I thought I would share with you the essay that I posed on She’s Right 5 years ago, on the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

As I mentioned before, prior to being a blog, She’s Right was a website where I posted political commentary. My husband found an old zip disc with all of those essays on it.

So, here is the first She’s Right flashback…

Happy 30th Roe v. Wade

I guess I couldn’t let the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade go by without writing about it. An issue that has managed to remain that heated and divisive for thirty years deserves attention.

The so-called champions of choice (the abortion enthusiasts) have been out in full force getting out their message. More power to them. The greatest part of our country is the open discussion of ideas, but an issue this important deserves to be debated truthfully. Much of the pro-choice rhetoric is nothing more than loaded sound bites and scare tactics.

When it comes down to it, both sides of the issue would benefit from the same goal – to work to lower the number of abortions performed in the US. It’s obvious why the pro-life camp would like this, but it would benefit the pro-choice people as well. If there weren’t millions of abortions performed each year, then there wouldn’t be so many people who wanted to make it illegal. If it really was only done under certain circumstances, most people would not object to it so much. But, the number of abortions performed in this country will never go down by any significant degree as long as the debate is centered on half-truths and, at times, non-truths.

For starters, there has to be some recognition that the ‘thing’ (for lack of a better neutral word) in a pregnant woman’s uterus is something more than a mass of non-viable tissue. OK, maybe you aren’t ready to call it a baby or an unborn child, but it is something more than a clump of cells. The first time an expectant mother hears the heartbeat, she knows this ‘thing’ is not just non-viable tissue or part of her body, it is her baby. You’ll win more points in the my-argument-makes-more-sense department if you acknowledge at least that much.

The pro-choice position wanders into the realm of the ridiculous when they object to legislation that would make it a crime of murder when a mother is assaulted and loses her baby. They call it a back door attempt to limit a woman’s reproductive rights by granting legal protection to a fetus. What they really mean there is that it might lead to future restrictions on abortion, but they don’t care about a woman’s reproductive rights or her right to choose. A woman’s right to choose and her right to reproduce are both severely violated when an assailant kills her unborn child.

Another myth perpetuated by the abortion supporters is that abortion opponents want to make abortion illegal as a means of oppressing women. First of all, every woman who has ever had a child should be insulted by that. In what way is having a child oppressive? There is nothing more empowering than giving life to a child. Not only that, mothers are able to participate in every aspect of this country’s social, political, and economic landscape, although many chose to make their children the priority.

Which brings me to may last point. In most cases, no one is forcing women to become pregnant. The vast majority of unintended pregnancies are avoidable. People talk about a woman’s choice. Women have lots of choices, especially in this day and age. Choices come with consequences. The consequence of unprotected sex can be a pregnancy.

Imagine if there was a way to abort all of the unintended or undesired consequences of poor choices. That’s not how it works, nor should it. Having to deal with the consequences of our choices is how we learn and how we grow. And until the debate about abortion in this country can grow to a point where everyone is being honest, in thirty more years, it will still be as divisive as it is today.