Abortion Rights
I didn't think it was possible, but being pregnant has made me even more pro-choice/pro-abortion than I already was.
Maybe in the past you've heard pro-choice people use some variation on the phrase, "no one is pro-abortion" or "no one wants abortions to happen" and then they follow it up with "we want people to have the right to choose what to do with their bodies." I feel like it's an argument common in faith-y circles, this "I'm not pro-abortion, I'm pro-choice" idea.
I am unapologetically pro-abortion and pro-choice and I was both of those things before I got pregnant. I'm pro-abortion because abortions can be necessary, life-saving healthcare, and I'm also pro-abortion because having a kid is a big deal and abortions allow people to decide when and if they take on that responsibility. It just seems so obvious to me that if someone wants to terminate a pregnancy, we should support them in doing that. I honestly don't care what their reasoning is and I think it's paternalistic to decide for another person if their reason for getting an abortion is a "good" one or a "bad" one.
Okay, so this is already how I felt before I got pregnant, and it's a perspective that leaves me unable to empathize with anti-abortion/anti-choice people. I genuinely do not understand the anti-abortion perspective. Is it just a sanctity of life thing? Because I am much more interested the sanctity of the pregnant person's life than I am in the sanctity of a potential life.
[Quick tangent about existing life and potential life: In her science fiction novel The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, Becky Chambers introduces readers to an alien species that manages child-rearing very differently than humans do and mourns the deaths of adults much more than the deaths of children. The reasoning being that adults are more woven into their communities than children are and so losing an adult, a member of the community, is felt very keenly. This species isn't as moved by the loss of potential that a child's death represents for humans. This bit of sociological scifi stuck with me because it challenged me to imagine a value system very different from my own culture's. I don't bring this up to trivialize any loss of actual human life. It's just something I always think of when I consider how we value existing life and potential life.]
Anyway... I already had pretty strong feelings about abortion rights. And now that I'm almost three trimesters into being pregnant, I'm just like damn, no one should be forced to go through this if they don't really want it. There's the question of whether or not to keep a pregnancy based on whether or not you want the responsibility of raising a child. But there's also the question of whether or not to keep a pregnancy based on whether or not you want the experience of being pregnant.
I'm not even having a very difficult pregnancy, and I do not recommend this experience unless you really want a baby or, I don't know, you really enjoy novel and challenging bodily experiences. Like, do you enjoy the cues your body has always given you around normal functions like needing to pee or feeling hungry suddenly changing? Pregnancy might be for you! With every new bit of pregnancy weirdness I encounter, I feel more and more strongly that this is an absurd and honestly, inhumane, thing to force someone to do with their body.
Am I enjoying parts of being pregnant? Absolutely! I love feeling the little lizard wiggling around - they're doing it right now. I'm so excited to meet and raise this kid with E. But I opted into this - the good parts and the bad parts. And it is devastating to me, in a more visceral way than ever before, to imagine someone being forced into this experience.