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.

A self-indulgent non-nonsensical group of words

Every now and then I come cross a post on Facebook along the lines of "25 things I wish I had done when I was 25". I read them, they make sense, and I move on. I also glance at (and yes, sometimes judge) the overly motivational quotes and hysterical announcements of life-altering moments. I am constantly amazed by how self-aware people have become and how ignorant we are. We have progressed and we regress. Especially right now. 

I optimistically believe I have an ability to learn from life's lessons and my choices. For example, I've written before that I don't regret my father's death and I don't. Obviously I wonder what my life would be like had he lived but at the same time I understand the impact of that horrible moment and the way it shaped my future. I also believe it was something selected (by me or otherwise) even prior to this life. When Keith had his stroke I changed things up, when my sister died I swerved to avoid the brick wall and took a different direction. I always did what my mother couldn't/wouldn't; I picked myself up and moved on (not always in a forward direction but rarely with any regret).

A lot of this approach is due to the wisdom and guidance of a mentor/guru/life-coach (there are many words for this person most of which she would reject; she would remind me that she is simply moi_being_a_therapist) that has operated in the background and the foreground of my life for almost 20 years, if not more, but certainly not less. Together we have explored many aspects of who and what I am in the context of Wicca, Buddhism, Taoism, Egyptology, using crystals and Tarot, the Enneagram and the Archetypes, through Grace and Grit, most torturously (I know that's not a word) through Boomeritis, while eating garlic chicken and coconut cake and more recently in Strategy and Authority. Who I am, how I react to life, people and events and what I think is in enormous part due to the work we have done and continue to do together. If you want to know her, ask me how.

Our lives are mostly governed by what we do for work. We spend so much of our time working and earning that salary to get from one month to the next. For the longest time I was grateful to be one of the few that truly loved what I did. But somewhere along the way I lost that. I worked harder not always smarter, and regardless I always gave my all even when I threatened not to. I got angry, I got worked up and I sadly realize now that for the better part of 10+ years I moaned incessantly. I could share the reasons why some of this happened but it's not really that important though I will say that a large part had to do with my boss and the reflection of him in me and me in him. It is here that I will acknowledge that Carolyn Glashagen was and remains to this day the most supportive, collaborative, thoughtful and effective leader that I have ever encountered. I did not say thank you then; I should have said it every day. She, among others, taught me to be the work-person-manager-leader that I strive to be every day.

A Facebook memory popped up recently. It was during a time when I vented publicly and cryptically as so many of us do. It was about an incident about ten or so years ago when I was given a document to review that had been so badly written that I could not bring myself to even respond to it. I sighed and started to re-write and clean it up and finished it 36 hours later without any sleep. By then I was angry and tired and I probably brought it up a hundred times in the subsequent years. Guess what? It made absolutely no difference to who and where I am today. No. Body. Cares.

It was 2 years ago that I decided to change again, that's what Keith and I do, we do it often and we do it well. I went from working from home for over 10 years back to an office environment and I have never been happier. Work stays at work. There is always another day. I am 100% replaceable, disposable, expendable, dispensable and I love it. I went from toxic crazy to non-toxic crazy but I don't get worked up about anything anymore. I do my job. I do it extremely well because I put in the effort. Then I go home and I walk my dogs and eat dinner with Keith and play with my friends and watch TV and read books and do all the things I want to do with the money that I work hard for.

I do it this way because no-one will ever write on my tombstone that I stayed up for 36 hours to re-write a document about which No. Body. Cares.

In a meeting recently, after one person slammed her fist down on the conference room table and stormed out, and another was escorted to Starbucks downstairs (probably to be given some Green tea), a colleague pointed at me and said "look at him, no matter what he's always smiling".

It is not easy. We are surrounded by so much information and change, progression and regression. Right now people are upset at the Abortion law changes in the US, at the Trump government, at Trudeau, at the Conservative swing the pendulum is making in Toronto and Canada in general. Sometimes I get why people go off the grid but the vast majority of us have no choice but to keep on keeping on.

I don't want to wait to be 80 to look back and tell people about the 25 things I wish I had done. Know Your Self, find a moi_being_a_therapist who can show you the way, find or be a boss who is a real leader.

Be Kind. Be Good.

That's 5. It's enough.