Becoming Pro-Life: Genesis

This post is probably going to be ridiculously long, and the answer to the question of why/how I became Pro-Life is a difficult one to answer, so this might come into multiple posts in order to fully explain everything--or at least explain things to the extent that it is properly able to be understood.

I want to start by examining my past, so that we can all understand just how I used to be and how, perhaps, dramatic my change has been. There is no one cause to my shifting views. Rather, there was a series of events and thoughts (both rational and not-so-much) that lead me to change from a militant Pro-Choicer to a person "in between" to barely Pro-Life to Pro-Life with few and limited exceptions. Perhaps there is more changing to be done in the future. After all, i have yet to read David Boonin's "A Defense of Abortion." There is no way to know with certainty whether I will remain Pro-Life, become more Pro-Life, or go back to being Pro-Choice. I am open to change. And that doesn't mean I hate the Pro-Life stance if I change or the Pro-Choice stance if I don't change.That being said, I'm not confident, so to say, that I will shift back to where I was, or even remotely near it, but again, nothing is impossible when it comes to the abortion debate and where I stand on it.

I want to take a look at where I used to be. I'm not going to explain my childhood or anything like that. In fact, I am going to start this story in 2010--this was the year I actually started not only paying attention to the abortion debate, but also began to mold my views. This might not sound like too much to explain, but a lot can happen in four years. Let's get started.

Note: I am not proud of how I used to "debate" at first, but it was how it was.

In the beginning...

I didn't actually start debating abortion on Facebook. I started on another website that had forums. That's where I started out. However, to shorten this, as it's already going to be ridiculously long, I'm going to leave that part out. The way it began there and the way it began on Facebook aren't markedly different anyway, so when I talk about my beginning on Facebook, it's sort of a combination between the two sites.

I started out a poor excuse for a Pro-Choice advocate.

I was probably one of the worst Pro-Choicers around. No, really. At least I was terrible in the sense that I was ridiculously close-minded, hateful, irrational, illogical, to say the least. And here is the kicker: I thought I was "educated" on the abortion issue. I suppose I was educated, to the extent that I was aware of some facts and some arguments. Unfortunately, the facts were, for the most part, irrelevant, and the arguments were poor at best. I threw around insults all the time. There was no such thing as a Pro-Lifer. They were all anti-choice males that hated women or they were women that were brainwashed by the patriarchy unable to make decisions or comprehend that they were oppressing their own gender. Pro-Life was anti-woman. Pro-Life was anti-child. Pro-Life was probably worse than Hitler. Did you know that Hitler banned abortion? Well guess what Pro-"Lifers" want to do? No, seriously. I was ridiculous. And here is a small list of failtastic arguments I used. 

• The fetus is not alive.
• The fetus is not human/a human being. You see, to me at the time, "human" (adj) was equal to "human being", and we just couldn't by any means say that the fetus was a human being (for whatever reason, I guess we felt threatened because if people thought of the fetus as human or a human being, people might start thinking that abortion is wrong, so that can't be had. Hello! Pro-Choice here! Anything that might even hint that abortion is a bad idea, immoral, etc. was bad, bad, bad.
• Abortion is legal, and therefore it is morally just (but laws are never based on morality). Figure that out.
• The fetus isn't an unborn child because while fetus means child/offspring/young one in Latin, placenta means cake. Since the placenta is not a cake, the fetus is not a child. I cannot express to you my humiliation now just thinking about this argument. Again--I thought I was educated!
• Don't like abortion? Don't have one.
• Abortion doesn't kill anything or anyone.
• You don't have the right to force your religious views on me or anyone else.
• The right to bodily autonomy is absolute. There is no other situation ever in which my body may be used against my will... Ever. It is absolute. No restrictions ever. Ever. No, seriously--ever.
• Abortion is moral because Roe v. Wade says so.
• Life doesn't begin at conception. 
• If abortion is murder, then masturbation is mass murder. Blowjobs are cannibalism.
• A fetus was most definitely not a baby. Don't call it baby-killing. If people start thinking that abortion is killing babies, then the right to abortion will be threatened, because who is going to say "Oh, it's okay to kill babies whenever a woman wants and for whatever reason she so chooses"?
• Abortion is just going to happen anyway, so we should keep it legal.
• If we don't keep abortion legal, women are going to murder born children.
• If you can't trust a woman with a choice, then you definitely cannot trust her with a child. 

