My Mother vs The Sanctity of Life

Now before anyone gets all uppity about this post, please bear in mind that this particular post wasn't even my idea. It was my mother's. During one of our rambling sessions about reproduction and choice, she made a very interesting point and asked me to use her as an example in a blog post. Here is my mom's story and how it pertains to abortion and the sanctity of life.

Right at thirty years ago, my seventeen year old mother learned that she was pregnant for the first time. The news was recieved with much joy and nervousness. She wasn't nervous for the reasons you might think that a seventeen year old would be in this situation: she had learned from her doctor months prior that she had a uterine disorder that would severely complicate her ability to carry a pregnancy to term. By severely, he meant that it would probably never happen. Mom, in her youthful vigor, decided to try. It turned out that the complications in this particular pregnancy would be trying to get me out of her (I proved quite stubborn even inutero). And on August 10th, 1981 I, in all my Leonine ferocity, was presented to the world.

She, and I, were lucky.

Mom went on to get pregnant many more times. "Many" being approximately 19 0r 20. Five of us lived. It seemed that Mommy had become a one-woman example of the study proving that 80% of pregnancies essentially terminate themselves (http://tinyurl.com/63p34wn).

The majority of antichoicers will look at women who repeatedly try to have children and suffer miscarriages with sympathy, stating that "at least they're TRYING to bring life into the world" or some such dismissiveness. But the simple facts are that my mother had prior knowledge of her (in)abilities when it came to carrying a pregnancy and still kept at it regardless off the numerous spontaneous abortions that she knew could (and would) take place.

I suppose my question to the antichoice is this: what makes my mother's case so much "better" than that of women who seek one or two abortions in their lives? She, herself, argues that her reproductive decisions cost more "lives" than the decisions of any woman who opted to terminate a pregnancy. This, cats and kittens, coming from a woman who has never had an induced abortion and miscarried 14-15 wanted pregnancies.

So in the arguement of "saving lives", would you have chosen to remove my mother's reproductive freedom as she ran such a high risk of spontaneous abortion? After all, if abortion "kills a child", by your own logic my mother is a serial killer.

No. I, of course, do not think my mother is a serial killer. And I'm certain that the antichoice are going to claim that they don't either, and they'll claim to "take such pity on this woman". But this is what their logic aims at: criminalizing and demonizing women for having reproductive control. The control women have to not be pregnant and, in the case of my mom, the control she had to keep getting pregnant.