By Stephanie Drahan, Outreach Associate
I remember the first time I saw the bumper sticker: "Aren’t You Glad Your Mother was Pro-Life?" I was probably about 19, driving in upstate New York, taking myself up to college. I remember the visceral reaction I had; wanting to swerve my car into theirs and run them off the empty highway. I may have even let my emotions get the best of me and flicked off the older woman driving her mid-90s station wagon.
How dare she? How dare she think she knows anything about me. Anything about my mother. Anything about the circumstances of my family. How dare she!
When I was about 16, my mother went out one evening every week. I didn’t know where she was going, and she never offered up a reason. Eventually my curiosity got the best of me, and I asked. She dodged my questions, clearly uncomfortable and not wanting to tell me. As an only child, I’ve always prided myself on my open and honest relationship with my mother. My teen years were certainly angst-filled, but even then our steady relationship navigated life’s crushing waves. She finally let me in; telling me that she was participating in a women’s support group. I continued to prod, asking for more details and eventually she opened up. She’d had an abortion years before I was born, and the support group was for women who had unresolved feelings about the abortions they’d had.
This is her story. This is my story.
It was the summer before her junior year of college. She was 20 and abortion was still illegal and she found herself in a situation that almost every woman dreads. Luckily, my grandparents were able to arrange for her to see a doctor who performed abortions on his lunch-hour in a hotel. Without divulging too many family dysfunctionalities, suffice it to say that her family was not very open and this situation brought out the worst of this trait. They barely spoke of her “problem” before it was “taken care of,” and they never encouraged her to process what she had been through. I think this is why my mom carried with her some unease about this procedure some 30 years later.
When I learned her story I was hurt that she had not been comfortable confiding her membership in this group with me. I don’t ever want my mother to hide something from me and I don’t ever want her to be ashamed of the decisions she makes.
The way I see it, I would not have been born if my mother had not had an abortion. She would have become a young mother, likely a single mother. She may not have finished college. She likely would have had to move back home. She would not have met my father.
My mother’s abortion allowed me to have life. I can wholeheartedly say that I became a woman’s rights advocate because of my mom’s abortion story. I must continue this fight. I want her (and all women who have had abortions) to know there is no reason to be ashamed of the decision she made. I don’t ever want my daughter, my niece, or my granddaughter (or any girl or woman) to be in the position my mother was in. But if someone I love (or anyone anywhere) finds herself with an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy, I want to know that safe and legal options are available, and that she won’t have to seek out an illegal, perhaps unqualified, abortion provider.
I remember the summer after my sophomore year of college often reflecting on where my mom had been at my age, and the contrasts of our lives. She had dealt with one of life’s hardest decisions and I was getting ready to study abroad. My mom has provided me with her very best; she has given thanklessly; she has taught me what it means to be strong, independent, and caring; she raised me to know that women can do anything and be anything. I took these lessons with me when I studied abroad, and I keep them with me to this day. Would my mom have been a good mother at 20? You betcha, but she wouldn’t have been mine.
Abortion is not about unborn lives, it is about the lives that are already being lived. Without it women would be forced into situations that would drastically change and possibly end the lives they had been planning.
So when I see the bumper sticker that says “Aren’t You Glad Your Mother was Pro-Life?” I think: Wouldn’t that be nice? If life was so simple, black and white. But, you have no idea; I’m thankful mine wasn’t.
And in the end, isn’t that what choice is all about?
My mom and me
Of course those who are born are glad their mothers didn't have an abortion. But that isn't an argument for or against abortion. After all, you could say, "aren't you glad your father didn't use a condom" or, "aren't you glad your parents had sex." Under that logic it would be best for your parents to have lots and lots of sex in order to produce children so that that their children 20 years from now will be glad they had sex.
Jerome McCollom
Here's an idea, lets ban abortion. Lets have all the pregnant women register with the government to ensure each baby gets carried to full term. If there is a miscarriage, we'll have the FBI come in and investigate to make sure foul play wasn't involved. If the miscarriage could have been prevented we charge the mom with homocide. If the miscarriage was accidental mom only gets charged with manslaughter. Then all the women in American must get their vaginas inspected by a sheriff deputy on a monthly basis to ensure there are no secret pregnancies. Once the baby is born, we'll tattoo a bar code on its forehead for tracking purposes. Better yet, the government should immediately send all newborn babies to a christian education camp for 18 years because we cannot trust society to make correct parenting decisions. Conservative Utopia Ahoy!
killed your older brother or sister. Your anger is misplaced. The little old lady you wanted to run off the road didn't kill your brother. Mom did.
