the anti-us side. sigh.

[keryx]

Something I cross-posted to my blog about the people shouting at us from the sidelines on Sunday.

Puzzled by the mix of attack-dog tactics (people with - I hope - fake fetuses in jars shoving them towards us, people calling us "wicked" and congratulating murderers of abortion doctors) and stoic silence (the "I'm sorry" crew, the "women deserve better" crew), I tried reading some of the accounts from pro-lifers who were at the March.

I can't.

I occasionally read the posts on After Abortion. I think we, as the pro-choice majority, need to recognize that individual women's stories aren't all about not being sorry. Some women are sorry, either when they do it or after. We alienate them when we act as if abortion is a simple issue for everyone. Most of those women don't, typically, argue that abortion and other reproductive choice resources shouldn't be legal, safe and available on demand. They just want to have their pain recognized. When we don't do that, they just feel anti-us. That makes them anti-choice, polarizes them when they didn't need to be polarized.

Is a man made to feel guilty for his vasectomy? Is he pushed to celebrate it? If he feels sad, is the only place he can turn to a pro-life community that calls him a reformed baby-killer? FUCK FUCKING NO. And yet hasn't he removed potential children from the world? This is an issue for all women, that we need to be able to recognize abortion as both a safe, legal outpatient surgery and a complex issue.

As supporters of choice, supporters of the rights of all women, I feel we need to stand by these women who regret abortions, need to respect that this is their feeling. Not because abortions are bad or wrong or need to be outlawed, but because their individual experience was bad. And if the pro-choice community can't see that, we drive more people to the pro-life camp. A camp whose followers bullhorned at me, called me names, called me a whore and shouted biblical verses at me (I guess they thought I was also a subscriber to their bible, which was perhaps a mistake). That camp shouldn't be the only welcoming audience for a woman who regrets or hesitates choosing to abort.

I personally don't give a rat's ass what choice any individual woman may make where abortion and birth control are concerned. I just want all these choices to be available. And I don't understand how someone, particularly a woman, could see otherwise (for instance, believing both sex education and abortion are wrong - how the heck does that work?).

So I read the March-related posts on After Abortion and on Diotima and the LJ abortion debate community.

Or, I started to read them.

And then I saw this pattern of generally moderate pro-life folk making comments about how we aren't really feminists, how all pro-choice folk at the March were mean (dude, did they actually encounter all of the million of us? I'm imfuckingpressed). It left me shaking with rage.

And I wonder if we can really have a civilized debate about this.

For now, I think, I'm just not reading any more of the pro-life side of the March coverage. I'll wait until they've cooled down a bit. I'll wait until the memories of some of the things that came out of those anti-us bullhorns are a bit softer.

But, like the women who regret their abortions, I feel polarized by this debate. I feel like I can't even speak or listen to someone who is strongly pro-life (or, as I come to think more and more, anti-choice) anymore.

And I'm thankful that we're the majority. Because if it has to be a contest instead of a compromise, I'd like to win.