Why Pro-Choice Is Pro-Life
S.B. 8 and my abortion story.
On June 7, 2020, my 42nd birthday, I marched in the streets with my two pre-teen children in support of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement. Next month, on October 2, 2021, I’ll be marching in solidarity with my fellow sisters to protect the reproductive rights of every woman across the globe to make their own decisions for their lives and bodies.
On September 1, 2021, S.B. 8 (“The Heartbeat Bill”) was enacted by Texas state officials under the cover of darkness as the U.S. Supreme Court and the rest of us slept. This bill rips away the rights of a woman to seek an abortion after 6 weeks, or the detection of a fetal heartbeat. Most women are not even aware they are pregnant until after 6 weeks, when it is too late. Not only does this bill violate the very fundamental right of a woman to make her own choices, but adding insult to injury, S.B. 8 also places the responsibility of enforcing the law squarely on the shoulders of average citizens, complete with a website to report women who are either seeking an abortion or have already had an abortion, and offers financial incentives to do so.
Sec. 171.208. CIVIL LIABILITY FOR VIOLATION OR AIDING OR ABETTING VIOLATION. (a) Authorizes any person, other than an officer or employee of a state or local governmental entity in this state, to bring a civil action against any person who:
- performs or induces an abortion in violation of this subchapter; or
(2) knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion, including paying for or reimbursing the costs of an abortion through insurance or otherwise, if the abortion is performed or induced in violation of this subchapter, regardless of whether the person knew or should have known that the abortion would be performed or induced in violation of this subchapter. 171.208.
Texas has officially become the wild west when it comes to women and their bodies, raping its way to total control over women in their state. According to S.B. 8 if I had an abortion today, whether the baby was conceived willingly or unwillingly, I would be branded a criminal. The greatest crime here, the real criminals, are the hired guns, the people we voted into office to protect our freedoms and our rights, not to attack us by passing laws that imprison our bodies, suffocate our potential, and determine our futures for us. This isn’t a pro-life bill. Pro-life would be valuing the lives that already exist. Pro-life would be allowing women to make their own life choices.
This just got personal. The Black Lives Matter movement and the fight for women’s rights are intertwined for me. It wasn’t until the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 that I was able to process a significant marker in my life where a void was made that can never be filled, a question was asked that can never be answered, and a life was made that would never be lived. I became pregnant at 17 years old with Damian’s baby; a black man I’d been seeing over the summer of 1995.
I was 7 weeks pregnant when I walked through the doors of my local Planned Parenthood for my appointment. I spent the few weeks prior trying desperately to find an alternative. I considered adoption but couldn’t stand the thought of bringing a child into this world and then abandoning it to perfect strangers; never knowing if I made the right decision. My step-mother offered to adopt the baby because she had recently miscarried her own at 6 months. Although the thought of giving birth to my little brother made me uncomfortable, I was willing to do it if not for my racist father, who blatantly stated he wouldn’t have a “coon” in his family.
I wasn’t ready to be a mother at 17. It became clear the baby wouldn’t be welcomed into my family, and I ran out of options and time. Within two weeks of finding out I was pregnant, there were many discussions had and many options considered. I had two weeks. Two weeks to decide the fate not just of my life, but a life I wasn’t even close to being prepared to care for. I made the best decision I could with the information I had and the circumstance I was in at the time.
I never knew the sex of the baby; they wouldn’t allow me to see the ultrasound. I understand why now. Best not to form any connection. Admittedly, I was grateful at the time because I understood the less I knew the less it would hurt. Now, 25 years and two kids later I wish I would have known everything about that tiny mass of cells, even if just for a few minutes. To name them. To tell them this is the only way I knew how to love and protect them. To say goodbye.
I’ve always felt society’s eyes on me, screaming at women like me through laws, headlines and billboards. Not only was I a white woman who had sex with a black man, but I aborted a fetus. Damian’s humanity has always been scored simply by the color of his skin; marked and numbered from the moment he was born. I knew then, so would be my biracial baby. No, not my child. My child would not be another victim to an oppressive system. I stand by my decision and I see with my own eyes how the same oppressive system that keeps its boot so firmly placed on the top of every head of every black person and woman in this country, still very much exists today.
Like Damian, I am all too familiar with what oppression feels like. Oppression comes in all shapes, sizes and colors. There’s a wide assortment and it doesn’t discriminate, especially when that oppression has a name, a face, and he’s your dad. My parents divorced when I was 12. My father’s jealousy, and his ties to the local sheriff’s department, landed my soon to be step-father in jail for a crime he didn’t commit through Operation BAD, a poorly organized sting operation conducted by the Adair County Sheriff’s department. It resulted in the loss of both my mom’s and step-father’s job, my trust in men and the justice system, and the three of us being swiftly run out of our small town. A $13,000 settlement did not settle anything, and never will. My mother and step-father never saw justice. I never saw justice. I watched my father get away with a crime while we paid the price. That’s a wound I’ve learned to live with. That’s what oppressed people do. We learn to live with the kind of pain others have the luxury of never knowing but are masters at inflicting. Oppression is the white man’s game and is as old as time. History is guaranteed to repeat itself, unless we stand up, speak up, and stop it. That time is now as we watch the oppression of every woman in Texas, and quite possibly in the not too distant future, every woman across our country.
I’ve noticed that every person who is for abortion has already been born.
