I originally wrote this in 2019. Today I attended a pro-choice solidarity rally. Fortunately, our abortion laws in Aotearoa have been updated since I wrote this. However, the USA has regressed and the constitutional right to abortion healthcare has been revoked. This leaves individual states to make the choice, and some have immediately outlawed abortion under any circumstances. We marched to the US Consulate to send a message of solidarity to our American friends. And we were reminded to be on guard in this country as nothing is ever guaranteed and right wing politicians are already making unpleasant noises.
I also want to note that whilst I have referred to women in this post, I acknowledge that the right to access to abortion healthcare is relevant to people of all genders.
At the moment, women in New Zealand are looking on as states in the USA enact the most restrictive laws against terminating a pregnancy we have ever seen.
What we fail to remember is that New Zealand's laws are not that liberal, either. We gasp in horror at the idea that young girls cannot have a pregnancy ended even in the case of it being the result of rape or incest, but we forget that those things by themselves are not ground for a termination in New Zealand.
The 'abortion debate' is one that throws up so many issues for me. I have come from a background of Christian belief that life starts from conception - although I don't know where that's backed up in the Scriptures. I have always had an uneasy relationship with the concept of terminating a pregnancy.
The recent resurgence in interest in the law around termination has come hot on the heels of a dear friend confirming her own pregnancy.
This is a very much wanted, and planned for, first baby. We are already starting to use the language of hope - at 6 weeks gestation we are referring to it as a 'baby' when it is nothing more than a clump of pulsating tissue.
This just emphasises to me that what we feel about something makes it what it is. Language matters, and right now, it matters more than anything.
Sitting alongside my friend's much wanted and already dearly loved first baby are the stories of women for whom this clump of cells was a danger. Danger is a strong word, but I will use it, even if it wasn't a life or death situation. Or maybe it was, just not in the ways we commonly describe it.
I know first hand the long term effect children have on your life. The 'motherhood penalty' isn't some theory that someone dreamed up. Its a real thing effecting the economic outcomes for women the world over. We cannot pretend that having a baby is just a physical manifestation and consequence of a physical act. We must acknowledge the far reaching economic and social impacts it currently has on the people who carry them - women.
I have four children whom I would not change for the world. They are delightful, clever, beautiful individuals. However, in a capitalist world, I cannot discount the economic cost I have borne for taking time out of the paid workforce to raise four children until the youngest was six years old.
As I moved away from my original religious ideology, and started to hear more of women's stories, I started to understand about the origins of life.
Life actually begins with the woman who is growing it. If she is not ready, if she hasn't met her potential yet, it is profoundly unfair to ask her for her life be usurped by someone else's.
I appreciated the meme that stated "what if that baby was going to cure cancer?" and the response that "what if the woman carrying that baby was going to cure cancer, but she didn't finish college because she got pregnant and and couldn't end the pregnancy?"
I feel profoundly uncomfortable with the idea of having a termination. Fortunately, I will not be in a position to have to make that choice, but I can appreciate what a difficult choice it is.
I am also in a position where I believe that a woman's decision about whether or not she wishes to be pregnant trumps everything.
My dear friend is pregnant with a baby.
The baby is a wish. An idea. A dream. A future.
But they are not all like this.
Some are pregnancies that are wrong. Costly. Deadly.
They are pregnancies. Not babies.
Babies are our ideas, dreams, futures.
And pregnancies must not continue at the expense the lives of women who bear them.
