definitely a product of their parents' beliefs, i'd say at least for most kids. it's not their fault--i grew up in fundie-central (not my family, but the rest of the town) and just about everyone parroted what they had been taught at home and/or in church about this stuff, even in high school.

not that these beliefs aren't/weren't legitimately held by any of my peers, but the percentage of actual thoughtful, examined viewpoints compared to well, not greatly swung in favor of "kids believe what their parents believe."

Ann, your experience mirrors mine. Went to Catholic schools for 11 years. Pro-life until probably I was like 13 or 14. I went to "field trips" to the state capitol to march for life or whatever, just to get out of school (elementary). Definitely thought abortion was wrong, and that women and girls that it was whispered about who got them were bad, too. I was too young to really understand the complexities of the world around me, of course. I grew out of it. Still Catholic, though.

I had 12 years of Catholic school instruction, but I don't ever recall a point when I identified as "pro-life." If anything, it probably strengthened my feminism.

In elementary school, abortion was not mentioned, from what I remember. My high school education was pretty liberal by diocese standards because they were independent and separate from the the local Roman Catholic Diocese, which regulates the curriculum for all registered schools. Therefore, abortion was not "demonized" (although in the textbooks given out it might have been, I don't remember), the majority of teachers were pro-choice, and some of the nuns had pro-choice leanings. Also, sex education was extremely and ridiculously comprehensive, particularly in the "religion and family life" class.

*Sighs* High school was fun.

I was also very "pro-life" during high school, and even my freshman year of college (referred to as the "cult-years" as I too was heavily involved with the fundementalist church, ect.) I broke away from my religion, and came to my senses though (with the aid of some women's studies courses, and research of my own.)
I wish education was more comprehensive and balanced, but don't we all? It's sad / scary / ect to see so many young girls fighting (uniformed) against their own rights.

I was also very "pro-life" during high school, and even my freshman year of college (referred to as the "cult-years" as I too was heavily involved with the fundementalist church, ect.) I broke away from my religion, and came to my senses though (with the aid of some women's studies courses, and research of my own.)
I wish education was more comprehensive and balanced, but don't we all? It's sad / scary / ect to see so many young girls fighting (uniformed) against their own rights.

I don't know. On the one hand, it's heartening to read the stories of all the people here. But we're a pretty self-selecting group, and it's important to remember that many, if not most, people do not necessarily make radical breaks from the culture they grew up in. I was raised by leftist feminists. I've never stopped being a leftist or a feminist. On the one hand, this could be due to the inherent righteousness of leftism and feminism, but I suspect that right-wingers think their positions are just as righteous. Friends of mine who come from right-wing evangelical backgrounds talk about going home to visit family and finding that they're the only girls in their high-school classes who aren't married with several children and attending church regularly. So...yeah, many kids do develop separate and different values from their parents. And many don't.

I don't think young people/kids/what have you are nearly as anti-choice as both the antis and some handwringing pro-choicers would have you believe. I also worry, though, about young people growing up in a world where they hear even feminists say things like, "Every abortion is a tragedy, blah, blah, blah." How can we expect them to be pro-choice if there's so little gutsy pro-choice activism seen in politics or entertainment. I get really sick of people who complain about the apathy/conservatism of young people, and then pander to that same apathy and conservatism in the general public.

I too grew up in a very religious town. My family wasn't so "prolife", abortion just wasn't talked about. But I definitely had a few very outspoken peers on the subject who grew up with the church dictating their beliefs. I give props to my grade 8 english teacher during our debate class. He had some guts to hold a debate on abortion, which was a very touchy subject! There were a bunch of topics and he tried to have the students to defend a position that they may not have actually supported but did for this assignment. I was on the prochoice side and have to say that was a major turning point in my views on abortion and a stepping stone for my feminist views. Although this was eye opening for me, I'm sure all of my teammates are still very "prolife" due to their evangelical religious beliefs. Of my classmates, the ones who were not deeply entrenched in a fundamentaly religious group seem to have more prochoice views but there are still many of them who are active antichoicers and will remain so until they die.
I think we need to have more comprehensive education on sex and reproductive rights, among other things, but even then I feel some people will still be so heavily indoctrinated that they won't even be able to listen.

Actually, my parents are pro-choice and I was still very anti-abortion as a kid and young teenager...
For one thing, no one had ever adequately explained the rationale behind abortion rights to me, and in my childlike, black-and-white morality, all I got out of the media discussion of abortion was "Some people think killing babies should be allowed, and some people don't." Which side I wanted to be on seemed pretty obvious to me.
The other thing is, I remember being 11 or 12, and really believing that bad, naughty girls who got pregnant out of wedlock should have to "be responsible for their actions" by having the baby and punishing themselves. I don't know where I got that idea (almost certainly not from my parents, who are fairly open and sex-positive people)... I guess cultural slut-shaming messages were having a strong effect on me as I was reaching puberty and worrying about issues of sexuality.
In any case, in my later teens, as I started to understand sexuality, feminism, and the reasons that abortion rights are important, I became pro-choice.

my (lesbian) girlfriend is pro-life while she is incredibly left-leaning on all other issues. she was raised catholic, but is no longer religious. she says she just believes life starts at conception. i can deal with her beliefs there.
this is where she loses me: if we have a daughter that finds herself in a unwanted pregnancy, she would help the girl move away and spend a year abroad studying or something if the daughter wants to get away from the social judgements.

I think it's definetely a product of their parent's thinking, and their upbringing. The ironic thing is, the Catholic kids I knew in high school were the ones with the worst reputation for having alcohol at parties when their parents were out of town, on buses to and from games, etc. But they'll go to anti-choice marches to get out of school!

I was raised by fundie parents as well. My mom is more relaxed than my dad is. We just don't talk about politics, period. I've always had a problem with the fundie belief that women are supposed to be subservient to men (the whole "submit" thing), and can't preach the word of God, even though a woman was good enough to give birth to God's son.

I've seen plenty of "good, religious people" who went to church every Sunday and were plenty judgemental...and who were completely hypocritical in other ways. My dad was "very religious" and had a horrible temper when my brother and I were growing up. Screaming, name calling, verbal abuse, using fear to intimidate us. But he was a Godly man. *eye roll*

And then there were the people at the fundie church my parents went to who wouldn't talk to me or my mom because we weren't white (we're Hispanic). Seriously. Good church going Christians.

I don't remember exactly when my views on abortion changed. I remember that my senior year of high school, I heard that a girl I knew casually had had one. She was a really messed up kid...into drinking and drugs at a young age, I don't think she finished high school. So when I heard she'd had an abortion, I remember thinking "Well, that was the best thing to do in her situation."

I think once the reality of life grasps them, it will open their eyes. I hope. Unless they really buy into the "women are vessels and should only have sex to procreate" thing. Ugh.

I've always thought that any anti-choice message coming from a man is almost automatically irrelevant, given the fact that no man will ever have to face the direct consequence of his anti-choice politics, and that only women could offer any sort of convincing pro-life argument.

Well, the anti-choicers have apparently been coming around to this point of view as well, which is why the anti-choicers have been benching their usual spokesmen (white male preachers & politicians) and have been putting their young female believers front and center these days.

I have to hand it to them. It's good media relations. One 17 year old speaking out against choice on CNN has the weight of a dozen of the usual old white males.

