Hi, everybody! For those of you who were reading the 40 Days emails, I’m sorry I took so long to get started here, but I am going to try to challenge myself to be a regular poster. This is my first time blogging - I hardly ever even comment on the blogs I read - but maybe I have a unique voice I ought to share with the world. Or maybe you will simply find out just how far down the rabbit hole in my brain goes. Let’s find out together!
I have a somewhat literal mind. I understand figures of speech, and use them myself, but I can’t help picturing the phrase in my head. For instance, “figures of speech” makes me see sentences sashaying down a runway being photographed by the literati. It has made for a few awkward moments over the years, as my interlocutors had to wait whilst I was lost in my inner visions, but it also makes listening to advertising and political speech a hoot. Because of this quirk, I have always found the phrase “a woman’s right to choose” slightly odd. Women, as well as men, have always had the ability to choose, as a function of being sentient entities. Even my cat makes choices. He often chooses to do things like lick my venetian blinds and eat carpet fuzz, so clearly rationality is not a necessary component in choice.
Of course, choice is nearly always constrained. I can “choose” to grow wings and fly, for instance, but I can’t make that happen by willing it. Our ability to choose is often contingent on physical realities, the past history of our own lives, and the choices of others. Perhaps what is meant is the ability to not so much choose, but select - to have the power to actually have something one desires. If this is the intended meaning, this is really not much better. I can select any number of physically possible options - start loudly singing “Never Gonna Give You Up”* while I sit in my cube at work, go around dressed as a rubber chicken, shave my head and paint it purple, and so on indefinitely. But I don’t do any of these things, not because I am constrained by my ability to select them, but because of the reactions of other people. I want them to keep employing me, keep being willing to spend time with me, not run away when they see me coming.
Indeed, some of the things I could choose to do are so negatively regarded as to be labeled crimes. For instance, I could yank the iPod off the twit with the cheap ear buds who is forcing me to listen to his wretched taste in music whilst pressed right up against me on a crowded rush-hour train. I could smash it into a thousand tiny pieces and then strangle him with the cord, screaming with pent-up rage, until they drag me off his lifeless form…ahem. I beg your pardon. I meant to say that while I could choose that, I won’t, for among many other reasons it is illegal, and he and his tinny tunes aren’t worth a trip to jail. But usually legality is not the decisive factor - there are plenty of things that are legal that are not socially acceptable (witness all the financial nonsense of the last decade that has resulted for the most part in a handful of fines and wrist-slaps), and some things that are socially acceptable that are illegal (jaywalking, downloading TV shows, etc.) Day-to-day, we make most of our decisions not based on what is legal, but what is socially acceptable.
So what seems to be wanted here is not just the ability to choose an option, or the ability to really have that option, but the ability to have that choice approved by society. What is wanted is for this particular choice to be regarded as not simply legal, but socially acceptable. What is wanted is for society at large to regard deliberately causing the death of an unborn child at the choosing of the mother as…fine. Not maybe the best option. Not what you might choose. A difficult choice made in a difficult situation, and who knows what we would do when faced with such pressures. It’s…ok. There are many who would like us to make that assessment about abortion. A handful of people want more, want abortion to be regarded as a blessing or a badge of honor. But for the majority of those who support “a woman’s right to choose”, it’s just…fine.
One of the reasons we go out there is to show that there are those who do not think abortion is acceptable. This may be interpreted as judgmental, as forcing our assessment of their perfectly legal action on them. I can see that. But we know by personal experience that for many of the women who come for an abortion, it’s not fine. They already perceive what they are doing as wrong. They just don’t see another option, or feel that they have no support to make any other decision. Ironically, we go out there in part to offer them a whole multitude of choices. Would they like to keep their baby? We know people who can help then get housing, medical care, education, diapers. Would they prefer to have someone adopt their child? We can help them pursue a variety of different options, all along the spectrum between a traditional closed adoption and the newer open adoption process. They can choose the adoptive parents, the amount of contact they wish to have with their child going forward, and many other factors. Do they just need a friend to give them the courage and guidance to become a great mother? We can help them find a mentor who will walk with them through the pregnancy and beyond. We offer then them the support for their actual preference that the people around them can't or won't.
The thing about choosing death is that it is choosing an end. It is choosing the cessation of choice. When you choose life, you choose possibility. You choose choice.
*I do apologize for any inadvertent mental rick rolling.
