From the essay “Our Bodies, Our Souls” by feminist author Naomi Wolf OCTOBER 16, 1995 THE NEW REPUBLIC
“It was when I was four months pregnant, sick as a dog, and in the middle of an argument, that I realized I could no longer tolerate the fetus-is-nothing paradigm of the pro-choice movement. I was being interrogated by a conservative, and the subject of abortion rights came up. “You’re four months pregnant,” he said. “Are you going to tell me that’s not a baby you’re carrying?”
The accepted pro-choice response at such a moment in the conversation is to evade: to move as swiftly as possible to a discussion of “privacy” and “difficult personal decisions” and “choice.” Had I not been so nauseated and so cranky and so weighed down with the physical gravity of what was going on inside me, I might not have told what is the truth for me. “Of course it’s a baby,” I snapped. And went rashly on: “And if I found myself in circumstances in which I had to make the terrible decision to end this life, then that would be between myself and God.”
Startlingly to me, two things happened: the conservative was quiet, I had said something that actually made sense to him. And I felt the great relief that is the grace of long-delayed honesty.”
To read the essay in its entirety, go here
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