Which is why I'm glad that feminists are starting to look into the motivations of these new spokeswomen. Where are they coming from? Are they merely parroting what their parents say? Am I correct in assuming that not very many of these young anti-choice women came upon their positions on their own, and that not many deviate from their parents' politics?

Ok, I read part of the article in the LA times, and had to stop when I read:"She has five sisters and a brother; most of her classmates, she said, come from much smaller families. The way Claire sees it, they're missing out on much joy -- and she blames abortion.

'I look at my friends,' she said, 'and I wonder, 'Where are your siblings?'

Jeezus lady, maybe not every woman WANTED to pump out SEVEN KIDS! That's a LOT, and it's EXPENSIVE to raise kids these days! Did THAT ever cross your mind?

This is what really freaks me out about these anti choices - they aren't just against abortion, they are against women having the option to not be a vessel for babies and nothing else.

My family is religious and when I was younger, I used to go to all those youth conventions - not the crazy fundie kind, but bordering on what I find increasingly uncomfortable. Most kids don't even make the necessary connections with what they're doing and what it actually means. I once bought a bumper sticker that said "True Love Waits" because it was pretty and purple. Now I want to go back and give younger me a "True Love Uses Protection" sticker instead.

In terms of being pro-choice, it was never really something we talked about in my family or in my church. When I was going to the March for Choice in 2004, I didn't tell my parents about it until I was already on my way to DC because I thought they'd be upset because of the religious implications. By sharing my own views with my family, I found out that before my mom met my dad, she had an abortion. Without that decision, my mom wouldn't be where she is today and most likely I wouldn't be here. It only further strengthened my beliefs and I wish I would have told her before I went, because it would have made the whole march a lot more meaningful (not that it wasn't in the first place).

The next summer after that, I was at another religious festival thing with my sister and we came across the booth of someone peddling the idea that abortion and breast cancer are linked. It was horrible to see how my religion was being hijacked to tell me that my mom was going to get breast cancer.

I only wish that these young girls could see that it's possible to be both religious and pro-choice. There's the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (http://www.rcrc.org/), the Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice and Healing (http://www.religiousinstitute.org/) and lots of different resources where you can maintain your religious beliefs and still hear all of the necessary things when it comes to sexuality. If there's one thing churches need to do concerning their young members, it's give them the tools needed to make smart, educated decisions about their bodies, not promote one blanket statement for different people in different positions.

You can be religious AND pro-choice AND pro sex education.

Another recovering fundie here. I grew up in fundie central, Colorado Springs, and my personality is one that craves approval to a sometimes unhealthy degree, so of course I was crazy "pro-life" (and all the other crazies that likely come to mind). In fact, a particular fundie group we were in for a few years in junior high was so "out there" that my mom now acknowledges it was a cult (something we kids have been saying for years). Good times! I didn't change my mind about abortion until a bit into my 20s (really not that long ago, scary to think), largely because I didn't move away from home (and, therefore, from my family and family friends, all of whom -- ALL of whom -- believed the *exact same things* about sex and abortion) until then.

Really, I think my mind started to change a little -- or at least the wheels in my head started turning -- when one of my close friends confided that she had had an abortion in her early 20s. She said she knew it was the right thing to do, but she still felt guilty in a lot of ways, not because she thought it was wrong, but because of the doubts society planted in her mind -- like, she kind of looked at me and said something like "I'm not a bad person, right?" And I think that started to make it *real* to me. Like, this isn't some abstract philosophical conversation about the meaning of life (though I am terribly fond of those as well) -- this is day-to-day physical, observable life. We aren't talking about hypothetical women who "should" behave in the smartest manner (not that we would ever expect men to behave that well -- and not that being smart is a 100 percent guarantee that things will go the way you plan), we are talking about real women with real lives and real bodies. Our friends, our sisters, our mothers, our daughters, our cousins, our aunts, our nieces, our teachers, our students, our confidantes, our mentors, our lovers, our enemies, our classmates, our co-workers, our bosses, our subordinates, our grandmothers, our granddaughters, ourselves.

My problem was that I had actually never been close with anyone who didn't believe almost exactly the same things I did. When I was a teenager, it was a big deal if someone smoked or swore or watched R-rated movies (and yes, this was in the 90s, not the 50s). A "big disagreement" was whether having an occasional glass of wine was okay by God (I wish I were joking). When abortion became real to me (hell, when *other people* became real to me), I started to think about it in a completely different light. Which is, by the way, the precise reason diversity is so important in and of itself (and why conformity is so frightening). To put a spin on the old racism excuse, if you *actually* have black friends, I bet you think a lot differently than if you'd never known a black person.

So anyway. I guess my point is that I think there is a lot of hope for these girls, if we can get them to see that the tiny little worlds they've been forced into are only a small, miniscule percentage of the great big world out there. And I think the first step is making them realize that what they are talking about *directly affects* the people they care about more than anyone else in the world. Whether that's a family member, a best friend, or a cherished and respected mentor, making them see *these* *are* *our* *lives* will make them stop and actually think about it for once.

This is most certainly the result of the rise in evangelical Christianity.

Maybe I was just unaware at the time, but I don't recall this level of anti-choice activism when I was little. The ranks of evangelicals is growing larger and larger; then they have lots of kids and indoctrinate them all. Catholics too, I guess.

When the abortion issue is framed as "Should baby-killing be illegal?" of course kids are going to say "no." They are being LIED to.
And the fact that abstinence-only is the only sex "education" kids are getting these days means their views on sex and reproductive options are very skewed.

It really worries me.

Kids are going to say "yes," rather.

I'm 18 and have extremely conservative grandparents who have told me since I was about 12 my liberal beliefs were wrong that my liberal massachusett public school teachers were indoctrinating me. My father isn't as extreme but definitely not pro-choice, only for rape and incest victims, yet I have always been very much pro-choice even before I knew what it was, it just seemed unfair to tell other people what they can do and cannot do with their bodies.

I never attended Catholic school other than the usual Sunday School, but I have been able to stray away from my parents political beliefs and take on my own.

Ha! Law Fairy you and I may have gone to the same church! For a year or two my dad *ministered* at various fundie churches in CS...I wonder how many of became feminist lawyers...must have been something in the water.

EG, I think you're more right than I care to think. My parents also spent three or four years in a small town in Oklahoma where I became fast friends with our minister's daughter. Her father forbade her from wearing slacks, cutting her hair, having makeup...etc. In addition he'd beat the crap out of her from time to time. But she was smart and funny and so kind. A year or two ago my mom moved back to that community and a few months ago I finally found the courage to go back there to visit her (yes, I realize that it seems silly to need courage, but it was one of the hardest things I've ever done). When my Mom told me about my friend I wanted to cry..she never left...never changed...she is still in the same church married to a man just like her father and raising two daughters exactly the same way she was raised.

I'm a senior now in what has to be the most liberal school in MS. Until my sophmore year, I was in Catholic school and I just took everything my teachers said as law. To be pro choice was worse than being gay, if that's any indication. It wasn't until this year that I did my own research and realized that almost every single thing I 'knew' about abortion was flat wrong. Total lies, everything they said.

I remember in grade school buying silk roses sprayed with rose smell for my mom for Mother's Day as part of a school effort to raise money for Right to Life. I just CRINGE to think about that now. I think it sucks that as a ten year old they were selling me that bill of goods. Sigh. My catholic high school was fairly liberal, too. They taught us about birth control, everything.

