Last year, while going through keepsakes from my childhood, I found a small piece of yellowed newsprint I had no recollection of. It was likely the result of a middle school persuasive writing assignment, but the content of the “letter to the editor” that I wrote and was printed in my local newspaper made me feel sick.
It read: “I think abortions should be stopped. They kill helpless unborn babies. People have been arrested for killing babies after their birth. Why is killing unborn babies any different? Some people will be unable to take care of their babies when they are born. That does not mean they have to kill them. Many couples cannot have children and would be glad to adopt. I hope the public understands that abortion is wrong, and we should try to stop it.”
My experience of the anti-choice movement
The letter was ironically printed next to another letter condemning book banning and censorship. There is a part of me that is ashamed that I ever wrote a letter like I did, much less sent it in to be printed in the newspaper. But I also think about the naive, indoctrinated child and barely-teen I was.
When I wrote the letter, I was an anxious, fearful thirteen-year-old with a nonexistent self-esteem and sense of self due to being raised in a belief system that was shuffling people off to hell for missteps. At thirteen, I believed that I was responsible for men’s “sinful thoughts.” At thirteen, I also thought — I really did — that I was personally responsible for Christ being nailed to the cross.
While I don’t remember writing this letter, I do have other memories of the anti-abortion rhetoric I was fed as a teenager.
I went to a Christian school and had a teacher who spent her free time harassing people with graphically violent signs at abortion clinics. She invited pro-life advocates into her classroom who shared graphic (and false) descriptions of babies being ripped apart and handed out tiny plastic fetuses. They were supposed to convince us to not take away human life. But pink and curled like a shrimp, the plastic blob that fit into the palm of my hand did not seem like a baby, even to teenage me. Unsure what to do with it, it ended up among the dust bunnies in the back of my closet until I tossed it in the trash.
In high school, I had a close friend who wore an “Abortion is Mean” sweatshirt like a second skin. In my 20s, I quickly came to the conclusion that no, abortion wasn’t mean, and it also definitely wasn’t murder. Restricting women and other pregnant people from obtaining safe abortions was just another way to control them. Just like the sexism and patriarchal control I had been subjected to for my entire life through religion.
The origins of the pro-life movement
As an adult, I also discovered the actual roots of the modern pro-life movement. Hint: It was never about the babies.
I assumed as a teenager that this belief in the “sanctity of all human life,” embryos included, was something that went back hundreds of years. After all, the bible was being used to defend this stance, and it was over a thousand years old. But even in the Catholic church, which is assumed to be both anti-birth control and anti-choice, the firm anti-choice stance came only in the 19th century with Pope Pius IX’s 1869’s decision that abortion was a sin that would result in excommunication. For most of the prior centuries, the official word on abortion was that it was only a sin after quickening, or when fetal movement was first felt, which usually happens somewhere between 16 and 20 weeks of pregnancy. Catholics believed that a fetus was “ensouled” at this point, a belief that was introduced by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, who thought that the fetus gained a soul not at conception, but 40 to 80 days later. The modern evangelical movement, rooted in masculinity and nationalism, also began to develop in the late 19th century, leading to their emergence as a political constituency in the 1970s.
In 1968, Christianity Today, a leading conservative Christian publication, held a conference in which they debated the morality of abortion. They concluded that while they believed in the sanctity of human life, there were circumstances in which it could be considered, such as pregnancies resulting from rape. That same year, Christianity Today published an articleexternal link, opens in a new tab on birth control and abortion in which Professor Bruce Waltke of Dallas Theological Seminary wrote, “[A]ccording to Exodus 21:22–24, the destruction of the fetus is not a capital offense. … Clearly, then, in contrast to the mother, the fetus is not reckoned as a soul.” When the Roe v. Wade judgment was made by the Supreme Court in 1973, the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, W. A. Criswell, released a statement supporting itexternal link, opens in a new tab, saying, “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.”
Why did the religious right flip their stance on abortion? It’s rooted in racism and politics.
