Here we are... we could be weeks or minutes away from Roe v Wade being overturned.
And this country is not ready.
This is a war on so many levels.
And the sides are clearly defined.
There are many people who have switched sides.
Let's hear from them...
Redditor Honeydew-Popular wanted to hear from the people out there who now have different ideas about a person's right to choose. They asked:
"Ex-pro-lifers, what changed your mind on abortions?"
How can we come together on this topic?
Let's try...
Birth
"The birth of my son almost killed us both. I am almost certain another would kill me. The thought of leaving my husband alone with two children, one grieving and one motherless, breaks my heart. I’m one and done for the sake of my family. We take precautions, but I’m not sure if I became pregnant I would carry to term. With my health and habits I’m not sure adoption would even be feasible if I could. I don’t know what I would do, but I want the choice."
NeedARitaThe Household...
"I grew up in a religious household where sexual relationships before marriage were considered a sin and abortions were considered murder. A friend of mine dated an abusive a**hole and she got pregnant, we were all in college at the time and she didn't have enough money nor support to raise the kid."
"Her parents were extremely angry and refused to speak with her because she ‘ruined' her life . We became roommates because I saw she needed a place to stay. Until then I'd always thought of women who got abortion as cruel. But i saw how helpless she was and how torn she was about the whole thing."
"After a few weeks of hospital visits she realised that she didn't have any other choice because of her financial instability and she also felt like she wasn't mature or ready enough to give birth to and raise another human being while she was still getting over the trauma of a relationship."
"And she was afraid of messing up an innocent kid's life so she got an abortion. After seeing all that happen I realised that abortion wasn't just people f**king around and then murdering an innocent child, it was when people were in situations where they knew they weren't ready for a child."
RavennaKeres
Realities
"I was raised with the religious pro-life outlook, and to believe all who had abortions were just devastated for the rest of their lives, that they didn’t comprehend the gravity of what they had done until it was too late. Then I went to college and met someone in a women’s studies class who shared she had had an abortion while married to a man nobody knew was abusive."
"I realized I had been misled about the realities of why people have abortions. When I suffered an assault a year later, I knew what choice I would make if it came down to it. And I was grateful to know I would have had a choice in that scenario."
"Working with homeless adults and at risk teens/social work really solidified that for me, when you see abused and neglected kids and you know the parent didn’t want any of those babies but has them because they were pressured out of an abortion… children should not be punishment or accountability lessons, they should be wanted and loved."
diamondtoothdennis
Family Friend
"Myself, this one is genuinely really trigger very sorry. When I was younger I was assaulted by a family friend, I wasn't pregnant but when i had to get the test the lady told me. 'If anything goes wrong, my sister works at planned parenthood.' She was a very sweet woman, but at that time i was like 'I would never abort a child' I remember genuinely shaking and crying before i had to take the test because it reminded me of what happened. I was negative, but the fear of having the raise the child that was forcibly put into me made me genuinely sick to my stomach."
savspitsbars
Bad Laws
"The exceptions were too numerous and sometimes too obscure to be properly written into law, so the law shouldn't restrict it."
waterbuffalo750
"This is where my mind changed. It’s too subjective. Like, forcing a couple who at 20 weeks learned their child has a genetic abnormality and won’t survive long if at all post-birth then have to wait it out versus aborting. That is just cruel and gut-wrenching to me."
rb928
This really is a rough topic. But we must keep reading to learn.
"the unborn"
"I decided to move away from my small religious community. I meet people who had different backgrounds. Listened to stories of people who had abortions. Realized that if I was in their position, then I would have considered abortion too. Then I learned that abortion was rife within my small community, just not talked about and deeply shameful."
"The same people who picketed at those rallies also coerced their underage teenagers into having abortions when they turned up pregnant. It was not about 'the unborn' it was about their image in the community and their control over others' bodies. It's about power and inflicting their world view on everybody."
BusinessShower
Trauma
"I got pregnant and my ex tried to force me to have one. Having someone try to take your choice out of the matter right in your face is a bit of an eye opener."
Big-Pollution2705
"I hear you. My son was conceived with someone I didn't know very well. I chose to keep the pregnancy, and I'm very thankful I did. I love my kiddo. But the experience definitely made me even more pro-choice, because my pregnancy was already miserable and traumatizing and it would have been much more so if it hadn't been my choice to keep the pregnancy."
JulesLovesYou1993
For the Boy
"Guy here... I realized that abortions are terrible and people don't want them they need them and generally only if they end up in a situation that requires them. I reasoned we should keep women safe and spend time on how WE can ALL avoid having to make to decision in the first place OR making the world better so that they could also choose to keep the baby in a really caring world. It was too easy to say abortion is bad ban it."
rangeo
Necessity...