I went to Catholic school through the 5th grade and was taught that abortion was ALWAYS murder.

But oddly, when I was 10, I saw an interview with Geraldine Ferraro (who was campaigning then) and when she was asked about abortion, simply said, "I think every woman has the right to choose what is best for her," and a light bulb went on. A 'click' if you will. At age 10. Of course every woman should choose the best for herself.

From that day on, I was pro-choice. It helped that I transferred to a much more diverse public school the next year, but I have never wavered from my pro-choice position since that day.

I'd say that most teens beliefs are reflections of their parents', especially if they disagree with them.

I came from an extremely conservative background, too. The pro-life teaching was actually done quiet interestingly in my community. I never heard much of 'women are vessels' and such, but it was always 'babies are alive, and abortion kills them. don't you want to save babies?' That's pretty much what we were told, and at first glance, are you going to say no to that? My Catholic friend invited me to March for Life, and I went because, hey, it was a chance to get out of school and see D.C. again. There were crazies, and when people started to sing church songs, I was like, 'okay . . . not so much.' However, I do think a lot of the young pro-life girls have good intentions but just aren't told the entire story. When I was in high school, I found out that these pro-life groups didn't support contraception and were trying to make birth control hard to come by. My one friend was ashamed of the fact that she had to take birth control for acne. The moment I became a feminist is when I realized how totally bullshit it was that these people, who wanted abortion to end, would block the one sure fire way to not get pregnant. If many of these young people were told the truth of what pro-life groups/leaders are supporting, they would probably have second thoughts. Also, I never had a pro-choice person harrass me, and I can't say the same for pro-life people when I've volunteered at planned parenthood. I think young people should realize that their 'own people' are the ones being disrespectful; one the best things pro-choicers can do when interacting with pro-life people is to be courteous and don't resort to the type of tactics pro-life people use to harrass people.

I never went to church growing up, and I have not started attending church as I've grown older, so most of my political/religious views were not fed to me by my parents because of their affiliations.

It's funny, because my parents never really mentioned politics to me until my sophomore year in high school when I became interested in politics on my own. It was only then, when I was 15, that I realized that my mother and I shared a lot of the same views.

My pro-choice views on abortion come more from my common sense than any religious conviction. I am participating in an ongoing debate with a Christian friend of mine about abortion, and I don't think we'll ever agree because of the varied bases for our beliefs.

I grew up Catholic and was always told abortion was wrong and always believed that. I did think about it for myself and towards the end of high school started leaning towards some of the pro-life feminist rhetoric because I started to see how freakin' scary those people on the March for Life (which I went to twice in high school) were.

But it wasn't until I went to a service academy, and realized that, *shockingly*, sexism exists, that I admitted to myself that I am a feminist. A woman colonel framed it for me as a controlling deviance issue, and the more crap I heard about women, the more pro-choice I became. When a woman chaplain told me her story of helping a cadet get an abortion, and I realized how incredibly lucky this girl was to have found someone who wouldn't judge her and was willing to take her, or otherwise she would have had to go on med leave and graduate late at a minimum and possibly leave. And I realized that God was by no means "pro-life" and that if I'd been in that girl's situation, I probably would have done the same thing.

most of her classmates, she said, come from much smaller families. The way Claire sees it, they're missing out on much joy

Can I just say that Claire clearly doesn't have a relationship with her siblings like the one I have with mine? One is enough, thanks. Often, one is way more than enough. Shut up, Claire. And Claire, get a clue. The reason I don't have more siblings is my mother's practically religious diaphragm usage, not abortion.

I have a theory about this that has nothing to do with religious upbringing.

I think that most children and younger teens are probably instinctively pro-life because they are closer in age and experience to a baby than to an adult woman. In other words, they hear about abortion and think, "Wow! That could have happened to me before I was born!"

Once girls are sexually active, or can imagine being sexually active, they identify with a woman with an unwanted pregnancy, and think, "Wow! That could happen to me!"

This is why I don't intend to tell my kids (now ages 7 & 10) what abortion is for a long time. I want to wait to discuss it until they can get past the idea that they themselves could have been aborted. It's kind of a hard concept for kid! I certainly hope that they will be pro-choice when they are old enough to understand.

It was completely the opposite for me. My parents are both adamantly pro-choice, including my mother who grew up Catholic, as one of twelve children. When I was a teenager, I once expressed the anti-choice view to my dad that I thought that only women who had "good reasons" should be allowed to have abortions, but that women who had lots of money, etc, should be forced to carry to term. My dad just said, "It's always the woman's choice." When I tried to argue, he just repeated, "It doesn't matter, it's always the woman's choice."

While that exchange had a big effect on me (I never expressed an anti-choice opinion after that, even when my parents weren't around), it wasn't really until I started arguing with people who were more anti-choice than I that I became truly and adamantly committed to a pro-choice position. Actually needing to debate and defend my beliefs showed me how to find the principles on which they were grounded.

I was prolife until I needed to get an abortion at 18. My stance was definitely a result of misinformation fed to me by my Southern Baptist high school and very fundamentalist Christian upbringing.

I was brought up as "a good Republican kid" by my mother and grandparents. I knew what it stood for in my tiny rural hometown, but I was never *officially* anti-choice. Most of my friends throughout junior high and high school were of the same opinion--we just didn't see the need for abortion. But most of my friends were also not sexually active until closer to 18, or even until college.

My first pregnancy scare at the ripe old age of 16 changed my perspective drastically. A conversation a couple of months later with my mother about her own abortion experience made much clearer the factors leading to the final decision of a woman who finds herself unexpectedly pregnant. The next week, I saw the HBO special "If These Walls Could Talk," and got a glimpse at what women faced when seeking abortion care pre-Roe.

I think several of the young ladies spouting their devotion to the lives of unborn babies in the name of Jesus will be singing a different tune in a few years. There's nothing like the self-preservation instinct to help someone rationalize the freedom of choice.

I live in a very Baptist oriented part of Texas. I'm talking hellfire and brimstone, no dancing, abortion is evil, Catholics are going to hell because they play bingo, boycott Disney Baptists, as opposed to ...other sorts of Baptists. I'm sure there are some non-crazy ones out there, just not in my neck of the woods.

I was that annoying child who always wanted to know why and would keep asking 'why' and 'why not' and 'then what' and 'how come' and 'what if' and 'for instance', until either I ran out of questions or the person I was talking to got frustrated and walked away. (Which didn't bother me, I would track them down later.)

I was (still am) instantly suspicious and disdainful of anyone who would not at least attempt to answer my endless questions and since the Baptists in my area are big on 'don't ask questions, follow the group, do as I say', I was never a fan or a follower and was obstinate enough to immediately take the exact opposite view of whatever it was they were spouting. (That is also still true to a certain extent.)

Since they were ardently pro-religion, pro-life, anti- being different, I naturally became the polar opposite: a non-believer, pro-choice, non-conformist, etc. Teenage rebellion at it's best. I never really rebelled against my parents, just against my hometown and the Baptist overlords.

I was the exception, though. Most of my classmates were and still are 'follow the leader, drink the kool-aid, every child is a blessing from gawd even if you can't afford another rugrat' and fit in quite well around here.

I spread dissent whenever I can, because I figure part of choice is being able to choose to be nitwit and it's hard to do that if you don't know you have a choice in the first place.

