Pro Choice--It's Not Just about Abortion
I've been thinking a lot about the term "pro choice" for several months now, since I got more details from a woman, physically abused as a child, who I've been in touch with for a long time. Recently, she told me more about how much the abuse continued into her teenage years--not the physical abuse, but the emotional, extending to the abortion she was forced into right after Roe vs. Wade was passed.
She had no choice at all, I realized, as she made herself vulnerable to tell me more. Her parents made the choice, and she has suffered the consequences ever since. She has beaten herself up over and over, still believing even now that if she'd only had the courage to stand up to them, she would not have gone thru with the procedure. In reality, she had no choice at all--even though she technically had "informed consent."
What her parents have never known is how much she's grieved that lost child and how much she's blamed herself for "not standing up to them and saying no," she tells me, as I remind her that the power differential was much too great for her to have done that. They have no idea how much it harmed her ability to bond with the children whose births her parents did not interfere with--because she was married. At least, her marriage wasn't to her rapist, as is the case for many thousands every year in the United States alone, according to Nicholas Kristoff in a recent op-ed in the NY Times.
It was un-Christian fundamentalism that made them so dogmatically abusive--her father emotionally even more than physically. It was un-Christian fundamentalism that led them to violate their own set of values, as well. For until they came face to face with the shame of an unwanted pregnancy in their daughter, these parents who would never have spared the rod to "spoil" the child, would never have thought of suggesting any other parent should approve of this measure! This, above all, was what made the hypocrisy so difficult for the teenager to bear and to continue to bear for the rest of her life.
Pro-choice isn't just about abortion. It is about giving women and children the right to a good start in life. So they do not end up in the place where many of my young patients did on adolescent, inpatient, mental health wards where I was charge nurse years ago. When so many of them told me: "I've never felt like I had a chance at life. I wish I'd never been born!" That's depression, yes--depression that's often born out of circumstances due to their parents not being close to ready to bring a child into the world.
Yet the grandparents, pent on not giving up their grandchildren, which is so easy for any of us to understand, could not bring themselves to support adoption. So these teens had been "welcomed" at birth into a home where there was little chance of ever becoming healthy young adults.
And then, there's the issue of the young woman who popped into my inbox only last night. She's still blaming herself to some extent because she did not have the emotional strength to put a stop to the sexual abuse she endured for several years from her pastor. Some in the congregation he pastored, where she was a long-time member, say she had a choice. Yet just like the young woman who had no choice in her abortion, due to the immense power abuse, this young woman, now with teenagers of her own, is suffering the consequences--not only of what happened to her during the direct abuse, but from the secondary abuse dished out by people in the congregation, where she feels she cannot even safely return to the fold to which she has immense emotional ties.
People really do not understand choice. Nor how complicated and convoluted the concept of making choices can be--especially when gender oppression is involved. Or when there is a great age or power differential.
It's time to stop condemning and judging. Time to start showing mercy, understanding, and "forgiveness" of victims, rather than treating them like the perpetrators who often go around protected and arrogantly unscathed.
And for many women, it's time to start forgiving themselves for whatever others condemn them for.
She had no choice at all, I realized, as she made herself vulnerable to tell me more. Her parents made the choice, and she has suffered the consequences ever since. She has beaten herself up over and over, still believing even now that if she'd only had the courage to stand up to them, she would not have gone thru with the procedure. In reality, she had no choice at all--even though she technically had "informed consent."
What her parents have never known is how much she's grieved that lost child and how much she's blamed herself for "not standing up to them and saying no," she tells me, as I remind her that the power differential was much too great for her to have done that. They have no idea how much it harmed her ability to bond with the children whose births her parents did not interfere with--because she was married. At least, her marriage wasn't to her rapist, as is the case for many thousands every year in the United States alone, according to Nicholas Kristoff in a recent op-ed in the NY Times.
It was un-Christian fundamentalism that made them so dogmatically abusive--her father emotionally even more than physically. It was un-Christian fundamentalism that led them to violate their own set of values, as well. For until they came face to face with the shame of an unwanted pregnancy in their daughter, these parents who would never have spared the rod to "spoil" the child, would never have thought of suggesting any other parent should approve of this measure! This, above all, was what made the hypocrisy so difficult for the teenager to bear and to continue to bear for the rest of her life.
Pro-choice isn't just about abortion. It is about giving women and children the right to a good start in life. So they do not end up in the place where many of my young patients did on adolescent, inpatient, mental health wards where I was charge nurse years ago. When so many of them told me: "I've never felt like I had a chance at life. I wish I'd never been born!" That's depression, yes--depression that's often born out of circumstances due to their parents not being close to ready to bring a child into the world.
Yet the grandparents, pent on not giving up their grandchildren, which is so easy for any of us to understand, could not bring themselves to support adoption. So these teens had been "welcomed" at birth into a home where there was little chance of ever becoming healthy young adults.
And then, there's the issue of the young woman who popped into my inbox only last night. She's still blaming herself to some extent because she did not have the emotional strength to put a stop to the sexual abuse she endured for several years from her pastor. Some in the congregation he pastored, where she was a long-time member, say she had a choice. Yet just like the young woman who had no choice in her abortion, due to the immense power abuse, this young woman, now with teenagers of her own, is suffering the consequences--not only of what happened to her during the direct abuse, but from the secondary abuse dished out by people in the congregation, where she feels she cannot even safely return to the fold to which she has immense emotional ties.
People really do not understand choice. Nor how complicated and convoluted the concept of making choices can be--especially when gender oppression is involved. Or when there is a great age or power differential.
It's time to stop condemning and judging. Time to start showing mercy, understanding, and "forgiveness" of victims, rather than treating them like the perpetrators who often go around protected and arrogantly unscathed.
And for many women, it's time to start forgiving themselves for whatever others condemn them for.
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