Apparently a great deal of my readers are avidly pro-life, which comes as no surprise to me.

So on my last post I received a lot of comments reading, simply put: Abortion is murder.

Let’s imagine that tomorrow Abortion becomes illegal. What, then, would be the penalty to the doctor who performs the abortion and the mother who requests one? Shall they be given a life sentence? A manslaughter charge of ten years? Negligent homicide (which hardly seems appropriate, as it’s not negligence), a misdemeanor charge? If it is truly murder, a mere fine seems insufficient.

What do you think?

I am stranded somewhere between being pro-choice and pro-life. This is a tenuous position to be in, but there I am.

I had two unplanned pregnancies that ended in the light of my life and the breath in my prayers being born. The first pregnancy showed my husband being laid off from his job a little bit in, us having to scramble to find somewhere to live and some way to support ourselves. I won’t go into extreme detail as this is not a personal blog, but suffice it to say that we were strapped for cash, living hand to mouth, and bad off. Very bad off. The second pregnancy we were still in a transitory position when it came to housing. The husband was again without consistent work. Things were still hand to mouth (and still are). So when I see a statistic that says that over 90% of women who had abortions ascribed failure to provide for a child/pay for a pregnancy as their primary reason to abort, I sympathize.

It is terrifying to bring a child into this world, even more so when one asks “where is my next meal coming from” and “how much are diapers again?” Now add into that the physical and emotional rigors of childbearing, instability in intimate relationships- and what do you have? A cocktail for disaster. Any time I am asked I will be frank about the physical symptoms of pregnancy, the strain it puts on the father of the child as well as the mother, the fact that labor and delivery while not the end of the world are not easy. There is an insurmountable psychological impact to pregnancy and childbirth that MUST be observed.

That is why any time I hear someone say, “why can’t the woman just put the baby up for adoption” I cringe. Not to mention that women who are not Caucasian will have a harder time getting parents for their child, and women who have done drugs or drank alcohol before they were aware they were pregnant will also have a harder time finding a family for their child. Ask a poor black woman with no intimate family to afford her who innocently drank alcohol a few times before realizing she was pregnant to just “have the baby and give it up.” Have it? With whom footing the bills? And to whom shall she give it? The overburdened foster system? What if the baby has permanent defects from the alcohol? She’s got no way to know.

When I found out I was pregnant with my son my first thought was, “dear God just undo this.” I was in no emotional or economic shape to give birth to and take care of a child. I had no way to know if we’d have insurance to pay for my care, and we were still in the process of paying off our uninsured delivery of our first child. Have another baby? In my state? With the state of jobs in our area? With no home to live in? With no money to buy healthy food to eat?

There was no way that I would abort. I knew from the second I suspected a pregnancy that I loved this child- but part of the reason I DIDN’T want my child was my love for him. I didn’t want him brought into the kind of life we were struggling through.

And that is why I am pro-choice. Because unless YOU, YOU YOURSELF are willing to take a woman’s child into your own home and raise it yourself, you’ve no right to make that decision for her. Is the unborn child a real life, imbued with soul and breath? That is another thing to be argued about. But consider embryos that implant into a woman’s fallopian tubes. Those are aborted without a second thought, because there is no hope of them being viable. If the woman carries them past the first trimester she will die of internal bleeding. What about the amount of miscarriages that happen? Were all of those sacred life? And if so, why would God allow a God-fearing couple who desperately wants that child to endure such pain?

These are questions we MUST ask ourselves if we enter into the abortion debate. But the greatest question of all we must ask is whom shall we love? The unborn, or the struggling mother? Whom must we embrace? The unreachable, or she who stands outside our door? Whom must we pray for in whispers and moans? Those who are with Father God, or those who must remain on this planet, within our reach?

Ask yourself that. And ask yourself if you were with her, at her side, holding her hand, wiping her tears, and she simply could not bear the thought of bringing her child into this world of pain and distress- would you still judge?

Or would you land with me, somewhere in the gray land between choice and life, choosing to embrace the life that we can see and touch and bear with.

Labels make my head hurt, and thus I rarely use them on myself.  But I realize that it can at times be confusing for people reading my blog to get a clear read on who I am.  There are times where people state feeling confused by what appear to be contradictory views, or times when an assumption is made that I clearly am (A) when in truth I’m closer to (B).

