion as a handle for dragging the dead horse of their oppressive convictions through everyone else’s rights. “Pro-life” implies support for the vibrancy of living. But typically, those with pro-life views oppose sex education, premarital sex, the distribution of condoms to protect teenagers from contracting AIDS, same-sex parent adoptions of children who might otherwise languish in institutions, and most importantly, social welfare programs to support the unwanted children and unqualified parents who would proliferate without the option of legal abortion. These views do not support life. They punish it.

Pro-lifers wave the flag of a moral code from centuries ago, one in which all sex outside of marriage is promiscuous, one that defines sexually active single women as immoral while excusing the same behavior in men as “normal.” In this punitive view, women who fail society by having sex outside of marriage deserve the burden of an unwanted pregnancy. But when pregnancy is enforced as a punishment, it is the unwanted child it creates that suffers most.

I know that many decent, caring people hold pro-life views. At the March for Women’s Lives in Washington, DC three years ago, as marchers passed the pro-life contingent near the end of the march route, I saw an elderly woman, probably a grandmother, holding a “ Choose Life” placard. She seemed bravely alone as nearly a million pro-choice marchers streamed by. I wondered: was she genuinely heartbroken over the loss of aborted lives? Did her concern for life prompt her to contribute to the homeless? Oppose the war in Iraq? One thing I know for certain is that she was never forced by pro-choice opinion to have an abortion against her will. By definition, “pro-choice” has no agenda to influence decisions to have, or not to have, babies. It merely provides an opportunity to act in accordance with individual conscience.

Yes, not counting the morning-after pill (which pro-lifers also oppose), abortion after 40 days of pregnancy stops a beating heart. It’s too bad that pro-lifers don’t militate for a society that loves, wants and supports all children and every beating heart, including the ones already born. For now, though, abortion enables us to create wanted lives or not, and to consider ourselves courageous, not immoral, when we take responsibility for these choices.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

What a debate: when does life begin? At conception? At birth? At 40 days, when the heart starts beating?

To me, life begins when you are born. If a fetus has a soul, and perhaps it does, it's still a part of the mother's body and energy during pregnancy. It just doesn't make sense that a woman can physically contain a fetus, which is completely dependent upon her for survival, yet she doesn't also feed and nuture that soul, as well. In this life, body and soul exist together, as part of the same system. Small and helpless is not its own person in this world until it is born and separate.

This theory also explains the bond that mothers have with their children. That spawned soul was created, in part, from her own. Mothers give a part of their souls when they create their children, so when the child hurts, the mother literally hurts, too. Tell me, those of you who are mothers, don't you feel your child tug on your soul?

Additionally, if a fetus is aborted, then that soul was not meant to have a life in this place and time. There is room in the universe for those fates, too. That's why babies die. It's a part of the overall plan, joy and heartache together, equal. Life isn't all rainbows and baby ducks.

8:46 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I've wrestled with a comment on this subject. For a time I thought my comment would be, "no comment". But that makes me, "chicken." I'm a mother and a grandmother and I know the pain that goes with your child's pain. I agree with Heather, if that can be construed as a comment. I like to think of life as rainbows and baby ducks because I am basically an optimist and I like to be happy with that half full glass. But sometimes the rainbows get swallowed up in a storm after the storm and the baby ducks sink.

3:56 PM

 

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