A pro-choice author, Cara J. Marianna, who interviewed dozens of postabortion women for a book she was writing, explains why she was pro-choice before she began the writing project.
She says that because of her feminism and basic political persuasion, she assumed that she should be in support of legalized abortion.
Her self-identified feminism and the other opinions she held were what prompted her to be pro-choice, not an honest examination of the abortion issue. She never claims to have been converted to the pro-life side, but clearly has some ambivalence by the end of the book.
She gives the insight that she was pro-choice even though she didn’t know that much about abortion, just because it seemed like she was supposed to be.
“As I moved further into the writing process, as I continually referred to women’s stories—read and reread their personal narratives—I became ever more aware of my own assumptions about the issue.
I came to see my own position as a set of beliefs built upon certain cultural scripts that I happen, probably for a great variety of reasons, to identify with.
According to those generally feminist and politically liberal narratives, there are certain things I am supposed to think about abortion: Abortion is a political, rather than religious or moral issue, and is a matter of human liberty, in general, and women’s equality, in particular.
Legal abortion is fundamental to reproductive freedom and women’s health and well-being. Like a religious person who opposes abortion, I take my beliefs to be articles of faith.”
Cara J. Marianna Abortion: A Collective Story (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002) Xiv
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can we simply define this baby as not a human being, and then kill him?