So I will try to clear the waters.  Perhaps I’ll only muddle them.

In any case, I’ll try to be clear.

I am an Anabaptist Christian.  My parents were Mennonite, my grandparents a mixture of Mennonite and Amish and my family tree, tracing back, goes straight to the Anabaptist Reformation.  I am proud and jealous of my heritage and wouldn’t have anyone take it from me.  It does still apply to who I am- not just in doctrinal beliefs but in lifestyle.  While I as a person don’t dress the way conservative Mennonite women do, I still home cook meals, I stay at home with my kids, I keep a tidy house and my husband and I live very small and simply.  This is who I am.

I am politically Liberal, which may seem like a contradiction to the above.  Is it, really?  I don’t think so.  While I would caution Christians to live a lifestyle of holiness and righteousness (because of who I am religiously) I also believe that Freedom is the greatest gift of America, and I jealously guard that as well.  We are all afforded civil rights, and the government becoming overly involved in legislating personal behaviors is a dangerous and horrifying prospect.  I believe that women should be afforded choice, that gay people should be able to marry, and that industry should be regulated. Why do I believe these things?  Because while I may have a personal theology and morality that dictates my life and my choice, not everyone shares it, and those who don’t believe as I do should still be given autonomy so long as no one is hurt.  Laws are about protection and preservation- not morality.

I also believe that without the commons (those things that belong to everyone- police, fire departments, roads, security) society falls apart.  The taxes we pay are what make this great country possible.  I think that government has failed us, by and large, by not maintaining that which needs to be maintained and harboring false priorities.  Which is why I’m an independent voter- because neither party has been fully responsible or taken responsibility for their failings.  Both parties are guilty of back room politics and finger pointing and trying to shift blame, and neither can win my full affection.

So that is that.

How many women whose eyes will touch this post have benefitted, in some way, from Women’s Suffrage?  How many prize their right to vote, enjoy wearing blue jeans, are enamored of the fact that they can stay home with their babies or choose to continue careers or never have babies at all if they don’t want to?  How many feel stronger as a result of their rights?  Feel validated and taken care of by their country?

Every woman, I would hope.  Because the rights we all recieve as humans in a free society are one of God’s greatest gifts.  God gave us free will, and in America God’s gift of free will has been translated into free enterprise and civil rights.

Yet…  How many women reading this blog post also mourn the rigidity of marriage laws?  How many have a sister or a friend who loves another woman?  How many are women who themselves are in love with a person of the same gender?

My word of caution to all women who enjoy equity under the law is to not become complacent.  We, blessed as we are with our own rights, must not forsake the sisterhood.  Yes, there is a sisterhood.  There is shared knowledge and shared pain, there is shared desire and shared regret.  We are all one body as sisters under God and under the law.  We must stand together.  Even as Christians we must remember Christ’s call to love and not forsake the sisterhood of believers-

We are humanity.  We must muddle together through the dark of night and the quiet of unspoken bias.  Every woman who cherishes her rights under the law must turn to those who are not considered equal under laws elsewhere and those who are not considered equal here at home, and lift each other up.

Today I was listening to the radio when an odd guest came on- the leader of the KKK.  Unfortunately I didn’t get to hear most of the interview because it was lunchtime, and thus I was distracted with the kids and getting food on the table and making the day continue to run smoothly.

Yet, as in all times when my body is involved in routine movements, my mind disengaged enough that I started down this line of thought.  I thought, first, of a few days ago when in a conversation with my father he mentioned that the welfare system has “destroyed black society”, a statement which seemed so empirical as to give me no reply.  I don’t like entering into a debate in which I feel crippled by my own lack of information, so at the time I said nothing.

But my irritation with the statement hasn’t faded over time.  For one, the statement seems incomplete.  He meant “black society in America” and it’s obvious given the context in which it was made, but even so…  I think that people too often assume that the whole of the “black experience” (another phrase I find irritating) hinges on the black experience in America. That and they too often say “black society” when they truly mean the inner city- two things that are wildly different.  Not all black people live in the inner city and not everyone in the inner city is black.  So let’s please keep those things separate.

