Is Pro-Life a Choice?

It may have been part of growing up in South Africa or maybe just the times I grew up in but it feels like I was always surrounded by people that thought the same as me. I don't ever remember there being division or even heated discussion between us, certainly different opinions existed and maybe we just didn't discuss politics as frequently when we were mostly partying and enjoying being young. I grew up in South Africa's apartheid era and lived through the end of that period and the birth of the Rainbow Nation. It was exciting times and we were united. I have been asking myself lately if I just lived an extremely sheltered (privileged) life that I was only surrounded by people just like me?

When we emigrated to Canada we started to make friends and not with people who are the same (we purposefully did not seek out the South African community) but with people who we engaged with in mostly random and positive ways that were friendly and welcoming to us. We became friends with people that I probably would not have met in my South African world. We are not the same, we did not have the same experience growing up, we don't all think alike and sometimes we argue and get frustrated that the other can think a different way but our friendships are real and genuine and I wouldn't want it any other way. Canada has changed me as a result of these interactions and friendships. It has made me a better person, the people in my life have made me a better person and Trump being President has removed any residual trace of racism or bigotry that existed in my pre- and post-Apartheid South African soul.

I don't typically engage much in political debate, mostly because I am not educated enough on this topic to speak with any authority. But the time has come to stop being quiet. It is time to make a noise. 

 

Right now the big debate is on abortion. Everything that follows in this post is me trying to educate myself rather than point out a right or wrong. 

I am trying to understand how a woman (Alabama Governor Kay Ivey) could put a pro-life law into effect that does not consider victims of rape or incest. I am trying to understand how a female federal judge (Wendy Vitter) could believe that abortion causes breast cancer. I am trying to understand how it is not clear to everyone that pro-life has only one option but pro-choice allows you both? 

There is a concept called body autonomy which is the basis of the argument that a woman has a right to decide about her own body. Interestingly nobody has the right to take one of my organs regardless of whether I am alive or dead but it would seem that in 2019 a group of people (men and woman) believe they can decide on some things on behalf of others, but not everything (they get to choose). On the flip side is the argument that the embryo while dependent on the mother to survive is an individual with a right to live and that abortion is the killing of another person. The uterus exists solely to house that embryo but does it require permission of the host? Is it assumed or does a woman have the right to decline occupancy to a potential tenant? Generally, other than in cases of incest or rape, a baby is the result of a conscious act. But does that mean that mistakes don't happen? I read an article about a woman whose grandmother died trying to perform an abortion on herself leaving behind a family that would never know her. I read an article about a woman who had an abortion at 17 and went on to have a successful career and three children that she says wouldn't have been had she given birth to her first child because she would not have been able to educate herself and would not have had the three children she had today. To her the sacrifice was for a greater good. I read an article about a child born out of rape who was severely deformed and challenged but was the light of her mother's life for the years that she lived. 

The book Freakonomics proposed a theory that the impact of Roe vs Wade was a reduction in crime because fewer children at risk of committing crime were born due to legal abortion. This theory has been challenged many times and more recently the World Health Organization showed that anti-abortion law does not reduce the incidence of abortion which implies that the potential criminals would be aborted anyway. 

This is one issue in a myriad of issues today that have a thousand counter-arguments to each argument. My argument is simple, allow for the most available choices rather than take the most restrictive path. I know it's not that simple. But I wish it were.