Back in my HS days, I drunk the same ol' anti-choice Kool-Aid that most of Barnwell County, S.C. drinks daily. A week from today will have been five years since I became a "reformed gynocider". Gynocide means the mass killing of women, a term I use often to describe the anti-choice movement.

Today, I got into it with a lot of anti-choice lunatics on the Augusta Chronicle discussion of another blatanly misogynistic letter the newspaper decided to print.

I became pro-choice on January 31, because I knew that the anti-choicers were going after my friends' uteri (plural spelling of uterus).

Sorry for the double post, but I meant to include the year 2003 in my earlier post.

First, I think it's funny that some of the most intelligent, outspoken, pro-choice feminists who frequent this site grew up in conservative religious environments.

Second, we've been talking a lot about the young anti-choice girls. But what about the boys? The girls might come around once they realize they're more than just vessels.
But the boys!!
Dear dog, there's nothing that makes my blood boil more than a woman-hating, anti-choice teenage boy.

" it's important to remember that many, if not most, people do not necessarily make radical breaks from the culture they grew up in. I was raised by leftist feminists. I've never stopped being a leftist or a feminist. On the one hand, this could be due to the inherent righteousness of leftism and feminism, but I suspect that right-wingers think their positions are just as righteous."

They "think" they are right, is the key. It does not matter. I stopped thinking that way after I entered university, became an adult, and realized the world was not as simple as they or the Bible presented it. Humans with rights and free will can't simply live their lives "by the book," in any sense of the word, and I view with skepticism anyone who says they can or do. Note that I know a number of Fundamentalists or JWs (and read their literature for fun) to hear such claims.

"I've always thought that any anti-choice message coming from a man is almost automatically irrelevant, given the fact that no man will ever have to face the direct consequence of his anti-choice politics, and that only women could offer any sort of convincing pro-life argument."

Granted. But how old were you before you realized this? Do children (particularly girls) typically realize this without being taught? If they did, there wouldn't be so much debate.

I remember having conversations with my parents when I was young about abortion. My mom talked about a paper she wrote in high school (pre-Roe days). She read a book describing how even though abortion is illegal, it still occurs, and it was very unsafe. She said that was when she formed a definite opinion. My dad became a true pro-choicer when he was a resident.

I definitely parrotted my parent's views for a while, but eventually learned enough on my own to reach my own conclusion about why abortion should be legal.

It kills me when my boyfriend says "I don't understand how you can be a woman and be anti-choice. That's just inexcusable." And I always have to reply, "ummm, what about MEN who are anti-choice?" That to me is the more inexcusable of the two - not that anti-choice is a justifiable position for anyone, but I can at least imagine a girl who thinks she would never be able to have an abortion and somehow extrapolates that to other women. Men are never going to be pregnant, so the degree of arrogance it takes to advocate taking the option away....grrrrrcan't...type...any...more

Free will is a pretty fundamental aspect of Catholic theology which sets it apart from some other branches of Christianity.
If you're Catholic and squeamish about the pro-life line, this is a great place to go for the non-conservative Catholic viewpoint: http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/

"Jesus Camp."

That's all I can think of.

I'm a product of my parents' beliefs. They are left-wing, pro-choice, anti-war, Bush-hating, Hillary-supporting, bleeding heart liberals too.

Though I'm a little liberal-er than they are, it's close. :)

When I think back 8 years ago to when I was twelve, I think, "who the hell WAS I?" I was cheering George W. Bush on and getting upset when it looked as though he was going to lose, I was very anti-abortion (without thinking about any less-than-ideal situations), I despised 'political correctness' without realizing how false of a concept it can be, and I 'knew' I'd be a virgin until marriage and didn't get why other people weren't. Basically the only merit a progressive could've seen in me was that I believed gay people deserved rights and didn't quite get how the Catholic church's beliefs that they could "be gay, but not act on it" could work. I had crushes on boys, I knew what dealing with unrequited 'love' was like, and I didn't see how people could say that some peoples' REQUITED love wasn't right.
And my parents...Republican. Pro-life. (Though also pro-birth control, my mother was on the pill for the first six and a half years of their marriage, and I recently experienced the shock of finding condoms in one of my dad's suitcases.) Somewhat homophobic. Advocates of abstinence. Always saying politically-incorrect things.
Amazing how much can change throughout the course of high school and two years of college and falling in love twice, eh?

I've had the same Catholic school experience as a lot of you. And while there were things I loved about being educated by nuns in an all-girls atmosphere for high school I'll never forget how they treated the pregnant girls. They were so shamed and pressured by the school to give the baby up for adoption that it's hard to imagine they would have been more shamed if they had an abortion. If you're going to force a "pro-life" agenda, then be supportive of the mother if she's choosing to follow that. Most of the girls I went to school with have rejected the indoctrination, anyway.

I counsel women before they have abortions in a clinic setting. You know what bothers me? The women who come in and say, "I'm totally pro-life, but I just found myself in this position." This is evidence of the break between ideology and reality; that one can be "ideologically" opposed to abortion but realizes that it is safe and legal and that one can access it if need be. Would those same people be so "pro-life" if abortion were illegal (as too many convservatives would like it to be)?

It's not just Christianity. I grew up in a multiracial Asian culture (majority Muslim) and while abortion was never talked about, the norm was "it kills babies, so obviously it's wrong". I never really heard it from the Muslims though - I tended to hear it more from my Chinese friends, maybe because they tend to be a little more outspoken.

My position was similar to yours - I found abortion unsettling (something dies!) and possibly wouldn't have it for myself, but it wasn't in my place for me to decide what other women should do. I personally thought that whatever choice should come with good counselling to make sure that it is indeed what you want and not just an impulse. I identified as pro-life simply because of the "abortion is wrong for me" thing.

My turning point came about two and a half years ago, during an international education program I was on. (Up with People, for anyone interested.) It was the first week, so it was a bunch of get-to-know-yous, and one activity they had involved going to different sides of the room depending on which position you took in an issue.

One question was about abortions. 3/4 of the room went to the pro-choice side; the rest went to the pro-life said. I was stuck in the middle.

Another Participant (forgot which this was): Why are you in the middle? What side are you?
Me: I don't know! I don't feel that abortion is right...but I believe that's up to the individual woman to choose.
She: That's being pro-choice, silly.

I walked over to the pro-choice side and have been there ever since. While I still feel unsettled by the idea of abortion (as I am about most medical procedures!) I'm not so vehemently against it as an option. I'm not pro-pregnancy either, so hey.

The Moonies (now resurfacing as CARP for the youngsters) are also very conservative. I'm not entirely sure what their position on abortion is, but I do know that they are big advocates about the virginity-till-marriage thing, though in their case they claim it's an effective way to fight AIDS.

I am so loving the Feministing solidarity that is popping up in such abundance on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. As much as I enjoy a good debate, it makes my heart happy to be among such like-minded people.

"I think that most children and younger teens are probably instinctively pro-life because they are closer in age and experience to a baby than to an adult woman. In other words, they hear about abortion and think, "Wow! That could have happened to me before I was born!" "

I agree, to some extent. I also think it might have to do with young people being more used to / willing to submit to the authority of others, and less used to making their own free decisions. If you're a little kid, or even a teenager, you're likely used to having your parents tell you what to do anyways. The government might not seem any different. If you defer to authority, perhaps losing your bodily autonomy isn't as devastating.