That's hard to swallow, and you may want to seek therapy yourself, so that you can cope with your misplaced rage.
How dare you claim to know what the right thing to do in this situation is. The point is that the choice belongs to the woman, not to narrow-minded, immature children who believe that issues are all black and white, good and evil, or any other kind of bullshit. I am constantly amazed that people value an unfeeling, unthinking, unhuman cluster of cells over the lives and well-being of women all across America. Shame on you.
For you, that baby has to be, "an unfeeling, unthinking, unhuman cluster of cells."
Otherwise, you have committed a crime against God and nature.
Deceive yourself if you will, but we'll never know the soul that your, " unfeeling, unthinking, unhuman cluster of cells" was going to be, because of people like you.
Shame on you for murder.
The potential argument, really? I often bring up a nice little parable whenever I hear that. I say to someone "In classical Austria a woman with several blind children who had a genetic disposition for passing on these diseases gets pregnant, what would you do?" They usually reply "I would terminate the pregnancy," to which I reply "You have deprived us of Beethoven." They are shocked. I the say "The same situation in Austria happened in 1888. What would you do?" Still shocked by the earlier revelation, they say "I would keep the baby," and I say "Congratulations. You've given the world Adolf Hitler."
You can't use the potential argument for two reasons: 1) Those cells are just as likely to grow into someone evil as good and 2) by that argument anyone who decides not to procreate is committing murder because they are depriving the right of a potential human being to live. Anyone who is fertile who is not having sex with another fertile person of the opposite sex is committing murder because millions of potential human beings aren't given the right to live.
I dislike abortion . I think it is an ugly thing and I hope that in the future advances in contraception and reproductive health would render abortion unnecessary. But unfortunately that hasn't happened yet, and this issue is far too complex to simply put a flat rule in place without any care given to the circumstances of the case. For that reason I believe that the current abortion rules set out by Roe vs Wade which allows abortions for all cases in the first trimester and allow abortion to be regulated or outright banned in late months are the best rules that have been put in place. In the first trimester the fetus is too undeveloped for it to be worthy of moral and ethical considerations while in later trimesters the fetus does develop the ability to feel pain and therefore needs to be protected. Yes, I oppose late-term and partial-birth abortion. Those forms of abortion are heinous because they cause untold pain to a feeling organism. Within the first trimester the fetus is not a feeling organism, and as such abortion in those stages has no major negative consequences.
You assume that killing the Hitler baby would be a service to mankind. You are wrong. You display the same sort of attitude that all social engineers display. You feel that you are uniquely qualified to decide who is worthy and who is unworthy of life.
You are like Hitler. He believed, as you do, that he could cull the evil from the world by sterilization and abortion and other grisly acts that your kind favors. Life is a gift from God, but you murder the gift of God, just like Hitler did.
Your attempt to make everyone guilty of your bloody crimes is childish and transparent. Everyone knows why you do that.
You're guilty of murder, and you'll answer to God for it someday. You better get right.
..does not make YOUR argument any more..
Sorry, I mistyped.
I did not say that abortion is a service for mankind. I abhor abortion. My parable is simply a shot at the "argument from potential" and how that argument is not a valid one.
Painting me as a murderer simply because I support a woman's reproductive freedom does not make my argument any more logical or compelling. Using religious terms and threats also doesn't had any weight. In fact both actions make your argument weaker as you cannot come up with any reasonable arguments you resort to calling me Hitler and threatening me with some sky-fairy. It makes you look uneducated and bigoted.
Being pro-choice is the epitome of contradictions and hypocritical thinking.
The very term "pro-choice" says you favor choice being available to YOU. Nothing wrong with that. We all want to have choices.
And when you choose to abort, you have just denied a lifetime of choices to the one being aborted. In other words, your SINGLE CHOICE is more important to you than all the millions of choices that baby, child, teen, and eventually adult will ever have.
"Pro-choice" should be renamed "No Choices (for the child)."