My dad once rescued me from the ocean floor after a huge wave knocked me down. I remember feeling trapped and tumbling over and over as the wave moved toward the shore. I wasn't strong enough to stand up or swim away. My eyes were shut tight as I felt his hands pull me up to the surface and then felt his arms strong and sure as he cradled me to his chest. He wiped away my fears by smiling and laughing, "wasn't that fun!"
I have another memory of my dad. I was seven, and my brother was three, and my mother was near death in the hospital after trying to deliver a stillborn baby. He was standing in the kitchen, figuring out who should look after my brother and me. He had a faraway look in his eyes, and I'm sure he didn't see me standing there. Because in that instant, and only for an instant, I saw fear in my dad's eyes. Deer in the headlights fear. The fear of what in the world will I do if my wife dies.
I didn't know it at the time, but that's when I became pro-choice. I wanted my mother. I didn't care about my dead baby brother. I wanted mom alive and taking care of me. I didn't ever want to see my dad be scared again.
I am a Catholic. I believe life begins at conception. I believe life is sacred. And if a woman chooses to risk her life to bring new life into this world, I'm fine with that.
But I don't believe in a one-size fits all approach to the issue of abortion. The "no exceptions" anti-abortion position of Paul Ryan and others on the far right has consistency going for it. But in that consistency lies laziness and misogyny, and those are disqualifiers for anyone serious about crafting public policy on this issue.
The circumstances of conception do not alter the fact that the fetus is innocent of those circumstances. It didn't chose whether to be conceived in an act of love between a married man and woman, as a result of rape (forcible rape, statutory rape, date rape, or whatever else kind of rape there might be), as a result of incest, or in a petri dish for that matter. But that is not the end of the discussion. Nor, really, is it even a particularly relevant part of the discussion -- unless you're a politician running as "pro-life," but needing to appeal to moderates who think its immoral to force a rape or incest victim to carry a criminal's baby to term. (Then comes an excruciating choice -- raise your rapist's baby or put your baby up for adoption.)
The life of the mother exception is handy for a politician who fears voters might vote for his opponent if he advocates that the life of a fetus is more important than the life of a woman (who might already be some 7-year-old's mom). But isn't this fetus a child of God, too?
Once you acknowledge the validity of a single exception to a ban on abortion, the argument that the life of the fetus trumps every other consideration under every set of circumstances is gone. Because unless you want to debate good fetuses versus bad fetuses, a single exception recognizes the existence of other competing values. Then the questions become (a) what exceptions and (b) who decides whether the exceptions apply in a given case. That takes hard work, particulary in the parental consent arena.
But the real problem with the extremists is their pathological distrust of women. They see them as immoral liars looking for the "easy" way out. Women who didn't "really" get raped. Women who could tough out a pregnancy if they really wanted to. Daddy/brother/uncle didn't touch her. So the extremists just can't let women make one of the most profound decisions they will ever be called upon to make. The extremists (mostly male) will make the decision for all the misfortunate girls and women who find themselves impregnated by men.
No matter what one's personal belief on abortion might be, politicians who think so little of girls and women should have no role in setting the public policy that affects them most intimately.
P.S. Mom lived. Its the "what if" that moves me.