Walking across campus the other day, the pro-life supporters were out on the lawn again. Unlike the street preachers, they didn't yell at us as we passed, trying to get their message across through screams and threats of hell. They were largely silent, only speaking if someone spoke to them first. Their message was clear in the gigantic pictures of aborted fetuses on wooden signs in front of their tables. Each detailed a bloody corpse and questioned the humanity of someone who could allow such an atrocity as abortion to continue.

I have a rule of thumb with protestors on the lawn. So long as they don't approach me or get in my face, I won't respond. I created this rule for myself because if I stopped to yell at each person I disagreed with on the lawn I'd never get to class or get anything done. It also would do nothing to change their opinion any more than their shouting changes mine. I walked past, shaking my head, and thought about why I was pro choice.

Abortion is a difficult subject. It's a difficult subject because it asks us to make a lot of decisions that really go above our "human power." We aren't God, so who are we to draw a line between life and death? Who are we to decide who gets to live, and who doesn't? The issue with thinking about abortion is that it is the intersection of science and progress with morality. It makes us question if we've gone too far. Are we overstepping our position as weak humans in need of an almighty God?

I don't know the answer to those questions. I don't know the answer to abortion. Most people fall in the middle of the spectrum where abortion is concerned. Most agree that if a woman gets pregnant by rape, if the mother's life is in danger, or if the fetus has a condition that will prevent it from being viable that abortion should be attainable legally and safely. I fall farther from the mean into the pro-choice movement.

I am pro-choice because, at 19 years old, I am not ready to have a baby. Every time I open Facebook it seems like another person I went to high school with is pregnant. That is their choice. It is not mine. I don't want the responsibility of a child when I'm hardly responsible for myself. I don't want a child unless I'm in a stable relationship with a stable living situation and a stable income. I have to be able to provide for myself before I would be willing to provide for a child.

I am pro-choice because I remember my sex-ed class in high school. I remember mostly what we didn't talk about. I remember that a sexual health advocate told my middle school class that she wasn't allowed to bring a condom onto school property to show us how they worked. I remember girls talking about how they couldn't get pregnant on their periods or under a full moon or if the guy pulled out. I remember that we didn't discuss any popular misconceptions about pregnancy and I remember the girls who got pregnant in my freshman and sophomore years of high school.

I am pro-choice because there are around 415,000 children in foster care, and only 59 percent are likely to be adopted. I believe that a loving family can be the driving factor in a child's success. I believe that love can overcome biological defects or horrendous experiences to create a bright and glorious hope for a child's future.

I am pro-choice because I believe there should be a choice. Pregnancy shouldn't be a 9-month of 18+ year sentence. Pregnancy should be exciting. Pregnancy should be a time of joy and preparation. It shouldn't be a time where a woman is dehumanized and treated as merely an incubator.

I am pro-choice because when I walked past those pictures of dead fetuses, I wanted to set up my own pictures of families struggling to survive. Of a woman and her child sleeping under a bridge. Of the Facebook conversation I read last week where a woman asking for help was told to "Get a job" and "stop asking for handouts." Of the classroom where the kids who can't afford to go on the field trip get sent to. Of the teenage mother who is called a slut, whore, dumb bitch, and idiot. I am pro-choice because we have children in this nation and in this world who aren't being cared for. I am pro-choice because I don't believe that the pro-life argument looks beyond the birth of a child. Life is precious, so we must treat it as a precious thing. We must value it, from beginning to end. If the only value we place on life is in its entrance to this world, then we have entirely missed the point. Life is what happens in your "dash" between when you are born and when you die.

I am pro-choice, not because I want to kill babies, but because I want to save the babies we already have. I want to protect and respect the lives we have largely ignored. I want to see an end to needless suffering.