As a former pro-life, conservative Christian woman, I want to explain why I’ve changed my views on abortion. If you’re a woman against abortion, hear me out.

To the Conservative Christian Woman Against Abortion,

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and to consider my point of view.

I grew up in a conservative Christian church. If anyone had told me, when I was 15, that I would have a blog in which I write about the absolute need for abortion, and the need to uphold Roe v. Wade, I’d have been deeply offended. As a teen, I wrote anti-abortion poetry (I’ll use the terms “pro-life” and “anti-abortion” in the way I see as most honest—the poetry was 100% about the evils of abortion, and 0% about the goodness of seeing babies born, so I think “anti-abortion” is fair). I volunteered at Pregnancy Resources. I expected that, when I was old enough, I’d picket the abortion clinics.

So what turned me from such a stalwart Christian soldier to a pro-choice blogger? It started with the numbers.

Abortion by the Numbers

You know about numbers. Between 600,000 and 700,000 unborn murdered per year. Per year. The term “holocaust” did not seem dramatic or exaggerated to me. And let me come clean about my current views: I do genuinely believe that life begins at conception. I’m not a “mass of cells” kind of pro-choicer. I’m with Carl Sagan in that if microbial life exists on Mars, we must let it develop. So if I think single-celled life forms are sovereign over the planet on which they evolved… how could I possibly not believe that human life beings at conception?

I can’t.

So yes. I do believe that life begins at conception. I understand that it may not be sentient, human life, but it’s life, in my understanding. And I value it. You and I still have that much in common.

But, back to the numbers. Over 92% of abortions are the result of unplanned, unwanted pregnancies. I searched and searched for contradictory stats, but I found none. Out of every 100 abortions, 92 occur because of an unwanted pregnancy. Only 8% happen because of things like severe illness, birth defects and fetal deaths. Growing up, I’d have heard this as, “Nearly all abortions are because of women who just can’t be bothered with the inconvenience of a human life.” But now… I hear something different.

Creating an Abortion-Free World

Now, I hear, “We could eliminate nearly all abortions if we could stop unwanted pregnancies from happening.” Think about it for a moment. If effective birth control were accessible (truly accessible) throughout the country, the abortion rate could drop by around 92%. Let me emphasize that. We could cut the abortion rate down to a little over 8% of what it currently is. And not in some utopian fantasy future. We have all of the technology needed to make this happen immediately. If we wanted to, we could send contraceptives out like the polio vaccine. We could teach students in every public high school how to use them properly. The only thing that’s standing in the way are the same people—largely conservative Christian groups—who claim that they want to end abortion.

And let’s just get this out of the way. These groups don’t want to end abortion. They want to make abortion illegal. They could cut the abortion rate by almost 92% by making reliable contraceptives available everywhere. Instead, they want to increase the demand for abortions while making safe and legal abortions inaccessible. So we’d get a dramatic increase in unsafe abortions, and an even greater increase in unwanted children. I’m not seeing a silver lining to this situation.

Is the Punishment Worth the Cost?

The only possible upside I can imagine pro-life advocates seeing is that people either…

1. Won’t be having sex in ways that disagree with lawmakers’ religions
2. Will be being punished physically, financially and emotionally for having sex in ways that disagree with lawmakers’ religions

That’s it. That’s the only “good” thing pro-life conservative Christians get out of defunding Planned Parenthood and overturning Roe v. Wade.

Is it worth it?

I grew up believing that abortion is literally murder. Women who had abortions had murdered their own children. So the idea that using a contraceptive was as bad as committing murder (genocide, as my church called it) was hard to accept. If some sins are worse than others, surely murder is worse than using birth control or having unwed sex. And if all sins are equal, surely it’s better to commit the sin that does not end a human life… right?

It was this realization that got me to start critically re-examining everything I’d been taught about abortion, contraception, and women’s health.

Women’s Health?

As a teen, I was taught, as you probably were, that “a woman’s right to choose” is just pro-choice code for “a woman’s desire to kill her baby.” I also heard that the entire idea that abortion and contraceptives are someone women’s healthcare is just insulting to women. But then, after a full seven years of suffering from debilitating ovarian cysts, a gynocologist prescribed me birth control. I was 18, so no one could stop me from taking it. And I knew as long as I didn’t use it for sex, it couldn’t really be a sin.