I also wonder how in the world Claire from the LA Times article knows the reasons for her classmates' parents not having a billion children. How does she know whether they got an abortion? Perhaps they just don't desire tons of children and logically use birth control to prevent it? *gasp* There might be someone out there who isn't EXACTLY LIKE YOU. Why is this such a novel concept? What about people who can't afford to have 6 children?

When I think about anti-choice now I always imagine the scene from the movie Jesus Camp where an older man is preaching the evils of abortion to a group of young kids. The kids are totally emotionally freaking out [as they are all throughout the movie- it's seriously emotional abuse...] Then the guy starts putting red duct tape over the mouths of the children. There's one shot where he's taping the mouth of this very young girl shut. It's the ultimate symbol of the patriarchy, and it made me feel sick.

Jesus Camp was the scariest movie I've ever seen.

Wow, the voices here are incredible. It’s uplifting to hear that many people do make it out of the indoctrination. On the other hand, I still worry about the girls in the story...being used against their own best interest.

lbacher, thanks for posting the RCRC link. I’m a member and appreciate this group of religious organizations that take a stand for choice. I too believe the anti-choice issue has highjacked my religion, also destroying the public perception of my faith. I raise my children in my faith but am worried about their exposure to the anti-choice message.

Kayt, thanks for posting the Catholics for Choice link. Frances Kissling is one of the best writers on abortion rights.

I find it fascinating that many people here were raised in extremely conservative/religious environments.
Personally, I am most definitely pro-choice, but am also very uncomfortable with the whole concept of abortion. I know that this comes from the influence of my mother. I pretty much formed my own liberal political views through reading, logic and the values my parents had instilled in me, and then discovered that my mother and I agreed about basically everything, and that we were both very shaky on the abortion issue. I have a lot of problems with people using it as birth control- use a condom for god's sake!- but I firmly believe that every woman needs to make the decision for herself.

"Jesus Camp was the scariest movie I've ever seen."

I absolutely agree.

I often feel so thankful that I was raised in such a liberal environment growing up. I like to think I'd have turned out just as radical and progressive as I am now just because it's so *logical*, but I'm a firm believer in social constructivism, so I can't really advocate that.
I think it's great that so many here have come so far from the values they were "fed" [no offense meant] as children and teenagers as they learned more about issues such as abortion!

I ripped up WaPo's article on my blog. http://blog.myspace.com/adrigon. It's really long and I went line-by-line.

I was sort of anti choice as a teenager, but in the sort of flimsy way that comes from having no actual experience with the issue. Then I was raped and got pregnant, and had to actually think about it. I chose to abort, despite my family rallying against the decision, and the rapist of all people offering to adopt the child if I carried it to term. I have a hard time understanding the justification those people had now, but I suppose that years of LDS doctrine teaching you that LDS women are here to populate the world with likeminded individuals in the most expedient way possible will sort of mess up your thinking. It's funny, though, whenever I talk to antichoicers about the issue and tell them my experience with it, they almost always say that my situation would have been an exception, it would have fallen under the rule where they would allow for abortion in the cases of rape or incest, but I never took the matter to court, never brought charges.

As a teenager i'll always remember my mom giving my older brother's wife hell after finding out she had an abortion prior to knowing my brother. It was pure slut-shaming on my mom's part and it really caused my sister-in-law a ton of mental anguish. To this day, thirty years later, my sister-in-law tears up when she talks about how my mom treated her and how she tried to convince my mom that she was in a horribly abusive relationship at the time and felt she couldn't go through with the pregnancy. My mom wasn't hearing it though- she just felt my sister -in-law was the most evil person in the world and that was that.
That did it for me. After that i never viewed being pro-choice/ anti-choice as strictly some abstract position. Sure there's theoretical/philosophical content to the argument, but i can never lose sight to the real world consequences of not allowing women to make their own informed decisions about reproductive health, including abortion. My sister-in-law's life would have been shattered if she had not had that abortion and i always admired her for having the bravery to make that decision- she grew up in a very conservative environment herself- and for standing up to the shit my mom gave her for making that choice. It certainly made me a pro-choice man.

Raising a child with religous beliefs is a form of child abuse.

Yeah, I'm definitely not the kid my parents thought they were raising. I'm pretty sure they're proud nonetheless, but our values are very different.

I went back and forth on abortion. My dad was (and still is) extremely sexist and according to him only sluts needed abortions. He used to love talking about my aunt who he deemed a "pig" because she was a married woman who had an abortion.

I started thinking that if my dad thinks that it is wrong, it probably isn't.

I became adamantly pro choice after having children, no woman should be forced to do that against her will.

It wasn't until I was faced with my own unplanned pregnancy (carried to term, mind you) that I became adamantly pro-choice. My teen years? It was easy to be pro-life. I didn't know what choosing was all about. I didn't understand any of that hullabaloo. Not that teens can't have convictions but having a little life experience under your belt goes a long way to shaping who you are and what you believe.

I went to a school with some evangelical teachers. She convinced me to be anti-choice. My mom pulled me aside and told me there were a lot of things I didn't understand and that, for what it is was worth, she was pro-choice. That was in 6th grade and I've been pro-choice ever since.

The irony being my mom switched over to the anti-choice side while I was in college.

A friend of mine who's very active in liberal politics around here (Oklahoma) mentioned something interesting to me. One of those pro-life organizations came and set up a demonstration on the campus we work at, and he rallied the local pro-choice group to respond. Anyway, he said that he's noticed at these events that the pro-choice women are mainly (not exclusively, of course, but mainly) those either too young to be sexual active or those who are past having to worry about pregnancy. He says he's seen very few women in the "likely-to-be-sexually-active-and-fertile" age ranges.

Food for thought, anywho.

I was devoutly Catholic as a kid. There were plenty of things I questioned, but I didn't question God, just the people surrounding him. One thing I never questioned though was that abortion was evil. It was "killing babies" after all. But then as I got older and realized you could get raped and be pregnant I thought "Well, I guess it's okay then". Then I got older realized it cost money to have a baby and that poor people (myself included) were being unfairly treated and I thought "Well I guess it's okay then". Then I went away to college and lived and grew and realized that even though I wasn't sexually active, that if I was, an abortion was my choice and my choice alone and that no one had the right to make that choice for me and I didn't have the right to make that choice for anyone else. And "Ta-da!" I was pro-choice. Turns out my mom was pro-choice too, but had never talked to us about it.

You know, interestingly enough, I was raised Catholic, but my mom was pretty liberal on social issues - including abortion. When I told her I was pro-life, she told me bluntly that I had no idea what I was talking about. I guess I was more religiously conservative than she was (which ties in with a whole larger issue of faith...) Anyway, yeah, as a teenager who had no plans to have sex before marriage or who had never been confronted with an unplanned pregnancy, I was totally absolute in my conviction that abortion was wrong (although I didn't want to make it illegal, just convince people not to have one). But growing up and becoming more educated about these issues, not to mention having to consider what I would do if, as a 22-year old secretary, I got pregnant unintentionally, my views have changed dramatically.

I was raised fundamentalist and bought into the whole "pro-life" argument until right around the time I moved out on my own. I never went to any marches, but otherwise I just went along with my parents and what I'd been told at church. I wouldn't discount all of these kids' choices, but I would guess at least half are already pro-choice and don't realize it, or will become pro-choice when they get older. I did.

