I started writing a lettor to the editor in response to the article, but it sort of turned into a manifesto:
I recently read your August article about the decline in pro-choice attitudes among young american women, and I found many of the attitudes on display in that article offensive. There seems to be a tone of condescension imbuing the way your publication speaks about pro-life women. The article quotes various pro-choice figures who speculate that young women are pro-life out of ignorance (not knowing how 'bad' things were pre-Roe) or arrogance (not believing they could ever end up in a crisis pregnancy). These same pundits invoke motherhood as a career- and life- ender, and speculate about the horrors of a life without legalized abortion.
As a young woman, I would just like to say this for myself and my friends: I am pro-life. I believe that a live baby is better than a dead baby.
I believe that I know more about abortion than my mother and my mother's generation did. I know that the figures often floated about pre-Roe back-alley deaths are ridiculously inflated - often adding up to more than the number of women of child-bearing given for those years. I know that pre-born infants are not just "clumps of cells." I know that my son is the same person now as he was a year ago in my womb...just more developed now, and I know that birth does not magically transform a fetus into a baby.
I believe I know more people who have been sexually active, who have been pregnant, who have had abortions, or kept their babies, or chosen adoption than my mother or my mother's friends did. I have witnessed the effects of the abortion revolution her generation brought about, and I say it has not solved anything. Abortion on demand has not made men respect women more, it has not made it easier for women to refuse unwanted sexual advances, it has not reduced the consequences of early sexual activity and pregnancy, it has not healed the emotional wounds of rape and incest victims....it has not given women the freedom to be men. We just aren't designed like that. We're designed to love and create, not destroy.
I believe abortion hurts the very women it was supposed to heal.
I believe abortion gives men the freedome to be irresponsible.
I believe abortion gievs society an excuse to ignore and spurn young mothers.
I believe that motherhood is not the end of life, but its beginning.
I believe women are strong. I believe that a live baby in the arms of an infertile woman is better than a dead baby - both for the woman who is gifted with that child, and for the woman who has the confidence and courage to choose life for her child.
I believe in choice: I believe no woman should be raped, forced or coerced into sexual relations. I believe that a woman who partakes in consensual sex has already made a choice - she is choosing by her actions to accept the possible consequence of a child. After all, that is what sex is designed t
Sorry...here's the last bit:
... After all, that is what sex is designed to do.
I believe in the beauty and the power of life.
I believe that the bravest, strongest person I know is the girl in my college who, every day, cares for and loves the child she gave birth to after rape. I believe that little boy is innocent of his father's crime and did not deserve the death penalty for it. He is blessed to have a mother who sought the support she needed to heal from her wounds and see him for the marvel he is.
I believe that many women who choose abortion do so out of a feeling of desperation. These women need to know that we will not let them down. They need help to have theie babies. They need healing after abortion. They need love.
I believe that a mature, loving sexual relationship ought always to have room for a child. Any man not worth taking that chance with is not worth your time and is certainly not worth giving the precious gift of your sexuality to.
I have always and only known a world where abortion is commonplace. Does that make me complacent? I think not. I think that makes me, and all my generation, survivors. My life, by my mothers choice, was spared. Since I first learned what abortion is, I have lived each day with the thrill and vigor of one who has already had a brush with death. I know life is precious, because I know my life is precious.
That is why I am pro-life. That is who I am. Not ignorant, not arrogant. I am full of joy, and hope, and sadness for the tragedy of lost lives and broken hearts. I am a survivor. I am a woman. I am pro-life.
"I believe that motherhood is not the end of life, but its beginning."
Kate - I am humbled by your manifesto. Praise God for your gift of rational thinking and for being able to use that gift wisely with words. Blessings - -
I feel this is just one person that is learning the hard way that what is written by the press is tainted. ALL americans need to learn this. It is not just about abortion but the lies and the slants are perviasive thru' many political/moral ideologies. I know that I did not understand how great the diffrence was until I went over seas myself and learned about our history from a diffrent view point. Now I question everything that the mainstream media shovels out. Even the non-mainstream. I try to always see for myself rather then trust somones "reporting". I always try to play the devil's advocate when thinking about what someone "wants" me to believe. It is very hard I think for so many people to understand that the press cannot should not ever be trusted. It is free, here, in the US to act, but it's master is money and that is controled always by those in power.
P.S. I picked that part out too Lee Ann.... now if we could only get more ppl to see it that way then we could really start talking about choice.
A -- yes, you are right - the choice - to be a parent or not to be a parent. When does that choice begin? Not after fertilization and I think you will agree with me on that!
I was raised in Japan and Afghanistan and did not come to the US until I was seventeen years old. Although my family of origin are US citizens, they were immigrants from Canada and Scotland, so my view of the world is also different from many who have been here all of their lives.
I was interviewed for a SilentNoMoreAwareness piece back in January. The interviewer was writing for the Northwest Progress newspaper, which is the archdiocese of Seattle's paper.
The interview was going along splendidly - I thought the interviewer was understanding what I was saying. Then, there was a shift. She started asking me whether or not I had been a wanton woman (my words, not hers) prior to my abortion and whether or not, since I was Catholic and had gone to confession, whether or not I actually believed God forgave me.
I was floored! From being a discussion all of a sudden the interview turned hostile...kind of like that hostile witness thing that we saw in the OJ trial with Kato...
Anyway - after I got off the phone (it was a phone interview), I wrote to her. Thanks be to God, most of what she put in the piece came from what I wrote.
The article is here...http://www.seattlearch.org/
FormationAndEducation/Progress/012005/
Silent+No+More++++++++++++++01-20-05.htm. (The photo is not of me.)
It is a real shame that the media, even though I thought I could trust what I was saying would be conveyed, is not always trustworthy of being up front.
Beware is all I can say! Blessings -
You know what she doesn't consider as a possibility?
As ralling cries go, "Aren't you glad that your mother could have killed you?" -- lacks something.
"Aren't you glad that your mother could have killed you?"
Spot on Mary! That should be the pro-life rallying cry...it speaks directly to the point! I think I see some new posters for the January pro-life march!
Kate:
Outstanding! I blogged your manifesto on my own blog and also on ProLifeBlogs. Cheers to you for standing up for life, and for expressing it so well! 
What a lame bunch of comments. Just because all of you personally choose not to have an abortion does not give you the right to make this decision for every other woman in the world. We as women are free to make our own decisions about our lives and our future, and especially when it comes to a decision as personal as this one. No one else has the right to make this decision for me and no one can tell me what is "morally right or wrong," because no one else is standing in my shoes at this moment and knows what goes on in my life. And seeing as men, such as our president, will never have to face this situation personally or experience that feeling of anxiety when your period is a couple days late and you fear you might be pregnant, they have no right to even get involved in the abortion debate and try to take freedoms away from women for a problem they will never even have the chance to experience first-hand themselves.
We have the right to use our votes as we wish. You do not have the right to make that decision for us, Jessica.
actually Jessica you might find this website a bit more intersting then most prolife websites because many of the women here HAVE choosen an abortion at one time or another and THEN became prolife. So most of these women have been in the shoes of someone that WOULD and DID choose to have an abortion. As for men having a say, well I think it is good to hear from them, far to often we don't. As far as I know most of us that choose to have an abortion got preg. with a guy. Part of his DNA was there too. And while I don't think that it can be his decision about what we do with our bodies, I don't think that I am so insecure that I cannot listen to their opinions.
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