Pro Choice and Pro Life

A few posts ago I wrote about the binary lens and how it attempts to force every issue into two sides. The binary lens say you must decide between right or wrong between black or white. The binary lens attempts to simplify a complicated question into two parts. Two sides. And you must pick one.

In math, we learnt that even though binary choice is the foundational building block of logic, life is depicted more accurately by a beautiful art puzzle of binary choices.

Don’t take the bait. When a black man says black lives matter and a white klansman says white lives matter, why do they need to retort and disagree? I understand the implications and arguments. I want to see black lives matter posters next to all lives matter posters rallying against injustice because they are both true. Heck, throw in white lives matter too but can we focus on the issue at hand over say, who is more accurate or more right or more binary?

I see the same exact issue when I see Pro-Life vs Pro Choice.

Are you in favor of life? Uhmm. Yes.

Are you in favor of choice? Uhmm. Yes.

Are you in favor of black lives ? Heck yeah!

Are you in favor of white lives ? Well, duh!

So then what is the issue? The issue is science and those blindly seeking to win have changed the definition of life and deemphasized the reality of life in a womb in order to emphasize the pain of a women making a choice with her body for two people.

I have a friend whose father was dying. He was in severe pain and the doctors rallied around him and said, he has amnesia and due to the legal transfer of consent to you. You get to decide if he continues in pain or you end his misery. The gravity of this choice weighed heavily on him. What is right, what is wrong what is best? He has no crystal ball to tell him whether his dad will fully recover but he puts himself in the shoes of his father and wonders aloud if he would rather die with the choice taken by someone else than live a prolonged, painful, hopeless existence only to die a painful death anyway.

What is mercy? What is love? What is empathetic? We can ask all those questions but we must not lead with what is right?

“What is right?” — the question simplifies a choice down to evil vs good. Right or wrong. Is every binary choice a choice between extremes? If a woman is in love between two woman, is that a choice between right and wrong ? Is a destiny eternally bound with Margaret the wrong destiny?

I might agree with you if you say what is better? Fine. We can look at the data and begin to understand the many use cases that a woman can find herself and try to understand what is the better choice. We could even from that research and understanding create laws to that effect but to start with condemnation merely serves to complicate an already complicated problem.

As a man, my default stance is pro-life! I can stick my chest and say yes!!!!! Yaaaaassss!!!! Yeeeeeaaaaahhhhsssss!!! Pro-Life! But overtime I recognize that I have become a fish that takes a bait when I label myself without first educating myself.

Is the woman choosing her physical life over her unborn’s pro-life? Is a woman choosing her mental health over her her unborn’s physical life pro-life? What is life? The quality of living or the mere existence of breath?

We need empathy. We need help listening and understanding the perspectives of both parties. We need doctors telling a more complete colorful tale of the life in a woman’s womb. We need women telling the tales behind the sorrow, friction, pain, loss, fear, that their choice presents them?

When I pondered the sadness of an aborting mother, I weep. I cannot imagine what she must feel, what her reality looks like. What does your world look like, mother, when you choose to override your maternal instincts to love your unborn child. What is the pain you carry, the fear you project? What are you afraid to see in the eyes of the one you deeply love but that symbolizes the hate you feel?

I fight for the definition of life to be revisited. To accurately depict the weight of a mother’s choice. I fight not for the woman to do what I and other men want but for her to choose armed with the weight of her choice. You are not merely removing a pimple from your body, you are ending the life that has just begun.

To be pro-life is to be pro-choice. To be pro-choice is to be pro-life. We need more women’s voices on both sides of these grave decision. We need context, we need science, we need truth.

What is true? We are human. We have free will to choose. What is life? How do we begin to separate the definition from life from the implication of the origin of life to a mother? I fear by jumbling the two together we have created a mess that divides us on an issue that should unite us.

The next time you find yourself choosing sides that you don’t understand. Educate yourself. By you, I speak through the mirror to my resemblance.

I *choose* life. Pun Intended.