I’ll never forget the first time I heard the word abortion. I was eight years old, and my mother and I were in the car running errands. This was the age of CDs, so we were listening to Jewel’s album, This Way. I had a wide vocabulary for my age, so a word in the satirical song "Jesus Loves You" caught my ear.

“They say that abortion will send you straight to fiery hell.”

“Mommy, what is abortion?”

My mother reacted in the best way possible to peak an eight year old’s interest. “It’s an awful, awful thing. I’ll tell you when you’re older. You’re too young.”

Of course I looked it up in the dictionary as soon as we got home. A few months later, I found an old pro-life article my mother had written for her school newspaper. Her editorial included a belief that abortion was wrong even in the case of rape. I was homeschooled, extremely religious, and greatly respected my mother as my only teacher. I hoped I would never be raped and have to be pregnant.

Flash forward eleven years. My family’s version of church was for my mother to read us the Bible and lead prayers on Saturdays, and I began yearning for connection with other Christians my age. Many of my friends were Catholic, so I began Catholic catechism classes. My parents were so conservative that Catholicism felt refreshingly liberal. I could accept the theory of evolution and consider people of other religions to be fellow spiritual seekers worthy of respect. Even the church’s positions on homosexuality felt loving and in keeping with my relationship with Christ compared to my parents’ rabid homophobia. Of course, being Catholic also meant I had more fuel for my pro-life position. That is, until I encountered pro-life activism in action.

The signs on our academic quad were at least twenty feet tall and featured pictures of dismembered bodies. I thought I was seeing anti-war activism at first. As I got closer, I realized the bodies were fetuses. “Stop the genocide!” the signs proclaimed. Meanwhile, men with Bibles stood shouting about hell, sin, evil, and our need to repent. Their wives and prepubescent sons stood by. Though I didn’t personally know anyone who had had an abortion, I felt empathy and fury. I knew it was likely some of my fellow students had had abortions, and I thought of the psychological damage this protest could cause them. I saw the young boys listening to this rhetoric about women and felt like vomiting. I sat on a bench, cried, and prayed. This wasn’t the Christ I knew.

That night, I found myself listening to Jewel’s “Jesus Loves You,” and pondering the next line in the song after the one on abortion. Context is everything, after all.

“That is if the fanatics don’t beat Satan to the kill.”

That day, the fanatics seemed like the ones deserving of hell.

I didn’t become pro-choice overnight, but that day shook me and made me begin questioning some of the dogma I had accepted since I learned the word “abortion.”The real catalyst came six months later when I was facing my own unintended pregnancy. I was in a committed relationship for the first time in my life, and I had come to realize my belief in abstinence until marriage was based mainly in fear and on others’ opinions, particularly those of my parents. I realized it was not actually what I wanted and that I was in a relationship where I felt completely comfortable having sex. Unfortunately, I was still indoctrinated into false beliefs about birth control being dangerous. The only form of birth control with which I was comfortable was condoms, and one condom failure later I found myself staring numbly at two pink lines.

Ultimately, I chose to carry my pregnancy to term. However, I am not egotistical enough to think that what works for me should work for everyone. I love being with my son, I have a supportive and helpful partner, we have great family support as we finish our degrees, and I have never felt so fulfilled. However, I had the freedom to choose. Although my pregnancy was mistimed, I had the right to consider my options. I knew my situation better than anyone else, and I knew the right choice for me was to keep my pregnancy. I do not know the right choice for anyone else. With my votes and with my words, I will continue to advocate so that other women have that same right to choose. Having sex is normal and healthy. Losing your bodily autonomy is not normal or healthy or a desirable precedent to set for our society.

I do still want to see a decrease in abortions, so I am now an advocate for free access to effective forms of birth control (which if you’re not reading pro-life propaganda like LifeSite News, does indeed decrease abortion rates). While I love being a parent, I think it’s deplorable that I was given so much misinformation about birth control. I thought my only option was the pill or implants and that they would cause me to gain massive amounts of weight (in the Conservative Christian culture in which I was raised, women were supposed to be thin, attractive ornaments or risk being unlovable. In fact, I was specifically told at age ten that I had better watch my weight or no man would ever want to marry me). That’s why I am an advocate for accurate, comprehensive sex education. I no longer believe abstinence-only is an effective form of sex education. We are already providing a good foundation for my son's future sex education by using proper names for body parts, and as he gets older we will discuss sexuality as a normal, not shameful, part of being human. I also intend to advocate for adequate sex education in his school.

Experiencing the psychological and emotional effects that came with my pregnancy gave me a huge appreciation for the right to choose. I can’t imagine going through the hard, hard work of growing and birthing a child if I had been unwilling. Carrying a pregnancy to term, even if the mother puts the child up for adoption, is not a solution that should be legally mandated. Pregnancy should not be a punishment for a woman having sex. Even if the father is involved, he is not experiencing the physical “punishment” that the mother does over nearly ten months of pregnancy.

I have come a long way since I first learned the word abortion, and I am sure I have a long way to go. What I do know is I will always support women in their right to choose.