And it changed my life.

When you’re freed from a chronic condition, the entire world opens up. I could hold down a job. I could even go to college full-time (I’d been home schooled, so absences due to ruptured cysts weren’t an issue). It made me wonder about the relationship between women’s health and contraceptives. Could caring for a woman’s reproductive system really be about a woman’s overall health, like the pro-abortion people insisted?

And Then, There’s the Anti-Woman Aspect

And what about childbirth? I’d been taught during my home school debate class that the danger of childbirth in modern society was virtually non-existent. Furthermore, abortion is far more dangerous to a woman’s life than childbirth. But, again, the data told a different story. I searched for answers that supported what I believed. I thought for sure the actual scientific studies would prove that the idea of pregnancy and childbirth being dangerous was just pro-abortion propaganda.

But it wasn’t. Turns out, the female body simply wasn’t designed to endure one pregnancy after the next, year after year. Unless, that is, you believe that the female body is a disposable, biological incubator. Which, granted, wasn’t a foreign idea up through the 20^th century. Women dying in childbirth or due to complications from unending pregnancies was a pretty common way for women to die in civilized societies

The more I heard things like, “But what woman wouldn’t want to give her life for her child,” and the less I heard things like, “Shouldn’t women get to choose whether or not to become pregnant,” the more I realized something else.

Pro-Life Really Is Anti-Woman

You simply can’t be anti-abortion and anti-contraception without also being anti-woman. In the midst of these severe, sweeping anti-abortion bills, where’s the legislation demanding an immediate paternity test of every child born to an unwed mother, so that the father’s wages can be automatically garnished for child support? Why is it so difficult to hold a father legally responsible for his careless, ungodly actions? Why is that majority of blame placed on the mother?

I mean, you know why. At least, if you spend a chunk of your childhood in the conservative Christian church circuit you do. You learned it when you were 14 and told that if you wore certain clothing you were encouraging sinful thoughts in the minds of the men and boys around you. Women tempt men. Women kill their babies. Women make these sinful choices. So we’ve got to limit women’s choices. I tried not to question it growing up, but I can’t help questioning it now.

The Fictional Abortion

The most damaging fantasy I was ever fed was that bad women have abortions because they have rampant, casual, careless sex. Growing up in a conservative, Evangelical Christian church, I can tell you that this was presented as the gospel truth. Maybe you heard it as well. Now and then I’ll happen to run across an old friend on social media who—in her mid-30s—still believes that the women who have abortions use it as casual birth control. They just have abortions every month, right?

This belief comes, in part, from an intentional blurring of abortions with things like Plan B and even—believe it or not—the birth control pill. Birth control pill, abortion pill, it’s all the same. Until I got to college (yes, college), I genuinely believed what the authority figures in my life had told me: That the birth control pill automatically aborts pregnancies. You may think I’m just really stupid… but I know too many intelligent women who believe the same thing. It’s not stupidity. It’s just willful ignorance.

In fact, Ohio Representative John Becker also believes that the birth control pill is an abortifacient. What’s really interesting is that he also seems to believe that it’s possible to create genuine contraceptives, and feels that his bill will force “the drug manufacturers” to “reformulate” the Pill so it is a contraceptive instead of an abortion pill.

This is a grown man writing some of our nation’s laws.

Why We Believe in the Fictional Abortion

This is not a case of stupidity. It’s—as I said—willful ignorance. Who knows why John Becker chooses to believe what he does? I know why I believed it. I have a guess as to why many other women in conservative circles, believe it. We don’t want to be kicked out of the only community we know. It’s just so much easier to side against those hyper-sexual, brainwashed women who kill their babies than it is to risk learning that we’re the ones maintaining those high abortion numbers.

Becker and his pals are doing everything they can, not to end abortion, but to take away a woman’s option to decide whether or not she has children, as well as how and when she has them. In the process, they’re eliminating all other types of women’s healthcare. “A woman’s right to choose” does not mean “A woman’s right to kill her baby.” It means a woman’s right to chose when, if, and with whom to have children. When you take away contraceptives, you take away a woman’s right to choose.

