Anti-choicers say the darndest things. For example, the question that I hear too often is “What if your mother had aborted you?”
The first time I heard someone give voice to those words, I was dumbfounded. I spent a long time trying to decide if the person was of reasonable cognitive ability before responding with “What if my father had used a condom on the night I was conceived? What if my mother had not left Missouri in 1978? What if the earth had opened and swallowed them both whole on Aug. 22, 1984, the day before I was born?”
The answer is the same in all instances: I wouldn’t be subjected to your inane questioning.
To the credit of the anti-choice crowd, the question has evolved a bit since I first heard it. Sometimes the question is rephrased to “What if your mother had been pro-choice?” The obvious answer is “Maybe she would have chosen to abort the fetus that eventually became me. Maybe she would have borne a child a year later that would have cured cancer by now. Maybe she would have chosen to continue her pregnancy while giving your mother a referral to the nearest clinic.”
We should all be so lucky to have pro-choice mothers at the times of our birth. Every child could go to sleep at night knowing his mother chose to bring him into this world.
Instead, we should be left wondering if circumstance dictated the conditions of her pregnancy. Did a willful husband threaten to beat his wife if she chose to end the pregnancy? Did she live in a state that made abortion access almost completely inaccessible? Did your mother bear you in her womb for nine months because someone told her that it was immoral to do it any differently? Or perhaps worse, did some state legislator force your mother to carry the pregnancy to term via the long arm of the law?
So what if my mother had aborted me? Would anyone know the difference? No, they would not. People like to think they live world-changing existences, but I’m here to tell you “It’s a Wonderful Life” is only a movie, and you shouldn’t believe everything you see on television (especially when such programming directly follows a parade featuring giant helium balloons in the shapes of candy and cartoons).
Life would go on with or without you.
These two questions brandished by the anti-choice crowd are terribly revealing of deep-seated insecurities. The moment you admit your mother could have considered aborting the fetus that eventually became you, then the possibility her love for you is not unconditional also exists. The idea she has not been hopelessly devoted to you from the moment that you were a zygote until the present day creeps into your psyche.
It’s more comfortable to assume your mother has been willing to give her life for you since the moment you were a “glimmer in your father’s eye,” but that is simply not the case in many instances.
Maybe your life is made easier by the undeniably narcissistic thought that from the moment your parents’ gametes met, your mother was willing to die so you could come into the world and make everyone’s life better.
If that is the case, you should stop tormenting me with frivolous questions pertaining to choices made by my parents more than 20 years ago and find a talking point that actually advances your cause.