"When I realized women abort out of necessity, because they can’t financially and/or emotionally support a child. Prohibiting it won’t stop them, it will only make them do it more dangerously, and therefore putting more lives at risk. If you’re pro-life, you should always be pro doing abortions safely, because that saves more lives than criminalizing it."
Confident-Midnight78
“family”
"I got pregnant as a teenager and it opened my eyes to how cruel the evangelical church is even though I was apart of their 'family' my entire life. After stepping away I reevaluated all my values and beliefs away from their indoctrination."
Suitable_Sky_9559
fire and brimstone...
"I've never been fire and brimstone pro-life but like most teenagers I have a vague idea that is was 'wrong.' Abortion was used as an insult and form of gossip at my school (omg Becca had FIVE abortions!) Usually by people with absolutely no critical thinking skills."
"The older I got and the more life experiences I had, the more I realised how awful it would be to be brought into a world that didn't want you. No friendly faces from the start. These loads of loving couples waiting to adopt babies are fictional, and the child is going to be either bounced about in the care system, or raised by a mother who didn't want and cannot support the growing child."
"Also if we have a boom of unwanted children, we need to invest a hell of a lot of money in foster care, residential homes, healthcare for children born addicted to drugs or alcohol problems, child mental health services, social services, prison services etc... No one seems to care about the baby once it is born, in fact, it becomes nothing more than a nuisance."
Crazy_Cauliflower_74
Bad Providing
"A horrific horrific childbirth that left me with unfixable fecal incontinence, and NOT ONE health provider informed me that this could possibly happen during my birth, despite receiving an intervention that is highly correlated with resulting in anal incontinence. NOT ONE provider took my issues seriously postpartum and just dismissed it."
"I had to fight to find my own specialists WHILE LEAKING POOP AND TRYING TO CARE FOR A NEWBORN. Not being able to even sit down for months afterward but still having to be my daughters primary caregiver at 6 weeks because my husband had only 6 weeks of leave."
"Gaining a ton of weight while pregnant and being extremely nauseous for SEVEN MONTHS, due to a severe hormonal imbalance that has yet to be corrected 16 months postpartum—you know, because I’m traumatized from the birth. I went from being a collegiate athlete to a 30 year old who now needs a colostomy bag. F**k americas health care system. I will speed drive any woman who wants to go to planned parenthood now."
Miserable_Painting12
Murder
"I was raised by a fundamentalist Christian mom, so as a teenager of course I was taught Abortion is murder. OMG, not the babies! As I grew older, I grew up. I am a Militant Athiest and see Religion as damaging in so many ways. Life is not black and white, there are many shades of grey. No one has the right to tell a Woman she has to carry a pregnancy. After having two kids myself and two miserable pregnancies I would never expect a Woman to be forced to go through that if she didn't want to for whatever reason."
"It blows my mind that other Women don't see it that way. It especially upsets me when men who have never been pregnant and have no concept at all are military pro life. Sorry but this is one of those stay in your lane situations. An abortion is a medical procedure and is no ones business but hers and her Physicians."
The List
"Getting pregnant and having kids and realizing that..."
"1) pregnancy is hella hard on a body..."
"2) the possibility of severe birth defects is terrifying..."
"3) a child should only be brought into this world if it is wanted and will be loved..."
" 4) no one should be forced to give birth against their will. I feel that every abortion is a tragedy, but often not the worst choice."
trashheap918273
"unwanted"
"My first girlfriend explained that it wasn't about the deaths of babies, but the potential lives of both mothers and children. The overflowing adoption system positively crawling with 'unwanted' kids. The way that providing abortion actually helped reduce the prison population and provide better lives to more people overall. My mind swam. I talked to my mother about it. I realized that her rationale- and also my father's in turn- was faulty and built on a rickety foundation of religious punditry."
Weak-Round-3772
your body is your own...
"That was a long, long time ago. There was a time when I was close to becoming an incel, thought that women have the better life and that I am screwed for being born as a guy. But I got smarter, until I was able to put myself in their shoes, realized that we are no different, and all expectations put on both sexes is just a social construct perpetuated by bitter geriatric men."
"So it doesn't matter if you are man or woman, your body is your own, when it doesn't behave like expected, you go see a doctor - unwanted pregnancy is no different here. The real question is whether the state should support the people to get the abortion - in the UK, abortions are free, but I don't know if there is a time limit on them."
throwaway_uow
Tipping Points
"I was raised sort of casually pro-life. I believed it should be safe and legal to prevent people being harmed in unsafe abortions and that it was justified if necessary to protect the 'mother,' but that to simply choose it because you didn't want a kid was morally wrong. I was never an activist on either side though. I just had my personal beliefs against it."
"I have a LOT of reasons that I am firmly pro-choice now, a list that has grown over time, but the tipping point for me, back in college, was the bodily autonomy argument. You can't force a person to donate their organs or their blood or any part or use of their body."