These Bills Will Stop Your Friends’ Abortions, Too

Here’s something else to think about. These bills aren’t just aimed at the “bad” kind of abortion that your fellow church members rail against. They work against all the kinds of abortion that your matronly church-goers (quietly) approve of, too.

Unless you’re in a very extreme, closed Christian community, you almost certainly know someone who’s had a D&C. This is when a doctor removes tissue from the womb. The “tissue,” in these cases, being a fetus—or the remains of one. This usually only happens when doctors suspect that the fetus isn’t viable, that the woman will soon miscarry, or when she has not miscarried after fetal death. It’s also done after miscarriage to remove any pieces that weren’t expelled already. The most anti-abortion women I’ve ever met, would talk openly about their D&Cs, their daughters’ D&Cs, their friends daughters’ D&Cs and so on. That includes instances where the death of the fetus was not confirmed, but just suspected.

These bills would limit or prevent those, too.

Do you know someone struggling to conceive? These bills could even affect her access to healthcare after a miscarriage or missed miscarriage.

The Last Ugly Truth About Abortion

This is something that we just don’t talk about. Conservatives won’t talk about it because it undermines their position. And liberals rarely talk about it because they fear it will undermine theirs as well. But here it is: No one wants to have an abortion.

If I went by what religious leaders told me, or by what some really pro-abortion activists say, I’d never guess that. Both sides seem to want to make it appear that women just love them some abortions. But if you take away nothing else, please understand this:

No one gets a positive pregnancy test and rejoices that now she gets to go to the abortion clinic and get that abortion she’s been wanting.

I mean, maybe there’s someone out there severely afflicted with Munchhausen syndrome who kind of gets off on having invasive surgery or outpatient medical procedures, but… I’m kind of skeptical that even that type of person would enjoy an abortion.

Women want abortions that way someone suffering from appendicitis wants an appendectomy. No one really wants an appendectomy, but if you tried to make them illegal, the entire nation would be in an uproar. Why? Because having an appendectomy is better than the alternative. We want them to remain legal. We want skilled doctors performing them. And we hope we never have to get one.

How to Really End Abortion

Now, I’m sure you think there’s a huge ethical difference between removing a bad appendix and removing a developing fetus or fertilized egg. And that’s where we get back to the defunding of women’s health centers and the bills that would make obtaining contraceptives virtually impossible for most women. At the moment, there’s not much we can do to prevent appendicitis. But we can eliminate nearly all demand for abortion.

If everyone got behind making abortion unnecessary, instead of making it illegal, we could watch the abortion rate plummet. And I don’t mean watch it decrease, like we’ve been doing over the last decade or so. I mean cut it by like 90%. That’s more than you’ll ever get by banning abortion, I promise you.

I can’t accept the fact that we have all the means necessary to make unwanted pregnancies (and abortion overall) an absolute rarity, and we’re choosing to make abortion both necessary and illegal instead.

In Closing

By now, even if you don’t agree with me, hopefully you see why I’ve changed my stance so dramatically. I want something better than ending abortion.

I want to end the need for abortion.

I want a world where women can choose whether or not to become pregnant.

And if that chosen pregnancy fails for some reason, I want her to be allowed to take medical action to save her life.

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Postscript

This is a much more personal post than I typically write for The American Spinster. As I’ve watched the news over the past couple of months, I’ve felt angry, of course, but also so frustrated that the issue of denying women contraceptives seems to have taken a backseat to the issue of denying women abortions. I absolutely understand the reason, and I’m not saying the focus on abortion is in any way wrong. But, knowing women who are against abortion, and knowing that they support eliminating access to safe, reliable contraceptives, has put a weight on my mind I didn’t think I could remove without using this platform to reach out to those women.

I wrote this open letter, as the title states, to conservative Christian women against abortion. But, in a small way, I wrote it for the women who support abortion, too. I want everyone to be able to understand where the anti-abortion Christian woman might be coming from. I wish everyone could understand the level of information control that happens in some small, religious groups, and how it affects our choices.

If you support abortion, please keep this in mind next time you talk to a woman who doesn’t. Some gentle education usually does a lot more than angry condemnation, however genuine and deserved it may be.

Thank you all so much for reading this and considering my viewpoint.