Not only did I use these arguments, but a number of my "educated", "logical" "friends" used them as well, and, in fact, I got many of these arguments from the general Facebook Pro-Choicer that stalks Planned Parenthood's page and NARAL's page because God forbid there be freedom of speech and a Pro-Lifer--erm--anti-choicer exercise that right! That last bit was particularly ironic because I considered myself a supporter of the Constitution.

You'll probably noticed that I put "friends" in quotation marks in that last paragraph. I want to clarify that. I refer there to the Pro-Choice persons I considered friends who, for a number of reasons, abandoned me (at best) when I started supporting Pro-Life views. There are plenty of Pro-Choice friends that I still have and I will say right here and now that not only am I thankful for those that have not left me purely because I am Pro-Life, and saw me as more than my abortion views, but I also want to say that even though I am Pro-Life I do not by any means suggest that the Pro-Choice stance does not have its own strong arguments in favor of abortion rights. There are. I have no doubts about that, nor do I have any doubts that I would defend my Pro-Choice friends--those who are still my friends, who are human beings worth more than their political views--to the death. They are good people. They are my friends, and I love them unconditionally. Just because I am Pro-Life does not mean that I cannot have Pro-Choice friends, does not mean I cannot discuss abortion with Pro-Choicers, does not mean that I think that all Pro-Choicers are evil.  I will get back to these points, but for now, let us continue.

Now, at this point that I'm discussing "the beginning", I didn't really have much for friends beyond the general troll, and I was proud of being a troll myself. Still, a few of them have stayed by my side and again, I am immensely thankful. 

I'm sure that many of my friends can probably remember how I used to be. When I say I was militant, I mean it. There was nothing anyone could say that would change my mind -- ever. A woman had an absolute right to do whatever she wanted to the fetus up until the point of birth. No ifs. No ands. No buts. I didn't give a damn about fetuses. They were nothing. Do you know who really mattered, more than anything or anyone? The pregnant women. Even men didn't matter--unless he supported abortion right and didn't care (even supported) the woman pregnant with his child getting an abortion. Women didn't regret abortion. Even if they did, that didn't matter at all. Abortion was safe 100% of the time. Women died having abortions? Well, they knew the risks. Women died during childbirth? Well, that's a result of the fact that pregnancy and childbirth is dangerous a vast majority of the time, and the ones that died in childbirth deserved sympathy because they didn't abort. They would have lived with a 100% guarantee had they aborted. Abortion was awesome. Abortion on demand, without apology, without stigma, anything else be damned.

I'm not saying these things to make fun of the Pro-Choice movement. Really. I know it comes off that way, and I know it will come off that way to those who continue to use these arguments. I know that being so brutally honest is going to insult some people, and, for once, I don't care. This isn't about them. This is about my story. And if they want to make this all about them, then so be it. I won't stop them. I cannot put a big enough disclaimer that not all Pro-Choicers (or Pro-Lifers) are bad or as bad as I was or stupid or inconsiderate or irrational, etc. There are plenty like that. But there are plenty (more?) that are not. So if you're going to use this to insult Pro-Choicers as a whole, simply because I started out using piss-poor arguments, then you are part of the problem. You're also part of the problem if you use this blog post to attack Pro-Lifers because you're butthurt or don't like me or cannot think of anything better to say but you absolutely have to say something (because God forbid you say nothing at all--you must be heard, dammit)! Attack the arguments all you like, but--please--do not attack the people. I have given plenty of arguments to bash. And I will probably only provide more as this continues.

In the coming post(s), I'm going to initial names. Even though I will mention some pretty nasty people, people I sometimes wish I'd never met at all, I do not desire for them to be attacked or located, or anything that someone who thinks they are anonymous on the internet can do. I also met really good people, whose names will also be initialed for the same reason. I respect the privacy of others, even if some of them could not, did not, and would not respect mine. But that, too, is another point for another day.

Also, to be noted, I may end up talking poorly about some people. I realize that I requested not to attack people and to only attack arguments before. And I'm not yet sure how these posts will come out. However, if I go against my own request, I will accept my hypocrisy. Will I do so? We will see.

This blog post is merely here for me to explain how I was in the beginning. Beginning in 2011, if I recall correctly, I began to change. Not to Pro-Life, mind you. I merely began to change--perhaps the better word is "evolve"--my Pro-Choice stance to be stronger, more rational, etc. And that change really began when I joined a certain group...

[To Be Continued]