Reproductive choice leaves no right answer

Reproductive choice leaves no right answer

By Kimberly Mackesy

A lot can change in a year. If a year ago I read Chris Ford’s
Jan. 18 article,"Defense of ‘choice’ is just an excuse for murder,"
I would have gotten not slightly, but extremely pissed.

I would have written a scathing reply deeming his anti-abortion
attitude as unrealistic, unconstitutional and an unforgivable
attempt to legalize infringement on a woman’s right to control what
goes on inside her own body.

But people change. I never thought my pro-choice convictions
would waver for one millisecond, until sometime this fall I came
across ­ I don’t remember how ­ a leaflet put out by some
anti-abortion group.

I was smug and secure that my beliefs were the right ones, so I
really had no reason to read it. But I was bored, and I like to
read things when I’m bored, so I opened it up.

Over the next half hour I read about two women who’d had
abortions and later regretted their choice. I sympathized, but two
of my best friends have had abortions, and as far as their lives
are concerned, it was the best choice they could make, so the
women’s testimony didn’t faze me.

I read about the various methods used in the actual abortion
procedure. Some of the ones listed included injecting saline into
the amniotic fluid (the fetus suffocates to death), sucking out the
brain tissue with a syringe before removal of the fetus, and
breaking arms and legs apart and removing the fetus in pieces.

I had never come across anything like this in my life. My brain
didn’t seem to be accepting this new information. It was like one
of those dreams where nothing sinks in and you are powerless to
react. My face was a mask.

I turned the page and saw something which I’d never seen and
hope to never see again. It was a close-up photograph. A doctor was
holding, between his thumb and forefinger, the tiny feet of an
aborted fetus.

The soles of the feet, from heel to the 10 miniature toes, were
no more than half an inch long, but they were already perfectly
formed. They looked like a doll’s feet. Only instead of being made
of melted plastic, they were made of flesh and tiny bones the size
of dental floss. They used to be alive.

Tears seemed to come from a fountain of nowhere. For the first
time in my life, I saw the anti-abortion side in absolute clarity.
Looking at those half-inch feet, I could picture a scaled-down
version of my own size nines. It was so simple. Here were a pair of
feet that would never get a chance to walk. They used to be
alive.

Abortion is life’s cruelest quandary. To force a woman to carry
a child, to reduce her will to insignificance in the prospect of
becoming a breeding ground went against everything I stood for. Yet
all I could do was cry and stare at those perfectly formed little
feet that used to be alive and thank God I’ve never been pregnant.
Because at that moment I realized that there just isn’t a right
thing.

The abortion issue has been debated to death. All I would like
to do is cut through with some simple facts:

* Medically speaking, abortions are now safer and easier to
attain than they’ve ever been.

* Legally speaking, a woman’s right to abortion is protected
under the Constitution.

What’s left? Moral judgments aside, one must realize that
enacting any law telling a woman what she can or cannot do within
the limits of her own body is nothing short of imposing. We must
see abortion for what it really is ­ an intensely personal and
private decision.

Anyone can cajole, plead, threaten, condemn, demean and even
call a woman "fucked-up" and "in psychodementia," but when it comes
down to the wire, it’s a decision a woman makes on her own. We must
all realize that personal affronts solve nothing and help no one.
No one can change the fact that existing laws and medical
technology leave it completely up to the individual.

The only decision to be made is what consequences the woman can
live with, because they will be on her head. The decision is hers.
Choosing an option she can live with is in her hands.

Mackesy is a first-year pre-communication studies student.