Please note that this article deals almost exclusively with the healthcare needs of cis women, and does not address the needs of trans women, trans men, or intersex people. It also does not address the differences in healthcare and medical treatment across the racial spectrum. While these are vital topics very worthy of discussion, they are excluded here simply because there is only so much I can cover in a single, one-topic, 700-word blog. I intend to address the needs of all of my spinsterly readers over time; this is simply the first of many articles on the broad topic of women’s health.

There are two major obstacles women face when obtaining healthcare. The first is accessibility, in terms of both geographic availability and affordability. The second, which I’ll be focusing on today, is a lack of knowledge about women’s healthcare needs.

What Is Women’s Health?

When you think of the term “women’s health,” you probably think of reproductive health, mammograms, and the yearly OB/GYN visit. If you have an insurance plan, it probably covers one yearly gynecological exam for women, in which pelvic exam, manual breast tumor check, and pap smear are done. If you are a middle-aged women, a mammogram every three years is generally included as well. If you have children, some portion of those expenses will be covered, and possibly even fertility treatments. And that’s pretty much the beginning, middle, and end of women’s healthcare as most people know it.

From this, a woman might get the idea that her health only differs from the standard of a man’s health in the fact that she has a uterus and breasts. She would be mistaken, but it’s no wonder we think this way. For decades the medical profession considered women’s healthcare needs to be identical to men’s, save for a few additional female-only issues (menstruation, childbirth, and – for a while – hysteria) . Thanks to a recent shift in thinking (and some 1990s legislation), we’re finally learning that the biological differences between men and women affect much more than we previously imagined. Sadly, old beliefs don’t die easy, and many women grow up believing that when it comes to medicine and healthcare what’s good for the gander is good for the goose.

Why is This Harmful?

In day-to-day life, these medical assumptions mean that women are often misdiagnosed, and that healthcare professionals often ignore female-specific symptoms of common conditions. For example, heart attacks typically manifest differently in men and women, as do a list of other conditions, including anxiety. Additionally, health education is lacking in these areas, meaning girls and women are taught only what applies to the ‘standard,’ which is men’s health. The result of this poor education (in doctors and lay people) is that women are often not receiving the same quality in care. And on top of this, they usually don’t know how to ask for the care they need.

What do women need?

Now that we’ve covered what women’s health is not, what do we as women need from our healthcare?

The short answer is that we need healthcare providers and health plans that considers how our physical and mental well-being are affected by our biological makeup, including our sex. And we can obtain that by:

• becoming educated
  

Pick up a subscription to a women’s health magazine. Buy a book dedicated to women’s whole health (including – but not exclusively – reproductive health). Learn about all of the things you weren’t told in your high school health and biology classes.

• finding a good woman’s health doctor

Your knowledge will only take you so far by yourself. You also need to find is a doctor that listens to you, takes your biology and life situation into account, and believes you – regardless of their gender.

• taking a firm stance when it comes to your health

Several studies and editorials have shown that women’s pain is seen as less severe than men’s, So rather than allowing a doctor’s dismissal to make you second guess yourself, it’s up to you to stand up for yourself. If you can, seek out a doctor who takes your observations seriously. But if switching doctors isn’t a possibility, it is imperative that you become your own advocate.

Don’t wait until sickness strikes at 11pm on a weekend to make these changes. Do it right now. If you’re an adult, no one can be more responsible for your health than you yourself. Don’t depend on a medical system that’s woefully behind the times. Be your own advocate starting this very moment.

The next articles will look into how to find a good doctor or women’s healthcare center, whatever your income level or state of insurance/non-insurance may be, as well as how to support women’s health.

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This is a question that keeps coming up time and time again as we continue to wade through the waters of women’s health. Now the obvious answer is “Yes, someone can believe in whatever ideas they want to, regardless of how well they line up or how severely they contradict one another.” But the underlying question is whether or not it’s ethical to seek to end legal abortion while simultaneously trying to prevent access to contraception.

Definitions

A contraceptive is a device (such as an IUD or the birth control pill) used to prevent conception. Note that conception is the fertilization of an egg and occurs before pregnancy.