That isn’t the whole of my irritation.  The implications as well as the overall lack of information they portray is what truly gets to me.  So lets, just for “fun” (by “fun” I mean sorrow inducing meditation, but whatever…) go over the history of the “black experience” in America.  First, black people are brought over on slave ships to be exposed to conditions worse than what we put cattle through.  They are worked to the bone, beaten and raped, subjugated, barred from learning basic skills, starved, and have I mentioned the beatings and raped?  Women would stand up to defend a stray dog being stoned in the street, but not a black man.

When the obvious injustice of this treatment was recognized and black people were given personhood- and note, by personhood I literally mean being identified as people- what were they given to correct this injustice?  These people, battered and beaten, barred from ever having so much as learned to write their names, were given a donkey, some papers and some land.  How were they expected to start to mete out a living?  And do you think their neighbors, the people who had been beating and raping them a year previous, would give them a pittance of help?  Do you imagine they were given years of free tutelage, invited over for dinners, loaned seed crop?  Perhaps some of them were, but for the most part I am not surprised by the fact that they banded together in shared misery and poverty, desperately trying to make the most of their meager circumstances.  At least they had their freedom.

But look at their situation honestly- these black communities are desperate and impoverished.  They have little more than the clothes on their backs.  They are surrounded by white people who have inherited wealth and circumstance.  Even the poor bakers and blacksmiths have inherited their trade- they have something to build wealth on.  Black people have a mule and the derision of the white people who still, at that point, felt that something had been stolen from them.

That divide has yet to be closed.  I refuse to believe it.  One can say that the white people in America built what they had from nothing- but those people came into the states with their health, their determination, their personhoood, their education- whereas the blacks were starting at less than zero.  It is incredible that they were given as much as they were, considering the bitterness on the part of the south, but even so…

Can anyone say that it was enough- not enough to assuage our own guilt, but enough to birth equity?  I don’t think so.

Do you?

“So the church and state are separate… next thing you know they’ll be outlawing religion entirely.”

“So women want to vote… next thing you know they’ll have caucuses of crying babies.”

“So black people want civil rights… next thing you know we’ll be giving them to cattle.”

And on, and on, until, “so gay people want to get married. Next thing you know they’ll be marrying dogs.”

The sick and twisted irony of all of this is that the first one- outlawing religion- is one that is still felt oh so many years later. So I don’t doubt that when gay marriage inevitably is allowed, people will continue to fear that there will be framed marriage certificates reading “John Smith” is wed to “Fuzzy”- and it won’t be in an ironic sense.

There is a difference between redefining law and abolishing it completely. Saying that marriage can occur between two consenting adults of legal status instead of between any male and female of legal status is not the same as saying, “marriage is open! Call in the sheep! Anything goes!” Just as separating the church and state didn’t lead to the abolishment of Catholicism outright and women being able to vote doesn’t mean that ANYONE can and black people having equal rights doesn’t mean that dogs do, too.

I understand. It is uncomfortable thinking of law as fluid rather than rigid. The second we realize that law is fluid we start to feel the ground under our feet move. But we also have to understand that it is we as a society who define the land over which law flows. We, as a people, govern our nation. Remember that. So it is we as a people who can say, “okay, Jack and John but not John and Fido.”

And OUR word is law.

For people who believe that we as a society are evil I suppose that’s a scary thought. I, personally, don’t believe that I live in an evil society. Certainly there are problems and certainly there are times when I want to put a pillow over my head and sing myself to sleep, but ultimately I believe that given correct information, comfort, and enough time, all people are capable of doing the right thing. In this case I suppose I have a difference of opinion from a lot of Christians, because I believe the right thing is allowing people to be “affirmed” in their “sin”- but sin is a choice that we all can and do make, to varying impacts, every day. At least sin committed out of love has got one thing right: Love.

Just keep in mind that there is an insurmountable difference between two consenting adults who love each other wishing to be joined in a legally recognized and protected union, and having sexual relations with a beast. There is a difference, a huge difference. The difference is that any sane person can see that regardless of sex, affection between two humans is affection that can be returned in equal parts. Sex, as a result of affection, is not so different regardless of the genders engaging in it. And I do believe that most homosexuals do feel affection for their long-term partners. Sex with animals, on the other hand, is all about lust and control.