Can I just say that Claire clearly doesn't have a relationship with her siblings like the one I have with mine? One is enough, thanks. Often, one is way more than enough. Shut up, Claire. And Claire, get a clue. The reason I don't have more siblings is my mother's practically religious diaphragm usage, not abortion.

Posted by: EG | January 24, 2008 08:26 PM

I take a little bit of exception to this, EG. I have a large family and am very close to each and every one of them, and am also close to my even larger extended family. Your discounting large families is just as ridiculous as Claire discounting small families. Though, WTF, she really thinks the reason some people don't have brothers and sisters is b/c they were all just aborted?!?!

Today, I got into it with a lot of anti-choice lunatics on the Augusta Chronicle discussion of another blatanly misogynistic letter the newspaper decided to print.

I became pro-choice on January 31, because I knew that the anti-choicers were going after my friends' uteri (plural spelling of uterus).

Posted by: Jovan1984 | January 24, 2008 09:23 PM

Oh, my, gosh! Jovan, my hometown newspaper prints at least a few letters like that per week. We must ignore every single other thing in the world because OMG LOOK AT ALL TEH BABEEZ THAT HAVE BEEN MURDERED BY TEH ABORTION MILLS! A friend of mine wrote a response to a woman who wrote in about being a protester on mother's day. His response was that he was a clinic escort and he then documented the cruelty and harassment that was actually happening by these so-called pro-lifers. They never printed the letter.

Raising a child with religous beliefs is a form of child abuse.

Posted by: Zwillingsmama | January 25, 2008 03:24 AM

Sorry, but that's some fucking bullshit right there. I was raised with religious beliefs and still hold many of those beliefs and I was not "abused." I had some damn good fucking parents, in fact. Just b/c someone isn't parented by liberal atheists doesn't mean they're fucking abused. Come on, now.

"I think that most children and younger teens are probably instinctively pro-life because they are closer in age and experience to a baby than to an adult woman. In other words, they hear about abortion and think, "Wow! That could have happened to me before I was born!" "

I agree, to some extent. I also think it might have to do with young people being more used to / willing to submit to the authority of others, and less used to making their own free decisions. If you're a little kid, or even a teenager, you're likely used to having your parents tell you what to do anyways. The government might not seem any different. If you defer to authority, perhaps losing your bodily autonomy isn't as devastating.

I also think little kids think of the world in very black and white terms. Babies are good. Why wouldn't someone want a baby?

roethke, I'm so sorry you had to go through that. What a nightmare.

What appals me about the Catholic church is they teach women that their bodies are somehow unclean and that sex is 'dirty' and is 'bad' unless done under certain circumstances and that women should never enjoy sex. I knew that stuff was all bunk long before I became sexually active myself, and I'm still angry they teach girls to hate their own bodies.

I was also raised in a Catholic school, but I remember sitting in Chatecism one day when they were talking about the role women play in church, and thought; 'all I can do is be a nun or marry and make babies?' I raised my hand and asked the nun teaching: "What if I want to become an astronaut?" She looked at me as if I had grown a second head and called my mother AT WORK asking he what kind of crazy things she was puttng into my head to make me ask such a question!

From then on I was a 'problem child' because I always asked questions my teachers were uncomfortable with. Pretty much by the time I was 12 I had realized the Catholic church was not for me. Not only was I convinced that a woman can do anything they want just as well as a man could, I was pro-choice, because I saw so many women who could have been scientists or doctors being forced into settling for being mothers instead.

My mother, while being a 'good' Catholic, could not accept the church's draconic and misognystic attitudes towards women and reproduction. As a nurse, she saw first-hand the misery unwanted pregnancies was causing.

By the time I entered high school my mother was a Nurse Practitioner working at Planned Parenthood and not only did I have to deal with the death threats and vandalism done to my house, I had to deal with pro-choice religious zombies telling me that Mom and I were going to HELL because she was a 'baby-killer' and I supported her. Ironically, one of my most vocal tormentors became pregnant as a Junior but denied she was pregnant to the moment her water broke.

As a mother myself I have carefully taught my own 14 year old daughter and will teach her younger sister that they should never accept somebody telling them that "only boys can do that" and have taught them to love and respect their bodies.

If anyone should have been indoctrinated, it was me. I went to marches and protests against abortion from a very young age and I volunteered for a "crisis pregnancy" center as a teenager. It's easy to be against abortion when you think you're saving babies from faceless, selfish strawwomen. I'm not surprised by how many posters became pro-choice after they became sexually active or became pregnant themselves. For me, I honestly never thought about abortion in terms of why women would want or need them until I started having sex. Before that, abortion was only about babies. It was as though women didn't even exist in the equation.

Raising a child with religous beliefs is a form of child abuse.

Um, no.

Zwillingsmama, it's one thing to criticize abusing religion to further a harmful agenda. It's another entirely to outright attack people's deeply held beliefs. In essence you're trying to deny people the freedom to be religious, which is just as bad as trying to deny a woman control over her own body (people have the right to control their bodies *and* their minds).

I know some AMAZING, loving, non-dogmatic Christians. My church, for example, welcomes openly (and actively) gay Christians and people from all walks of life -- it's not particularly political, but it definitely does not judge people for making difficult life decisions. One of our priests is divorced, and at least two others are openly gay men (one of whom is in a long-term relationship). Being Christian does NOT mean being hateful and negative, and it doesn't take much research to figure out that the fundies -- a fringe minority in the church -- unfairly give us all a bad name. In the future, educate yourself before disparaging other people's life choices.

The "raising kids religious is child abuse" argument is one that comes from Richard Dawkin's book The God Delusion(it may have been argued elsewhere, but that's where I encountered it). His argument is that raising children in a particular faith is denying them the autonomy of forming their own opinions. He likens it to saying children shouldn't be considered "Republican" or "Democrat" just because their parents are. He's being deliberately combative by using the word "abuse" to describe the situation (a choice I don't usually appreciate), but I do think his central point is worth considering: If we believe young people are autonomous beings, with a right to free will and personal opinion, then a very proscriptive faith runs counter to that because it closes off inquiry.

This isn't true of ALL religion, I would argue (Dawkins disagrees), but still something for all of us to think about. I gained a lot from my Christian background, but my parents never asked me to profess my OWN faith, they only shared their own with me. I think that's a very different approach than most fundamentalist-evangelical circles use, when there is enormous pressure on kids at a very young age (think of the film Jesus Camp) to adhere to specific beliefs.

A little off-topic, but one of my best friends from college had never been to the gynecologist until several weeks ago because her mother was convinced she would go on birth control or something. We are now twenty-five. She was on her parents' insurance and in school, so going behind her parents' backs wasn't really an option for her. She was actually DENIED MEDICAL CARE she should have been receiving for at least the past seven years because of her parents' extremist views.

I was also raised Catholic, but my father is one of the most egalitarian, feminist men I've ever met, and as far back as I can remember, he told me I could do anything I wanted with my life. It was never even qualified with phrases like "Girls can do anything boys can do" -- males never factored into it, and as a result my self-esteem is a lot more solid than that of many of my friends.

However, because my dad was Catholic, I had always assumed to some extent that he was pro-life. Happily, I discovered a couple of years ago that this is not the case. My mom is even more liberal than I am and if I became pregnant unintentionally, I know she would hope I would consider my own needs; however, I am fortunate that my parents would be able to support me in any choice I made.

