Witchvox Article

Author: Maewyn
Posted: September 21st. 2001
Times Viewed: 3,605

I love reading bumper stickers, and they're all over the cars around my college campus. Every car has a university sticker on it somewhere (even if it's only the parking permit), and I exult over the occasional stickers that say "Born-Again Pagan" or "My Other Car is a Broom". (My husband's van has a sticker that says "Odin Lives.") "Choose Life" is another common sticker—usually paired with a metal fishy symbol. But this one really got to me:

"If you can't trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?"

I think it makes a very good point, and this saying has come to be a cornerstone of my philosophy on abortion.

My husband and I are both twenty years old, and both still in college. We're having a hard time supporting ourselves and our two pets—we know that there's no way we could support a baby. Plus, our schedules are so erratic, who knows when we'd be around to take care of the child? Where could we find a babysitter willing to work a couple hours here and there, or how could we afford daycare? So we made the choice: we plan to wait until we're both out of college and have steady jobs and a better home. We acted on that choice by using birth control.

For this choice, and for many other choices I've made, some people have called me a wise individual. I think that most people, when given the chance to think things through, could make the same choice as above: weighing the issues of being able to take care of a child, wanting or not wanting a child, financially supporting a child, etc., and from there deciding whether or not to have a baby. But sometimes it's not that easy...sometimes the condom breaks, or you missed a few pills, or you did everything right but you still got pregnant. In that case, you still have to make the decision: Are we fit parents right now? Can we support a baby?

Lobbyists have tried to make the public think that people in my age group can't think for themselves, and can't make these types of decisions. Well, at twenty years old, my husband and I have made the following decisions:

To get married.
To rent a house.
To get jobs.
To own a car, and have car insurance.
To get health insurance.
To take care of a cat and a dog, and make sure they have adequate medical care.
To go to college, and pay our own way when necessary.
To get a checking account.
To use credit cards.

Many of my peers have made the same decisions: whether or not to get married, whether or not to just get by on an allowance from their parents, whether or not they'll go to college, whether or not they'll live in the dorms or get their own place, whether or not they'll take care of pets. In a year or two, we could rack up nearly $30, 000 in debt from student loans and credit cards. The bank trusts us—at twenty years old—to pay back those loans. Our landlord trusts that we will pay our rent when it's due. Our parents trust that we can take care of ourselves. Our employers trust that we will show up to work and do the jobs that we were asked to do.

But somehow, we're not smart enough to be trusted with the decision to have a child (or not to have a child, as the case may be). Somehow, we're not smart enough to see that it costs money to raise a child—money that we don't have. We're not smart enough to realize that babies can't eat ramen noodles, or that we won't be able to go to parties or sports games or just about anywhere else, because we'll have the baby to consider. Somehow, we're not smart enough to see past our own sex drives.

The pro-life lobbyists (or, more often, anti-abortion lobbyists) don't see all the decisions that twenty-year-olds can make in this world. They don't see the amount of responsibility we already have. They see the result of a responsible decision—that a young couple has decided that they cannot support a child, and so it would be better for all concerned if the child were not born—and the pro-lifers see that this decision is against their personal beliefs. They don't understand that their beliefs are not my beliefs and they are not your beliefs. This is where the saying applies: "If you don't like abortion, don't have one!"

My stance is this: I do NOT approve of abortion if it's just more convenient for the mother. But I DO approve of abortion if it would be better for the child not to be born. If the child would be born into a low-income family (like a couple of college students) where he/she could not be supported, financially or emotionally (because the parents are working constantly, for example), I don't think it would be wise to allow the child to be born. Or if this baby would be the newest of nine children. Or if he/she was the result of rape or incest, and the mother would hate or resent her child. Or if the child would be born with a birth defect or disease which his/her parents could not or would not support.

Just because a woman is pregnant doesn't mean that she decided to get pregnant. She might have been at a party, got drunk, and ended up sleeping with someone (whether that's a random male or her significant other). She might have been trying for the last five years to get pregnant, and only recently succeeded. But if a woman carries a baby to term, she has had anywhere from five to nine months to think about having this baby. She has had time to think about her baby's life. "Will this baby come into a loving family, with ample resources? Will this baby be thrown away or not wanted? Will this baby have a debilitating disease of some sort, and can I/we get medical care for this baby? Can this baby grow up in a safe environment--free from abuse, neglect, or criminal behavior?" All these things have had time to come into a pregnant woman's mind. She has had the time to weigh the options, decide whether or not she can support the child, and act on that decision.

Yes, a baby has the right to be born. But the baby also has the right to be born into a loving environment. As Pagans, some of us believe that the soul chooses its next life, and it chooses whom its parents will be. If that really is the case, don't you think that the soul will choose you twice? If you are pregnant and abort your baby, don't you think that your baby's soul will come to you the next time you get pregnant? Or might the soul change its mind?

She of the Storm

ABOUT...

Maewyn

Location: Baltimore, Maryland

Author's Profile: To learn more about Maewyn - Click HERE

Bio: She of the Storm is a relative newbie to the Pagan scene, and has considered herself Pagan for one year this Samhain. Storm currently follows an eclectic path, but mostly identifies with the Druid tradition. She is a college student majoring in technical writing with a journalism concentration, and hopes to work for a Pagan publishing company or newsletter. She has already been published in a few local 'zines. Storm's spare time is spent taking care of her cat, Lucy, her dog, Sasha, and her husband, Odinkar.

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