abortion

We Can do Better for Women and Children

lpatangan

It feels impossible these days to discuss hard things. We’ve become so comfortable aligning ourselves with the same point of view that we’re sometimes hostile to listening to others. It reminds me of the seemingly innocuous playground game Red Rover I played as a child.  One team calls out a player from the other team, and that player tries to run through the other team’s arms to break the chain.

Firm and rigid, no one wants to bend.  Other points of view get plowed over or knocked down. It’s dirty and messy. People get hurt. Saddest of all, it makes us forget a fundamental truth about our humanity – that we belong to each other. In a primal sense, there is no other side.

Nowhere does division seem more obvious than the contentious issue of abortion rights.

This November, Floridians will vote on Amendment 4 which the ballot summary states “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”

The language of this amendment might appear to put limitations on abortion as it states that a “health care provider” is required to determine if an abortion is necessary to protect the mother’s “health.” However, a healthcare provider is not synonymous with a licensed medical doctor, and the broad term “health” also includes, as determined by the courts, the mental health of the mother.

While the seriousness of mental health issues should never be downplayed, this amendment makes no mention of how significant these “health” issues must be. Presumably, any mother seeking an abortion has some level of anxiety as to her condition. As it’s written, it is hard to imagine any instance in which an abortion wouldn’t be allowed under Amendment 4. It essentially allows abortions on babies who could survive outside of the womb for health concerns that may be treatable and temporary.

Currently, Florida law requires parental consent for minors to have an abortion. Receiving “notification” significantly dilutes the existing requirement of parental consent, making abortion the only medical decision for which parents have no say. Considering the epidemic mental health crisis of our youth, Amendment 4 puts minors in the precarious position of making a pivotal life decision without a loved one to help navigate how their decision may affect their emotional well-being. This is a dangerous precedent and an infringement on the rights of parents that is not in the best interest of our children. Read more →

Pro-life: Pro-love

lpatangan

I was subbing for a first-grade class when I received a text message from an unknown number.  It was from a family friend’s college-aged daughter seeking help for her friend considering an abortion.  She knew that I had volunteered at the Women’s Help Center, a pro-life organization that supports women throughout pregnancy, and asked if I would be willing to speak to her friend so that she understood all her options.

Choice.

Of course, I said yes. As implausible as it is to think any of us has the right to terminate life, it is a legal choice in our society.  A choice that is clearly devoid of God who created us out of love and with the innate purpose to love. Taking God out of the miracle of motherhood feels illogical, but there are many who do.  Even biologically speaking, motherhood is the most natural thing in the world.  Not just our bodies’ ability to create life but the innate desire to protect, nurture, and sacrifice for our offspring.  In the animal and the human species, this is the norm, and while it is standard it is also fierce.  Everything else – including our own survival is secondary to the “it’s in our nature to nurture” phenomenon hard-wired in most living things. It hardly seems like a matter of choice.

Being in a room full of six-year-olds is a frenzy of joy.  They are dynamic, unique, curious, and flat-out funny.  They give spontaneous hugs, ask personal questions, listen attentively when a middle-aged woman talks about cats, and without hesitation trust you with their day. They are also complicated like the rest of humanity and will become increasingly so.  Even as an outsider, I can see their proclivities, strengths, struggles, and basic need to be loved and accepted.  They have a keen sense of the world around them.  They are paying attention.  They are fully alive.  Each one a choice.

By the end of that school day, I learned that the woman made an appointment to have an abortion.  She was still agreeable to speak with me and was supposed to call me the next day.  She never did. Her friend explained to me that she didn’t want to be talked out of her decision.  I called the young woman and assured her I was here if she wanted to talk, and would be after her appointment as well.  Not to judge or lecture or to act like a caricature of a pro-life Christian in all the variances of absurdity they are portrayed as – but just to listen.  My heart ached for the burden of choice this young girl carried.  It would sound condescending to say the woman didn’t understand her choice; presumptuous to say abortion will affect her deeply, and Pollyanna to say that if she has her baby it will be full of giddy laughter and flying unicorns, when I know how gut-wrenchingly hard motherhood can be. Everything that can be said can be construed as flippant, dismissive, over-simplified, insensitive, or unrealistic.  All the best words can come out wrong. Read more →