The Sin of Choice
Picture kneeling at the altar in trance-like anguish with a large group of people, powerful worship music thrumming in the background while rending your heart and sobbing tears for the blood of the unborn.
This was my life and I was in it deep.
I marched in prayer and walked America defending the rights of fetuses inside other women’s bodies. I wore preachy t-shirts to school and wrote papers in my English class about the evils of Planned Parenthood and Margaret Sanger.
Being on the front lines of this cause awarded me praise for my role playing an evil abortionist in a church drama skit and my acting/activist skills qualified me for going undercover with a wiretap in Planned Parenthood to prove to the world that they offered abortion as an option for an unwanted pregnancy.
I went to jail twice for nonviolent civil disobedience.
We peacefully sat around abortion clinics to shut them down. And never did we consider the question “peaceful for who?” We were saving babies and singing praise and worship songs to God while we did it; peaceful martyrs who waged warfare on women’s bodies.
None among us gave the slightest wonder to the idea that our actions might not be peaceful for the women choosing the best solution for their individual life. Instead, we created one last barrier on an already scrutinized path by forcing them to walk through our Christian fire-wall of judgment and unsolicited life-coaching.
In my early forties, I sought out a permanent sterilization procedure because I was done producing children. In France, where I live, doctors are required to question women about being sure of their choice, and by law, women must sustain a month-long waiting period to think long and hard before the procedure is administered.
Of course, it is a medical professional’s job to provide full information on what it means to obtain an irreversible procedure. But to have a doctor question your motives, lifestyle, and imply that you might regret your decision causing psychological distress, sent me home in tears. It was a trigger that brought up past issues I worked for years to overcome. It was sufficiently traumatizing that I called my husband directly after to have him reassure me that I was a grown woman, capable of reasoning and making decisions on my own and that no one else should tell me how to live my life.
I had already thought long and hard about the procedure. I was happily moving forward on my chosen best-life path, and just as I was ready to take the next important step, someone asserted themselves with a line of questioning that implied they knew better for me than I did. It was emotionally violent, and not at all peaceful.
My 31-year-old virgin self grew up in a world where birth control, sex, and abortion were quite literally demonized. The only way in which these subjects were ever addressed was to say not to do them. These subjects were surrounded by negativity and held rank on the list of taboos.
What tools did I have then, to equip myself with when I did start having sex despite it being a sin?
Absolutely none. In this case, miseducation about sex meant the following:
I didn't know how to do it or what to expect.
I didn't know how to prevent disease.
I didn't know how to prevent pregnancy.
I wasn't allowed to abort if I didn’t know how to prevent pregnancy.
And what if I did end up pregnant?
My two options were:
Public shame from having sex, become a social pariah, bring pregnancy to term, and have life altered dramatically by becoming a parent or giving to adoption.
Private shame from having sex and abortion, but remain on optimal life-path.
For the first time in my life, I understood the life-altering consequences of bringing a person into the world when I wasn’t at all ready for it. I didn’t have a job, I was still at university finishing my studies, my new partner was waiting on immigration so he could join me. A pregnancy in that situation would have critical repercussions. It made me panic.
One morning while staying with my family I finally had to open the conversation. My stomach was in knots. They knew I was having sex even if I had to pretend I wasn’t. But I had to let my dad know that the very condemnation I was facing for being sexually active led me to conclude that if I became pregnant, my only option would be to abort.
I can’t blame my dad for the look of horror on his face when I told him I decided I’d abort if I became pregnant. It went against everything I grew up believing. Certainly, it went against his own values.
I will say it again: if being sexually active outside marriage is a sin, then a woman has two choices:
Public shame and humiliation and an altered life.
Private shame and humiliation and a relatively unaltered life.
Unless you’ve ever been in a place where other people tell you what to do with your life and your body, you cannot possibly understand how emotionally and mentally traumatizing it can be.
Largely, no one tells men what to do with their bodies. If men have unprotected sex, the consequences are not met with the same scorn and potentially life-altering fallout as they are for women.
Unexpectedly, my dad said that if I were to get pregnant, he would love and welcome a baby out of wedlock. How could I possibly predict this response when he told me himself that what I was doing was wrong? His response in proportion to the negative messaging and judgment I always received about the shamefulness of sex was rather confusing.
Why should women listen to religious dogma? It is a psychotic mix of “We hold you accountable for your debauchery, but we love you.”
If you’re wondering where I finally stand on this issue, my answer is that I stand for each person to decide for themselves how to live their life. What a person chooses to do or not do with their own body is not my business. I have my own body to take care of.
Pro-lifers make the argument that they have the right to intervene in a woman’s body to save her baby from being murdered (and here there are arguments using science - something religious folks aren’t often inclined toward - about fetus, viability, and baby. Not the argument of this piece). Their fight to remove a woman’s right to her own choices twistedly makes them not pro-the life of the woman who is already trying to live hers.
It is too easy, dear religion, to sob tears at a church altar for the unborn while pointing a judgmental finger devoid of empathy or thought toward a living human who can already think and act for herself.