Homosexuality is NOT about lust and control.

If you, dear reader, disagree with me on that point I suppose there is no reason to continue the discussion. Just please, talk to a few gay people. Ask them about their hopes and dreams and expectations of life. Ask them the qualities they seek in a partner. See that aside from the gender issue, they aren’t so different from you and I.

Every time gay marriage is mentioned, someone eventually says something along the lines of:

“But think about the children!”

The nuclear family is eroding, family values are plummeting, one can only imagine how the next generation will turn out…

My inevitable response is, “yes, DO think of the children.”

Given the state of affairs in America, shouldn’t every single child that could have a loving family be placed with one? Shouldn’t gay people who want to be parents have that chance? What is better: that a child have no home, or two fathers? Personally, I believe that every family is flawed. Every parent has problems, every relationship has strain. It is impossible to raise a child in an environment where they will be exposed to no pain, no criticism by peers, no sin. There are going to be straight parents who fight and divorce, kids with two sets of parents, kids raised by people who are “less than seemly” to say it simply. Given that fact, I personally would say that anyone who loves a child and wants to raise it should be given the chance, assuming that there is no abuse or potential for deep harm.

I just don’t think that someone being gay is enough harm. What if the parent was straight, but a serial cheater? What if the parent was straight and left the mother of the child for a younger, sluttier model? Is modeling that behavior somehow WORSE than homosexuality?

So I say, please, DO think of the children. And ask yourself if the worst thing a parent does is love another person of the same gender, does that somehow disqualify them from parenthood? What if they love their kids, hold them when they can’t sleep at night, make them homecooked meals, send brownies to the teachers, do their homework with them, hem their pants, and also hold hands with another man? Does the last item make all of the others mean less?

I don’t think it does.

I feel really conflicted about abstinence only sex education.  I feel like young people, especially girls, should be educated about how best to protect their bodies and prevent unwanted pregnancy.  But I also realize the risks involved with sex and the fact that the only guarantee you won’t have a little seven pound “mistake” nine months later is abstinence.  After all- I myself conceived one child while on the pill and another through a diaphragm.  Those little nagging “.01″ percents do exist!

The biggest reason I dislike abstinence only education is that it does a disservice to all of the people out there who chose to abstain out of more than fear.  I believe that teaching abstinence is best is a good thing, but to cheapen sex itself and to make a mockery out of the choices kids should make is a bad thing.  By making it about fear, fear of pregnancy, fear of disease, misinformation in the name of safety… that’s just wrong. Kids shouldn’t make choices out of fear, and I truly believe that given all the right information in a supportive environment, most kids actually do have the ability to make good choices.

There are better reasons to wait to have sex than just fear.  For one, there’s the fact that there is a very clear line between virginity and sexuality.  Once sexuality is awoken, one can’t go back and see the world through virgin eyes.  I won’t go all Victorian on you and talk about the knowledge of the flesh, but there is a clear difference.  I can remember what it was like, to wonder about sex, to wonder about touching, to wonder how certain things would feel, what it would be like to be desired, all of those things.  Now that wonder is gone, and while I don’t miss it, I do think that I made the right choice by waiting for my husband.  There’s also the fact that since I did make the choice I did, I have no memory of being with someone else. My sexuality, in a very real way, belongs to my spouse.  He is the only man to see my adult body totally nude.  He is the only one who knows where to touch and what to say.  Our marriage bed is truly secret.

I don’t feel naive or somehow deprived, when I say that.  I feel proud.  I feel like I have managed something really miraculous, in preserving some of the old ways in my own life.  There is this feeling of sacredness and divinity that is so lost in our culture, in our world, and to be able to keep even a touch of it alive is so worthwhile.

To have sex with someone is to grant them access to your body.  That is not something that should ever be done lightly.  To have sex with someone is also to bond to them, in a way, because the body will form an appetite in a very real way.  Hormones play a game of catch and release, and once your body learns to desire it won’t stop doing so.  In a marriage it’s a good thing, because sexual appetite can keep two people together through the times when anger and obligation blind them to their love- but outside of a marriage it becomes testier.  What happens when you break up, but your body keeps craving?  Do you throw yourself into another relationship just to have sex?  Learn to settle for something less than, just to not crave?

