My Thoughts on Reproductive Rights

“William Strickland Peach, 23-year-old horse trainer, died on March 18, 1936.  An employee of the Hillsboro Hunt club, Mr. Peach sustained what was thought to be minor injuries (broken ribs) three weeks ago when a horse knocked him against a feeding trough.  The injuries proved fatal.  He is survived by his wife, a bride of ten months.”  Review Appeal, March 19, 1936.

I have a framed picture hanging on my hallway wall of him sitting on the fender of a 30-something model car with his 21-year-old wife sitting on his lap.  The picture is dated December 1935.   Though you cannot tell by looking at the picture, the wife is two-months pregnant.

The paternal family, all Methodists, in Peach Hollow, and the maternal family, all Church of Christ, in Boston, Tennessee embraced this widow awaiting the birth of a child.  Dr. B. N. Woodard came from Spring Hill and delivered the baby at the home of her parents, in July of 1936, a half Methodist, half Church of Christ male child of a miracle birth, pampered by two hollows of aunts and uncles and believed to be destined for greatness.

In a chapter from The South Side of Boston, “A Half-orphan” there is a quote from my uncle who said, “Anyone who has 4 grandparents, a mother, six uncles, six aunts, and two hollows of cousins is not a half-orphan.”

The chapter is from a memoir in which an eight-year-old conveys his thoughts on the southern culture of 1944.  He tells about families with 12 and 15 children, women who spend most of their young lives pregnant.  He observes that men hang around the store and go hunting while mothers stay home and feed babies and change diapers.  In his innocence he does not understand the chauvinism of fundamentalist religion and submission of wives to the sexual egoism of the male culture.  He discusses a family who could not have children “because there was something wrong with the woman’s body,” and he heard stories of mothers who did not want babies and gave them to the orphan’s home, and of mothers who did something to make babies not be born.  He instinctively knew this was not good, but concluded in his innocence, “It seems like women ought to do the deciding about how many babies they have.”

He knew that his mother was loved by the community, and she loved him. Though she had no husband, no income, her life was blessed.  Her son was conceived in love in a marriage she shared for ten months.

The story of my birth precluded any thought of abortion.  I, maybe more than anyone, am anti-abortion.  But logically I am a defender of a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy.  I cannot accept the idea that a fertilized egg, a zygote, a cell formed by the union of two gametes, a fertilized ovum, has rights that negate the rights of a woman.  I would question those who use the term pro-abortion, who would criminalize abortion with no exceptions for rape, incest, or life of the mother.  No one is pro-abortion.  I am pro-choice.  I am anti-abortion, but I would defend a woman’s right to make this heart-rending decision.  This is not abortion on demand; this is not taken lightly.  Those who would deny that right are usually the first to emblazon a scarlet letter on the bodice of a dress, and assign some stigma or rejection on the mother of a child born out of wedlock.

I respect opinions you hold based on your interpretation of strongly held religious beliefs.  As a disciple of Christianity, I see Jesus kneeling with a woman caught in adultery, as he challenges the potential stone-casting executioners, saying ”Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.”  There is something harsh, judgmental, and unforgiving in the dialogue on reproductive rights in America today.

In a later book, Random Thoughts Left & Right, in the chapter, “Mind, Heart, and Womb” I wrote the following:

“When I look at my three daughters, my seven grandchildren, a wife I have loved for 47 years, and think about my mother and my grandmother, abortion becomes unthinkable.  I cannot imagine the thought of a potential break in the sequence of love and existence.  But this involves only five generations in my narrow, personal world.  My opinions are shaped in an environment of love, financial security, and a tradition of bright and healthy offspring.

With this limited experience, this narrow perspective, I could never make those difficult decisions for others—for the obstetrician torn between saving a fetus or the life of the mother; for the victim of rape or incest; for the third-world mother who has watched the children she loved die of malnutrition and disease; for the woman who clings to life giving birth to her eleventh child that she was advised not to have, born 16 weeks early with minimal chance of survival; for the loving mother who has just learned the tragic results of an amniotic examination; or the ninth-grader who is still a child herself.

Nor could I sit in a state or federal legislature and define the meaning of life, or introduce or support any legislation that would invade the privacy of the mind, the heart, or the womb.”

 

 

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Tags: Abortion, Pro-choice, Pro-life

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