The Issue

The basis for this issue stems from religious doctrine and its interpretation. A large number of Christians are opposed to abortions because they believe that the human fetus (sometimes even a fertilized human egg) must be seen with the same rights and personhood as a post-birth child. The Catholic church also formally denounces abortion for the same reason. Additionally, the Catholic church is – perhaps famously – against the use of contraceptives among its members, as it believes sex and reproduction should never be uncoupled. Many other protestant churches and church groups are also against the free or low-cost distribution of contraceptives, believing that it will encourage non-married people to have extra-marital sex, which is accepted as a sin throughout Christianity and other religions.

Things start to get muddy, however, when one considers that the same freedom of religion that allows these and all other groups to practice their religions and engage in or abstain from whatever practices they choose also allows others to do the same. Under U.S. civil law, it is legal to use contraception and to engage in consensual sex with any consenting adult. It should also be noted that abortion is also legal in all 50 United States.

Some sobering facts:

• 50% of pregnancies in the United States are unplanned.
• 43% of unplanned pregnancies end in abortion.
• Nearly all abortions (statistics vary, but most appear at over 90%) are the result of unwanted pregnancies.

Many pro-life politicians and other advocates strongly believe that illegalizing abortion is the best way to prevent it, despite undeniable evidence that –  throughout world history as well as in the relatively recent history of this country – abortions will continue whether it is legal or not. Illegal abortions will simply be far more dangerous to the woman.

This brings many who are both pro-life and anti-contraception to a difficult place. If the overwhelming number of abortions occur from unwanted pregnancies, finding a way to reduce or eliminate the occurrence of unwanted pregnancies would be a sure way to reduce the number of abortions. The good news is that there is a way. And unlike banning abortions, this solution has never yet been tried on a large scale, so there’s significant hope that it might actually work.

The solution is making contraceptives easily accessible to everyone. Those who have religious conflicts of interest will find that they must decide which they, their religion, and their God finds worse: murder (as many pro-life people believe abortion to be) or allowing others to have sex in ways that they themselves are not permitted. You’d think the answer would be obvious, and yet for decades religious groups have actively fought against the disbursement of free, low-cost, and sometimes even full-cost contraceptives.

So can you be pro-life and anti-contraception? Certainly, but not without engaging in outright hypocrisy, and not without actively creating a need for the very procedure you’re so opposed to.

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No, for the very last time, you are not paying me to have sex.

Most of you probably remember several years ago when Rush Limbaugh declared that Sandra Fluke was a ‘slut’ who wanted taxpayers to pay her to have sex. Fluke was making the case for contraceptives to be covered by healthcare, which would seem like a no-brainer when one considers the enormous cost of raising a child, which can be subsidized by taxpayers through programs like WIC, Medicaid, and other welfare programs for children of low-income families. But the obvious cost-savings of subsidizing contraceptives over children isn’t the point of this article. The point is that the idea – which somehow persists – that women receiving low-cost or free contraceptives are being paid to have sex goes so far past a logical fallacy that it’s about to come back around the other side and pass it by again.

But if you’ve got some friends, co-workers, or family members who like to talk about how responsible XX chromosome owners are using their tax dollars to fund their sinful escapades, simply reply with one of these 4, easily-digestible points.

1. If women on birth control are prostitutes, so are mothers receiving government aid.

Every mother has had sex (though not always consensually). So how is it that a woman who takes contraceptives to prevent pregnancy is being paid for sex, while a mother on government assistance isn’t?

2. Women on birth control aren’t always having sex.

Anyone who’s pregnant must have had sex, but due to the nature of hormone based contraceptives and devices such as IUDs, women use contraceptives whether they’re having sex or not. Some women use birth control for reasons completely unrelated to sex.

3. No one is being paid.

I’ll repeat that: no one is being paid. Being able to obtain low-cost or free birth control is not the same as being paid. If you think it is, trying paying Mr. Limbaugh with pill packs and see if he accepts them as currency.

4. Even if they were being paid, it wouldn’t be for having sex.

I want to stress this: the women using contraceptives aren’t being paid (though the pharmaceutical companies providing them are… does that make them sluts?). However, even if we were to imagine that receiving subsidized contraceptives was somehow the equivalent of receiving money, women would be receiving that money to either a) not get pregnant if/when they have sex anyway or b) treat a hormonal imbalance or other disease or disorder.