-Ronald Reagan
Let’s consider this for a second. This quote is plastered on a billboard on I-70 in Missouri. Every time I pass it I think, “Yes, they have already been born, but did they want to be?” If we had the ability to communicate with our unborn children, what would they say? If we could open ourselves up, show them the world today and ask them, “Do you want to be here,” would their answer be yes? And what about our lives? Do women deserve to be condemned for the rest of their lives because a fetus is suddenly more important than their own? S.B. 8 says yes. It’s absolutely a pro-life matter. Pro-choice is pro-life, because our lives matter too.
We not only have to consider the state of ourselves, but we also have to consider the state of the world. So many children born to parents who aren’t ready are abused or placed in foster care; a system that currently isn’t designed, equipped or even willing to support and nurture them. In Texas alone DFS reported 14,976 children in foster care in July 2021. In August 2021, according to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services there were 20,548 reports of child abuse, with 11,991 reports substantiating an investigation. I wonder how many of those children, if they were able to make a decision for themselves in the womb, would they choose a life that was undeserved and unceremoniously bestowed?
I’ve witnessed the consequences of women who don’t have proper access to reproductive healthcare. In 2012 I founded a nonprofit that provided a resource center in the community for low-income and at risk children under 5 years of age. Families could receive a voucher for clothes, diapers, shoes, books, toys and anything else they may need to care for their children. Foster and adoptive families were also able to access those services. During my time I saw my fair share of both.
Foster parents came into the resource center desperate for supplies because they were notified mere hours before they were picking up a baby from the hospital, without knowing the sex of the baby or even equipped with a car seat; a requirement to even leave the hospital with a baby. I saw foster parents and relatives take in children with developmental disabilities, physical disabilities, and children who had been severely abused or neglected. Because I often delivered services to clients homes, I saw children in households so filthy that I could not cross the threshold. I saw children who looked like they hadn’t bathed in weeks, toddlers running around on floors covered in feces, diapers sagging so badly they dragged the carpet, and roach infestations so entrenched you were no longer able to tell the color of the walls.
These children, born to women that likely didn’t have access to reproductive healthcare or support, are left to fend for themselves in a world that forgets about them. The same laws that fight so hard to get them here don’t protect them once they make their debut. It’s convenient to preach pro-life when they don’t have to carry the baby and the responsibility can be shirked as soon as that baby takes its first breath.
In March 2021 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported 423,997 children in foster care in the U.S. in 2019. According to the Children’s Defense Fund it is estimated that a child is placed into foster care every two minutes. In 2019, 651,505 children were victims of abuse or neglect, averaging an abused or neglected child every 48 seconds in America. Texas would like to lead you to believe they are fighting for life, but the evidence is yet to be seen on how they are fighting for that child’s life once they’re born. One only has to look so far as the local Department of Health and Human Services to draw your own conclusions. Google your state.
I made sure my child was not going to be another statistic, and every woman should have the right to make that decision for herself. I was lucky. I got a do-ver. I made the best of an impossible decision. After dropping out of high school I completed my GED, enrolled in college and didn’t stop until I finished my Master’s degree. I interned at a group home for pregnant teens girls. I have a BA in Social Work and an MBA. I started a non-profit and finished my Master’s degree while having a toddler on my hip and one on the way. I gave birth to my second child and was back in class two days later. I got married. I had two beautiful children. I became a productive citizen, just like society told me to. I would have not accomplished any of those things as a mom at 17. I am at peace with my decision. I am more than a statistic and so was my baby. I honor my child by fighting for them, wherever that takes me and however long it takes.
Four decades ago women had more options concerning their reproductive healthcare than Texas women do today. My mother, born and raised in Texas, had an abortion in 1979, one year after I was born. She was married to my father at the time and living in Kansas City, MO. She didn’t believe they would be able to provide for another child, so she crossed the border into Kansas and had the procedure done at Planned Parenthood. In 1995, I was thankfully afforded the same rights to make my own decisions about my body. Texas women can’t say that today because their elected officials are determined to flex their masochistic muscles by impeding progress and moving the clock backwards, not forwards, eliminating one of the most basic of human rights; a person’s ability to make their own decisions about their body. Make no mistake, this is an all hands on deck attack on women.
Texas isn’t the only state grabbing the handcuffs. Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and South Dakota are all planning their own similar assaults. Almost five decades after Roe v. Wade, here we stand, fighting for the same rights that were promised to us in 1973, like it was on loan. Our money and our time wasted on these movements while our civil servants work furiously everyday to find more ways to imprison and oppress us. They aren’t just turning back the clock, they’re sprinting towards the dark ages. Like thieves in the night. Let’s not forget who they work for. History will keep repeating itself, unless we stop it.
Bills similar to S.B. 8 not only rip away a woman’s right to make her own choices about her body, but it condemns her to a future she didn’t choose and criminalizes her for making any other choice. On October 2, I’m marching for my baby, my mom, for women everywhere who have ever had to make that excruciating decision, and for women who live in states have robbed them of their own self-determination. They don’t own our bodies. We do. We march together, mother and daughter, in solidarity with women everywhere, to fight for the reproductive freedom we were promised in 1973, that women in Texas suddenly don’t have today. Your life matters too ladies. We hear you. We see you. We stand with you. We’re coming.
*Names have been changed to protect privacy.
References: Children’s Defense Fund, S.B. 8, Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, The Pittsburgh Press, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
