Abortion is Legal. Murder is Not.
I’ll start by saying that as a white male in his mid-thirties who grew up in hospitable middle-ish class conditions, that I feel somewhat unqualified to write an article about abortion. It’s never been my body. It’s never been my choice. So who should give any fucks what I think about it?
Earlier today, I read an article in the Colorado Independent quoting Adams County lawmaker Rep. JoAnn Windholz as saying [of the recent shooting at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs], “Violence is never the answer, but we must start pointing out who is the real culprit. The true instigator of this violence and all violence at any Planned Parenthood facility is Planned Parenthood themselves. Violence begets violence. So Planned Parenthood: YOU STOP THE VIOLENCE INSIDE YOUR WALLS.”
It’s the catalyst that pushed me here to write this. It’s the catalyst that led me to comment this article’s title on a friend’s Facebook posting. So, I say to Rep. Windholz and anyone who agrees with her statement:
Abortion is legal. Murder is not.
Abortion and Planned Parenthood have been the subject of debate so often that it feels like the legality of abortion is still in question. It is not. Repeat. It is NOT. Like the right to bear arms, a woman’s right to choose is protected by the Constitution. The Roe v. Wade ruling (as summarized in this article) offers the scope of constitutional coverage as follows:
The specific right of a woman to make the decision to terminate her own pregnancy is generally classified as a privacy right implicit in the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments, but there are other constitutional reasons why a woman has the right to terminate her pregnancy. The Fourth Amendment, for example, specifies that citizens have “the right to be secure in their persons”; the Thirteenth specifies that “{n}either slavery nor involuntary servitude … shall exist in the United States.” Even if the privacy right cited in Roe v. Wade were dismissed, there are numerous other constitutional arguments that imply a woman’s right to make decisions about her own reproductive process.
Abortion is legal. And protected by the Constitution. Murder is not.
The heated and vile rhetoric that continues to flow from the mouths of some politicians regarding this issue needs to stop. It’s not just Rep. Windholz, but Ted Cruz and others. These lawmakers swear to protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States. Abortion is a right given to women under that document.
And here’s the thing. In my twenties, I was living with a woman I loved very much. In the spring of 2005 she moved to California for a summer job. Things for us became rocky (and had been angling toward rocky for some time) but we still managed to express our love physically whenever I could fly out to visit.
One day, she called to tell me she was pregnant. We had a difficult conversation. We both agreed that we weren’t ready to be parents. It was clear, too, that we weren’t even great for each other. Ultimately, I deferred to her in the final decision, but we both agreed about what needed to be done.
After the abortion, we cried together on the phone. We talked about all the things that loving and rational people talk about when faced with a difficult experience. We were sad. We were haunted. We were, at times, devastated. I think both of us had always wanted to be parents… some day. We had both wanted to be able to provide… some day. The problem was, combined with our relationship listing dangerously, that some day wasn’t then.
Why tell you that story? Because I still think about it to this day. Because the discussion about whether abortion is moral or not precludes the fact that no one celebrates getting an abortion. It’s not fun. It’s not some liberal pagan ritual. It’s not a party. It’s a personal, complex experience.
And it’s legal. It’s protected by the Constitution of the United States.
Murder, though, whatever the claimed motives, is not.
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