"Even to save another living breathing human, so you certainly can't force someone to risk their life and loan their uterus to a group of cells that could become a human later if left alone. I read the sentence 'Outlawing abortions means giving pregnant people fewer rights than a corpse,' ten years ago and I've been loudly pro-choice ever since. I acquired more reasons as I became more educated, but that was what did it."
maple-belle
17
"Not me but my daughter. Pro life because 'omg how could you hurt babies????' But I am going to respect her positions so whatever She got pregnant at 17 and gave birth before high school graduation. Going through a traumatic pregnancy, finishing high school and now starting college, have to navigate all the WIC stuff. Even with the whole familes support including her boyfriend, it would be an understatement to call the experience an eye opener."
Daaaaaaaaaanasaur
Knowledge
"Education. Learning more than my right-wing parents had ever exposed me to. Getting out from under the rock and being willing to listen and change my opinion based upon newly gathered data."
this_name_is_banned
These stories speak for themselves. Thank you for sharing.
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Jameela Jamil Opens Up About Her Abortion In Viral Thread: 'It Was The Best Decision I Have Ever Made'
Jameela Jamil, an actress and activist who plays Tahani Al-Jamil in NBC's The Good Place, is speaking out against Georgia's recent anti-abortion legislation.
The law makes all abortions illegal after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, generally around 6 weeks—often before a pregnancy is even discovered.
Jamil took to Twitter to voice her opposition to the law, and the damage that it will do.
She called the law:
"upsetting, inhumane, and blatantly demonstrative of a hatred of women, a disregard for our rights, bodies, mental health, and essentially a punishment for rape victims, forcing to carry the baby of their rapist."
This anti-abortion law in Georgia is so upsetting, inhumane, and blatantly demonstrative of a hatred of women, a di… https://t.co/MC6bhzzzHv— Jameela Jamil 🌈 (@Jameela Jamil 🌈) 1557774247.0
She went on to reveal that she had an abortion when she was younger and called it "the best decision I ever made."
She wasn't prepared emotionally, psychologically or financially to support a child, and decided not to bring a child into the world under those circumstances.
She also cited the increase in children who will end up in foster care because of the law.
An already overcrowded foster care system isn't prepared or able to deal with a sudden influx in children needing placements.
I had an abortion when I was young, and it was the best decision I have ever made. Both for me, and for the baby I… https://t.co/IzQmHBHgJS— Jameela Jamil 🌈 (@Jameela Jamil 🌈) 1557774248.0
She clarified later in the thread that she meant nothing against foster parents. They provide valuable care to children who are in need of a loving home.
Further taxing an already overtaxed foster care system won't help anyone, least of all the children needing foster homes.
Ps.. this isn’t any diss at ALL to foster homes. I’m in awe of people who take in children in need of a family and… https://t.co/xkGOy53edi— Jameela Jamil 🌈 (@Jameela Jamil 🌈) 1557775367.0
The comments on Jamil's thread were largely people criticizing her for her decision to have an abortion or attacking her character.
There were some who appreciated her candor, though.
@jameelajamil Thank you for sharing your story. I appreciate your candor and courage.— Super Left Democrat (@Super Left Democrat) 1557935471.0
@jameelajamil Thank you for being brave enough to share your story.— WilyOtter (@WilyOtter) 1557933558.0
@jameelajamil Thank you for saying what so many women have been shamed into keeping secret. Choice not only gives u… https://t.co/HRJIcBdocJ— Deborah Edwards (@Deborah Edwards) 1557932096.0
A few people had words for those that were being willfully obtuse and missing the point of Jamil's message.
@jameelajamil It’s her decision. That’s the point. Everyone should make the decision that best for them instead of shaming women.— Connor Justice (@Connor Justice) 1557925400.0
@jameelajamil @YNB What is wrong with people? If you don’t agree with abortion then don’t have one. And wait, doesn… https://t.co/qn6p9lVKUI— Ricky Quarequio (@Ricky Quarequio) 1557799897.0
@jameelajamil It takes a lot of courage to be open about this - thank you. I know at least two women for whom this… https://t.co/CXElWcoDiH— Droooooooooo (@Droooooooooo) 1557941920.0
@jameelajamil I think people are missing the point that you were trying to make about a child ending up in foster c… https://t.co/BhOMfXXJHJ— Precious (@Precious) 1557923352.0
It is a fact that there are many loving foster and adoptive families, but it is also a fact that there are many less than stellar ones. Children placed in foster care don't have the luxury of choosing only to live with the good families.
Many of the arguments against Jamil's message also ignore a pregnant person's right to bodily autonomy.
Laws like this are not going to make people suddenly stop having unwanted pregnancies; they are much more likely to just make people seek unsafe alternatives when safe, legal abortions are not an option.