Ferretlass -- I, too, had the experience of asking too many questions at Catholic school. Fortunately, my parents realized I wasn't getting a suitable education and pulled me out six weeks into my first-grade school year.

I wouldn't say that the young people I come across are anti-choice. What I do hear a lot is:
"I am pro-choice but I am against women who get multiple abortions." That burns me up; people think they are so morally superior.

I take a little bit of exception to this, EG. I have a large family and am very close to each and every one of them, and am also close to my even larger extended family. Your discounting large families is just as ridiculous as Claire discounting small families.

Wait, what are you talking about? Where did I discount large families? I described my family and was annoyed with self-righteous whiney teenage Claire.

snappy mackerel I think you are the first person on the thread to say not only did you attend marches but you volunteered at a crisis pregnancy center. I think your commment that the women didn't even factor into your view, like you literally never even thought of them, is interesting. I wonder if that might be a way to turn people around? How do you make the women more visible than the theoretical babies in their preview?

"Can I just say that Claire clearly doesn't have a relationship with her siblings like the one I have with mine? One is enough, thanks."

It sort of came off as dismissive of large families. My bad if I misinterpreted it.

Ah, I thought I made the context clear but I guess I didn't: my relationship with my sister is terrible--not just distant, but actively bad and toxic. One is (more than) enough (in my family) given that. Not one is enough for everybody. It was mostly a response to Claire blathering on about how much "joy" those of us without many, many siblings are missing out on, and a note that "joy" does not accurately describe some (many?) sibling relationships.

I was raised in a pretty conservative christian household, and sent to a private christian school for most of my elementary school education. I bought the anti-choice doctrine (as well as other things that I am not proud of) throughout junior high. In high school I started thinking for myself & realized that things were not as black and white as I was led to believe. Funny thing is that my dad still thinks that my sister and I were both "indoctrinated" in college.

I am a "recovering" Christian as well and it is something I still struggle with. At 14 I remember coming home and crying because I had a crush on a boy who was not Christian and I thought I was for sure going to hell for wanting to "go-out" with him. I also had a lot of mental dissonance with the church but was too afraid to look into it. Now, after being out on my own for 5 years I have completely changed my beliefs, although I do still have the remains of guilt for many things. Thankfully this is going away too.

As for the anti-choice camp, they are incredibly offensive, rude, and inaccurate in their tactics and that was the first factor that turned me off. When I was pro-life I never was harrassed by a pro-choicer. Not the case when I became pro-choice. Just two days ago I had someone shout "WHORE" at me through a megaphone while walking into a Roe v. Wade event. The person who shouted those words was a girl no older than 16. I had an undying urge to talk to her about the underlying connotations of that word for women. Surprisingly enough, that word really affected me and I realized again how much power is exerted over women to be "pure" and "beautiful" and any deviation results in being shamed. I shouldn't have cared that I was called a "whore" by a 16 yr old, but I did. It was lame and it reminded me how far we have to go. It also makes me sad that she has been indoctrinated at such a young age.

My (male) partner was raised in a huge Catholic family, by an anti-choice mother who works for Catholic Charities, went to Catholic school until college and now teaches at an all-girls Catholic school... Somehow he managed to fall in love with me - left-leaning on everything, and passionate about reproductive justice.

He says that when he went to college he just slowly awakened to how sheltered his upbringing was and how a lot of his indoctrination taught him to be judgmental and unjust. I think a lot of it (more so for guys) has to do with the people around you. As you grow to care about them as autonomous humans, you grow to care more about their rights and justice for them - many more fundamental religious groups don't teach much genuine care and respect for women as autonomous beings, but once you become part of a group that demands that openness and respect you views shift.

We still butt heads about things regularly, but he tries hard to be open and just. Just my perspective, since some people have mentioned it may be different for male youth.

My (male) partner was raised in a huge Catholic family, by an anti-choice mother who works for Catholic Charities, went to Catholic school until college and now teaches at an all-girls Catholic school... Somehow he managed to fall in love with me - left-leaning on everything, and passionate about reproductive justice.

He says that when he went to college he just slowly awakened to how sheltered his upbringing was and how a lot of his indoctrination taught him to be judgmental and unjust. I think a lot of it (more so for guys) has to do with the people around you. As you grow to care about them as autonomous humans, you grow to care more about their rights and justice for them - many more fundamental religious groups don't teach much genuine care and respect for women as autonomous beings, but once you become part of a group that demands that openness and respect you views shift.

We still butt heads about things regularly, but he tries hard to be open and just. Just my perspective, since some people have mentioned it may be different for male youth.

I think the problem is that the pro-life movement simply has more effective visuals than we do. I was pro-choice in high school, but I was not pro abortion. I thought it was morally wrong, but that it should be a woman's choice whether or not to do it. It wasn't until I read Back Rooms : Stories from the Illegal Abortion Era that I truly understood the importance of being pro-choice. We have to share those horrific, graphic, terrifying stories and images with kids, because the pro-life movement has some pretty ghastly images that work in scaring kids into a pro-life stance. Why don't we use the same tactics? Do we not want to stoop to their level?

I've NEVER not been pro-choice, no doubt because I was lucky to grow up in a liberal area (the Bay Area) with a family that encouraged me to make my own decisions about such issues. Mom is fervently pro-choice, but when my brother went through a (mercifully short-lived) anti-choice phase, she didn't try to pressure him to think otherwise.

Why don't we use the same tactics? Do we not want to stoop to their level?

Part of the success of the movement to legalize abortion in the mid-20th c. came from the fact that women were able to deploy those images . . . and many more people in that era (just after the advent of the pill, remember) had personal stories about women in their family who had attempted home- or back-alley abortions and been damaged or disfigured.

Since abortion has been legalized, the number of unsafe abortions has (thankfully) dropped significantly . . . though of course not been eliminated. But I think it's more invisible than it used to be to those in the decision-making positions. White, middle-class women with money aren't flying to Cuba for back-alley abortions, they're able to drive to the next state to the clinic of their choice.

Building a successful movement for comprehensive reproductive justice, I believe, must incorporate centrally the issue of women's health and women will die because of restrictive abortion policies. Already, women elsewhere in the world are suffering the effects of the global gag rule (see Ms. magazine's most recent issue for some good articles).

I'm not necessarily for using the shock tactics of the anti-choice movement, since they often involve using misleading images and false information. But I do think we can do a better job of highlighting the bodily risks to women--and the impact on their families--if the country continues to strengthen anti-choice policies.

As a follow up to the impact on women's health, here's an amazing audio documentary that was honorable mention at the Third Coast Audio Festival this year:

BEST DOCUMENTARY: HONORABLE MENTION
The Search for Edna Lavilla (Australia)
by Sharon Davis and Eurydice Aroney with sound engineer
Russell Stapleton

In 1942 Edna Lavilla Haynes died from a backyard abortion. After her death Edna was never mentioned again. More than sixty years later Edna’s granddaughter looks for clues - a search that leads through police files and government records and down Sydney’s back alleys of the 1940’s, where one in four pregnancies ended in abortion and sometimes death.

The Search for Edna Lavilla first aired on ABC Radio National’s Radio Eye.

It can be found online at this website, currently sixth story from the top and it's about fifty minutes long. Really amazing stuff.