So next time your outspoken uncle tries to talk about how women are making a living off of subsidized birth control, you can kindly let him know why he’s been misinformed.

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Two studies have come to light in the past year that have made a splash in women’s health. And the controversy they’ve generated has opened a door into the hushed history of birth control…

The Studies

1. What Women Have Been Saying All Along

The first resulted in data that simply showed that depression was higher in women and teen girls taking oral contraceptives than the general population, and suggested a causal link. This caused a stir because oral contraceptives have been having this effect on women since literally the very first trials on the pill, yet was not confirmed by scientists until over 50 years later. Even more upsetting is that no new technology or novel approach was used to draw this conclusion; all of the evidence has been there all along.

Understandably, this can feel both vindicating and upsetting to women who have suffered these side effects. Often doctors neglect to inform patients of potential side effects such as these, and even when it becomes clear the medication is having an adverse effect, many times pharmacists and other healthcare professionals either deny that they exist or insist that they’ll go away. The fortunate patients are able to switch to a different type of pill or find another form of contraception that meets their needs. The rest simply endure, either believing it’s all in their heads, or accepting that the side effects are preferable to an unwanted pregnancy.

Now, at last the medical community acknowledges what many women have know for decades. Yet who wouldn’t feel some resentment that it too so long to finally study and admit it?

 

2. When Men Are Take More Seriously

On the heels of this study comes information from a clinical trial of a birth control injection for men. It should come as no surprise to doctors, researchers, or women who have taken the pill, but many men in the test group experienced the typical side effects, including changes in mood and loss of libido. What did come as a shock to some was the fact that 20 (of a group of 320) participants stated that these side effects were unbearable, concerns for the participants’ safety were raised, and the trial was halted.

Now, if a number of participants refuse to continue, it’s not uncommon for a clinical trial to be suspended. Nor is it a bad thing that researchers took these side effects seriously enough to stop the trial to ensure the safety of the subjects. However, what’s leading to outrage in some is the fact that it appears that when men experience exact same things women have been complaining about for 50 years, researchers may be either indefinitely suspending research and production or possibly even going back to the drawing board.

Let’s be clear – no one, male or female – should have to suffer through these side effects, particularly if they can be avoided. Most women feeling upset about this development aren’t calling for men to suffer. The problem is that this is yet another (and disturbingly modern) example of women’s health being ignored or dismissed while men’s health is not.

The History

All of this gets even more damning when we examine the somewhat sordid history of the development of the pill. In addition to some wildly unethical treatment of (unknowing) test subjects, we’ll find that at the outset an injection or pill contraceptive was considered for men. However, the idea was scrapped due – in part – to the assumption that men wouldn’t tolerate the side effects. The female birth control pill continued under the (correct) assumption that women (who have always been legally and socially held responsible for the children that often result from sex) would accept them. Essentially, if it gave women control over their own reproduction, they would tolerate the side effects. Men, presumably, would not.

We should take note that the original birth control pill, Enovid, contained up to ten times the amount of hormones needed to prevent ovulation, leading to more frequent and more severe side effects. Since then, the pill has been greatly improved by cutting down the dosage. Even so, as our first study shows, many women still experience side effects that can dramatically reduce their quality of life.

The Fallout

So, why are women angry about all this? Because many of us feel that this is just one more example of a problem not being considered a problem until it’s something men have to deal with. This is the result of a patriarchal (note, not “male-dominated” but “patriarchal”) medical establishment within a patriarchal society that dismisses the suffering of women but actively addresses the suffering of men.

The Future

What does this mean for the future of birth control? There are three possible outcomes of the suspension of the clinical trial for men’s contraceptive injections.

The first is that the trial will resume and men will be told that they must deal with these symptoms and potential dangers just as women have (I don’t think that’s very likely).

The second is that the trial will never be renewed and this method of contraception will be abandoned. This will clearly lead to anger and resentment as women will still be faced with the often physically unpleasant task of being responsible for contraception.

And the third and possibly most inflammatory outcome is that the drug may be re-designed to minimize the side effects in the male injection. Imagine how women who have endured depression and the loss of sex drive for years will feel if it turns out there was a fix for this all along, but no one looked into until men began to suffer as well.

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