Racism has been part of the religious right for generations. The aforementioned Southern Baptists broke off from Northern Baptists in the nineteenth century because they disagreed with the latter’s anti-slavery stance. Racism in Christian circles also persisted after the civil rights movement. In the 1970s, the IRS began to revoke tax-exempt status from educational institutions that persisted in racial discrimination. The very conservative Christian Bob Jones University, which only began to admit black married students in 1971, continued to discriminate against black students and those in interracial marriages, and continued to prohibit interracial dating on campus until 2000. They did not like the federal government telling them that there would be consequences for their discrimination and began a thirteen year battle with the courts. The 1983 case Bob Jones University v. United States resulted in the federal court confirming the loss of their tax-exempt status and a ruling that tax exemption could be revoked for religious schools practicing racial discrimination.
The opinions on abortion among the religious right began to shift when the ones in power realized that more public forms of segregation and racial discrimination weren’t something their base was rallying behind anymore. So when the racists couldn’t be openly racist anymore, they turned to greener pastures. What could they get evangelical Christians hot and bothered about to get them to show up at the polls and vote Republican? Embracing abortion as their issue of choice wasn’t ever about the babies, but rather politics, power, and control, inspired by the success of Catholic mobilization around the issue.
Conservatives, including some of my family members, demonize those who seek out and obtain abortions, as well as anyone who thinks they should have access to them in the first place. At one point in my life, this would have bothered me, because I was indoctrinated to please. Now not so much, because I believe everyone should have access to safe, legal abortions, no matter their age or the circumstances surrounding them becoming pregnant.
But I remember what I was taught as a teenager, and I’m well aware of how misconception and misinformation only serve to strengthen pro-lifers beliefs. Pregnant people who obtain abortions are characterized as promiscuous and condemned for using abortion as birth control, despite the fact that that is exactly what abortion is. While trans men and nonbinary individuals also obtain abortions, women, in particular, are slut shamed for their sex lives. Women having ownership over their sexual choices is offensive and threatening to many religious conservatives.
Evangelicals also tell horror stories of “partial birth abortions” that don’t even occur in reality. Heather Corinna’s article on abortion terminology says, “This is not a medical term, and there is no such medical procedure that exists by this name. Rather, it was a term invented by Douglas Johnson, the legislative director for the National Right-to-Life Committee in 1995.” And abortions after 21 weeks represent 1.1% of total abortions and 78.6% occur before week 10 of pregnancyexternal link, opens in a new tab. Abortions later in pregnancy are usually due to the health of the fetus or pregnant person or are a direct result of limited abortion access. The general catastrophizing of abortion in the present day is also misleading because the number of abortions and abortion providers have dropped since the 1980s, likely due to more effective birth control and greater access to it and comprehensive sex education. Ironically, conservatives want to regulate and obliterate these things, as well.
Now, in my late 30s, from the outside I might look to some people like someone they think would never need an abortion. I’m a middle-class, married mother who did everything in the quote-unquote right order. The religious right characterizes all people who obtain abortions as young, childless, and promiscuous women. But in 2022, the CDC found that of the data collected from 48 reporting states, 34.9% of people who had an abortion were over 30. The 36 areas that reported on marital status found that overall 12.3% were married, although in states such Utah (21.8%) and Missouri (37.5%), which also have more restrictive abortion laws, the percentage is significantly higher. The most interesting statistic to me is that 59.6% of people who had abortions in the 41 reporting areas had previously given birth. This was particularly interesting to me because even though I have been pro-choice for a number of years, it is only since becoming a mother that I have considered abortion for myself.
Why would I get an abortion?
The conservative war on abortion is as much a part of my present as it is of my past, because it is a war on my body, my family, and my future. Although I do have one child, I do not want any more children. If I did get pregnant again, I would choose to have an abortion.
My mental and physical well-being relies on not having any more children. I believe that my living child deserves to have a healthy and happy mother. I believe that every child that I would bring onto the earth with my body deserves to be a wanted one. I believe that my family deserves to have their mother and wife around for as long as possible. I believe that I deserve to have a happy, healthy future too!
Every person should have the power to decide whether or not they want to be a parent and how many children they want to have. They should all have access to safe, affordable healthcare, including abortions.
I am not simply a uterus, a womb. I don’t want myself, or any pregnant person, reduced to a human incubator, which is actively happening today in states with abortion bans and restrictive abortion laws. I am a living human being worthy and capable of making choices for my own body and my future. And I want my daughter to have those choices in the future as well.