Wait for what is best, my mother would say, don’t just settle for what you can reach.

I agree.

There have been a lot of interesting news stories in the past few days. Interesting, that is, in that they make me want to dig a hole in the backyard and bunker up with my laptop and never see any people ever again.

Or maybe just not for a few days.

First of all I’d like to point out the sickening dichotomy of over 4,000 soldiers being dead on EASTER WEEKEND. Huzzah for the resurrection! Too bad those soldier’s families will have to wait until the End of Days to get their boys and girls back. I say that with more than a touch of irony simply because I feel it’s easy to overlook the significance of that story. For every one of our families hurting, there are dozens more Iraqi families that have been torn apart. For every drop of grief we feel, we in our comfortable homes and comfortable lives, there is a bucket heaped on Iraq. For every nerve ending rubbed raw by our tanking economy there are hopes being killed by the decimation of Iraq’s infrastructure. I could go on, and on, and on, because the biggest story we are missing here is the fact that how WE feel isn’t the only thing that matters.

It’s also about the Iraqi people.

Imagine, for a moment, that we simply took the billions of dollars we’re spending to keep our troops there, and we wrote Iraq a check. We told them, “revitalize the economy that was killed by the sanctions, dug up, and shat on by the war. Build your people some nice homes and schools. Get some doctors in those hospitals.”

Just imagine.

Oh, and by the way, did you all know that Reverend Wright was quoting a WHITE MAN? This makes me that more devoted to Barack Obama, because now not only did he give that beautiful speech, but he COULD have justifiably given the media his middle finger and tell them that they were totally off base- because the “worst” words that Wright said, the “most” inflammatory, weren’t even his own.

I am SO done.

Really.*

(*For like the next four hours until I get bored. I’m a woman.)

It looks like everyone in the blogosphere is talking about Obama’s speech from yesterday. I’ve already done the same elsewhere (link includes full transcript), so I really don’t want to repeat myself here except to say language is power, and by that measure Obama is far more powerful than people credit him.

I do want to talk about race. See, I’m white. I’m not just “Caucasian”, I’m WHITE. The vast majority of my heritage is dutch, and it shows in my pale-as-a-baby’s-bottom skin, the blond hair and blue eyes, the “wholesome beauty” of my features which will never be described as striking. I’m the daughter of a Pastor and a woman whose parents started out as Amish, so I also come from white middle-America Evangelical conservative stock. We didn’t watch the evening news. We listened to Rush Limbaugh.

I also have black cousins. Their mother married a black man in a time when that sort of thing was still rare and rather taboo. I can’t describe the oddness of going to family reunions where a good half of the people were Amish, most of the rest were conservative Mennonite, and here’s me in my punk rock jeans sitting off to the side with my black cousins. People who think that race doesn’t matter or is no longer important are people who were raised in a part of the country where race doesn’t matter. People out in the boondocks see that it does, and how do they see it? Because out here you NOTICE when someone is black. If a black man in a wifebeater with jeans around his ass walks by me, I’m shocked.

I’m shocked, and I’m always worried that my momentary startlement will be interpreted as racism.

I’ve heard lines like, “black people aren’t willing to work,” and “black people are still too full of self-pity to move forward”, and “black people are all full up with anger” from the mouths of men I wouldn’t have thought capable of racism. I’ve heard gentle, loving women say things like, “when I see a black man I cross the street, I don’t know why, I just get afraid”. So there is still this lingering issue of race. That, and there’s fear. As we lose more and more jobs and we see more and more black people and Mexicans walking around our little town, people start to wonder if they’ve got the jobs and the rest of us don’t.

I get angry when people say, “racism is outmoded” or “racism doesn’t matter anymore.” How can you say that? As long as it exists, it matters, and it STILL EXISTS. There are still parts of this country where people see black men standing on a corner and they tell their kids to lock the car doors as they drive by. It matters; it matters and it is still very real.

I have heard more than one man say that if Barack Obama becomes the President, he won’t live to run for a second term.

Oh, yes, it matters.