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Let’s Talk About a Woman’s Right to Choose

I grew up believing abortion was wrong. Not just wrong, but some sort of moral failure. On the list of sins it sat somewhere between murder and infidelity, the unspoken eleventh commandment. I heard the way the church spoke about women who had gotten themselves into that situation, as if pregnancy were something a woman did alone, as if consequence belonged entirely to her body.

My mother volunteered at a crisis pregnancy center, and I went with her weekly, coloring in the corner office and reading Baby-Sitters Club in the waiting room while she prayed with pregnant women and girls. My mother was there to offer hope: a steady voice, open hands. The message was always the same: no matter the circumstances, a baby was a blessing. To abort was to slap God in the face…to say, my plan for my life is greater than your plan for my life.

There were other options. Support. Community. Prayer. Here, take these pamphlets. Here, take my number. Termination was only ever spoken of as a last resort.

I assumed unwanted pregnancy came from carelessness, a cliché scene stripped of nuance. Abortion was framed as the easy way out. When you grow up holding signs you cannot yet read and hearing the same words preached from the pulpit, belief burrows into you before you learn how to question it. I carried those beliefs into adulthood like proof of character, evidence that I was different, that I was better, because I would never allow myself to be in that position.

Until, of course, I was…