Funnily enough, I'm still very much pro-choice. As I sweat over each parenting decision I make (especially ones made on my bad days, those days when getting out of my pajamas seems insurmountable) I realize how vulnerable these wee lives are. How important it is that children are wanted and brought into families that can care for them well. And how life altering a pregnancy can be, how overwhelming it could be to someone unable to bear it.
And so how do I reconcile this belief that babies are babies from day one, and yet still remain an advocate for pro-choice? I felt like I got some perspective when I was reading Waiting for Daisy, a women's accounting of her difficult fertility. When the author was in Japan she miscarried her child and had to have a D&C. She learned that after having a miscarriage or abortion, Japanese women often honor the soul of their lost child with a practice called mizuko jizo.
Mizuko means ‘child of the water’ and is used to refer to the soul of a child who has been returned to the gods, and Jizo is the name of the Buddhist god who protects and guides that soul on its journey to another world.Mothers create shrines at home or in temples with small statues or dolls. The baby is honored with prayers and bows. Learning about this Japanese perspective helped me to see that we don't have to view our lost children (be it a miscarriage or termination) as "fetuses" or "cells" in order to comfort ourselves. And that yes, pro-life people are correct, this is indeed a life. It is a life that should be honored. Can we do that? Say goodbye to a child to be, wish him or her well in their lives to come, but still do what is most merciful and healing for both child and mother? In my heart I think we can. Perhaps, honoring our departed babies instead of viewing them as stages of cell growth is the way we can be pro-choice and not give up something of ourselves as mothers and women. What do you think?
(In Japan) Abortion is regarded as the parents willingly making a decision to return a child to the gods, sending a child to a temporary place until such time that it is right for the child to come into this world, either into the same family or another one. The child is returned because the parents, at that time, would be unable to provide enough love, money, or attention to this child, without it being to the detriment of their present family. Practising mizuko jizo allows the parents to provide a certain amount of attention to the child, who is regarded as a member of their family: to apologise to the child and to ask for forgiveness from their child for being unable to bring them up. - www.being-a-broad.com