Who gets to decide?
If you are among the 56% of the adults in the United States that opposed the recent Supreme Court ruling in the United States, you have likely been in a state of grief - shock, rage, sadness, disbelief.
And if you are among the 1 in 6 women who has survived rape, 1 in 4 pregnancies that ended in a miscarriage, 1 in 50 women who grieved an ectopic pregnancy, or 20% of BIPOC women in the United States with a heritage of being treated as property, you very well may be feeling retraumatized.
My heart hurts with you.
At the same time, you may be among the 40% of our U.S. friends, neighbors, and family members who are celebrating, relieved, or generally unaffected by the same decision.
What do we do with this complexity? This diversity where one view and value impacts, and even restricts, the freedoms and choices of another? Where one person's triumph is another person's suffering?
When I was in college, I enjoyed many philosophy and ethics courses by a particularly engaging professor. In one such course, we read, debated, and ultimately wrote our analysis on abortion and value of protecting life.
Before completing the paper, I presented my view to the professor. He kindly discouraged me from pursuing my stand, pointing out that it would be hard to articulate and argue my perspective rather than choosing one of the two clear options.
I wrote it anyway.
My paper’s title: Personally pro-life, legally pro-choice.
Despite his concerns, I presented my view that while I could acknowledge the concerns and questions about abortion, and expected I'd find it extremely difficult to consider for myself, I did not believe we had the right based on the evidence to restrict this option for others. In this country, given the emphasis on freedom, liberty, and choice, I did not feel there was an ethical imperative to make it illegal on the scale of murder.
While I don’t have my full text, I remember clearly how difficult the topic was -
When does life become life?
Whose life is more important to protect?
Who gets to decide?
In a country with a history of saying it prizes freedom and liberty while also consistently restricting who has the right to these protections, these questions are paramount.
In the decades since then, I have counseled many individuals who have had to live in this complexity. Regardless of whether they were among those whose lives were saved from a non-viable pregnancy they desperately wanted (by procedures that will now be banned, or even prosecuted, in many states), those who chose to have a child, or those that chose to end a pregnancy, considering an abortion is an experience fraught with fear, sadness, doubt, and judgment that these individuals have not taken, or lived with, lightly.
Now, as so many have noted, we face complexity on a grand scale.
Not everyone will be impacted equally by this change in the law. Those who already live with injustice will be disproportionately at risk.
And, the basis for this change paves the way for additional threats to rights, liberty, and freedoms of people from marginalized backgrounds, and to large-scale questions of who owns the rights to make decisions about a person’s body.
We cannot face these all at once. We cannot face them in isolation. And we cannot face them only in a bubble of simplicity with others who think, feel, or believe exactly as we do.
Irrationally, I was especially angry that this decision was handed down on Friday, the same day (and even the same time) as the celebration of my father’s life. And I couldn’t help but think of what my dad would say…”No one ever said life was fair.”
And, as I would counter - “Yes, but that doesn't mean we leave it as is. What are we going to do about it?”
Since this email is getting rather lengthy, I’ll be sharing part two with you next week. In the meantime, please remember that, in this moment, like every other...
You matter. You can make a difference. I'm so thankful you're here.