I grew up in a suburb of L.A. during the 70s and never even heard of abortion (not even in my parochial Lutheran Jr. High) until my best friend got one in high school. I felt glad that it was an option then and still do today.

I’ll say that if either of my parents had expressed an opinion, I would have echoed it for all I was worth and then probably internalized it to some extent. Kids want the approval and favor of parents foremost.

Annajcook - thank you so much for posting a link to that audio documentary. Listening to it now.

NewsCat--unfortunately, I didn't come around until it was personal. Even when I worked at the crisis pregnancy center, the women there (in my mind) didn't have lives or needs. They were "other". They were obstacles to saving babies, period. I don't know how to reach others, unless it's personal.

I used to work at Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington--the site where the marchers protest for several days before the march. In talking to our escorts, who spent MUCH more time talking to the protesters than we did, we learned that many of them were just like Ann said--don't like abortion, but don't think they're pro-choice, for whatever reason. I think young women have been so indoctrinated to the idea that "pro-choice" means "pro-abortion" that they're afraid of the label.

I myself have always been pro-choice but my husband has not. He told me that in high school he and his friends (all boys) would call the girls who identified as pro-choice murderers and baby killers. It wasn't until he got to college and was exposed to reality that he realized no one has the right to tell another what they can and cannot do with their body. I knew he'd done a complete 180 when a local church in town advertised that they were hosting the statewide "pro-life" leader (a man, of course) and my husband, an Episcopal priest, started brainstorming about ways to get a pro-choice speaker at his church. I was so proud.

As for the question about kids thinking for themselves versus thinking with their parents' values/indoctrination, I think it is a little of both, depending on the situation and the person.

Although I have always thought it was ironic that the anti-choice protesters will tape up their mouths with the word "Life" written across it. Especially when it is a woman. They are taping up their mouths, showing that they do not have a voice, or rather that their voice and agency is invalidated once they become fetus-incubators.

I'm a kid (I'm 16) and I believe what my parents believe about most things, and other people I know do too. I think your parents have a tremendous influence on you, certainly if you don't rebel or reject them, as I haven't, because my parents are cool ;) That said, I do know an awful lot of people, in my parents' generation and my own, who stopped going to Mass, and believing, sometime after the age of 10 while they were still living at home with practising Catholic parents. I think some kids loudly reject their parents' ideas and a lot don't, and even if you do, you're likely to absorb a lot of stuff by accident.

Although I did not read through all of the 88 comments before mine, I am disappointed by those that I read.

I'm currently writing my senior thesis on young people, Christianity, and feminism, and I've been interviewing young men and women (mostly in high school)who are active in their Christian congregations (in Texas, mind you) about their beliefs about "feminism," pro-choice ideology, etc. While it is often upsetting to hear them deny the "feminist" label, criticize the legitimacy of Hillary's campaign, or vocalize anti-choice view points, I respect what they're saying.

It is obviously true that their beliefs were influenced by their families (and churches, in this case, and probably many others) and friends, but can we not give these young people any credit? Are we really all in agreement that they haven't done any independent thinking on the matter? Do we really think their opinions and beliefs are just imitations of their parents?

That attitude severely upsets me. What do they have to do for you to respect their opinions? Believe what you do? That hardly seems fair.

While I am a passionate and committed pro-choice feminist and deeply saddened by the high number of young people in attendance at the March for Life, I simply cannot dismiss these young people as followers. They're capable of making up their own minds, and we need to respect them.

If we don't take anti-choice young people seriously, are we also not going to take pro-choice young people seriously? That's not helping to promote our cause. Instead of dismissing these young people purely as products of their surroundings (something that could also be said about young pro-choice people), we should take a lesson from the pro-life camp. They encourage youth participation and are good at getting their message out. Feminists and pro-choicers need to make their message accessible and prominent to young people at a grassroots level. And then we need to respect young people as legitimate humans.

kspitz,

I really hear what you're saying, and I think there are a lot of ways in which we don't treat children as human beings to be taken seriously in our culture. So I'm glad you made the point here. It's important to keep in mind.

I also think that there's a big difference, in terms of coercion and faith "abuse", between the faith of teenagers--even when they've grown up within a faith subculture--and the way in which very, very young children are asked to be extremely emotional and religious at a young age (several of us mention Jesus Camp on this thread; the majority of young people in that film were pre-teens).

As someone who grew up and went to college in a very conservative Christian area, I would say just personally that the young people who held conservative religious values were not very articulate about them--mostly because they'd grown up with like-minded people all their lives. Not just their parents, but the church, the school, everywhere. Whereas I was pushed every day to speak up for my minority views. I learned a lot doing that, and I'm not bitter about the experience overall (though I've had my moments), but I do think that when you grow up in a very authoritarian subculture, which does not invite a lot of critical thinking, it's difficult for young people to articulate WHY they believe what they believe . . . it's just "common sense" to them.

It's not necessarily an age thing--I knew plenty of adults who behaved the same way. But this thread (the original post, anyway) was about

"I think the problem is that the pro-life movement simply has more effective visuals than we do."

I believe it is much more relevant that many of the more visible pro-lifers are assholes. The pro-choice movement doesn't exhibit mutilated bodies of dead women, or use offensive imagery of third world nations to show what an extra 50 million births in the US would be like.

And in answer to the question: what would be necessary for me to believe that someone is not simply following dogma for or against *any* issue, is to demonstrate they can think out of the box or beyond "by the book," not parroting bible verses or lines verbatim from pro-life arguments, or to be fair, feminist arguments. For example, there's a difference between parroting "it's a woman's body, and her decision alone" and actually feeling or believing it, even if one is male. I know what I felt, and I saw how my wife was affected, when she had two abortions years apart, out of guilt (one secretly), as she didn't know if they were mine. Many posters have had personal stories or lightbulb moments about when they "became" pro-choice, and so did I. What kind of research have people done on their own, and how much have they seen, heard, or experienced of the *other* side of the issue (I was religiously abstinence only and pro-life through my teens, a simple matter for one not sexually active until 26, and a man), to *form* their own opinions, instead of having it fed to them by others?

I can *respect* a person's opinions, even if I consider them indoctrinated or poorly informed (and whether or not they share my opinion), but I do not need to believe they are making a mature, informed choice.

And in my professional role as a nurse, I am *legally required* to believe people are making informed choices before treatment, preferably in writing. [I understand the requirements are different for abortion, but I am not involved in those.]

"I am pro-choice but I am against women who get multiple abortions."
That burns me up; people think they are so morally superior.

I want to hit those people. Really hard. Especially when it comes from the mouth of someone who has had an abortion themself. It seems absurd. It's kind of "my abortion is the only moral abortion," but with people who claim to be pro-choice. It boggles the mind.

As for young, anti-choice men:
I've been surrounded by them, and 9/10, they change their minds, slightly, when they become sexually active.

Unfortunately, half the time, when they change their mind, they don't become pro-choice, they just aren't pro-life.

They tend to hold the view "if she (the girlfriend) gets pregnant, I guess I'll tell her to get an abortion. She'd be the one who'd actually do it, so she'll be the one who God is pissed off at." They're generally pissed when the woman disagrees with that plan to both deny her choice, and villify her whether or not she has the abortion.

For anyone interested in this subject, you absolutely MUST read the book "Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War" by James Risen and Judy L Thomas. It's an incredible book - I borrowed it from the library a few years ago and I've been hunting for it in used book stores ever since because I want a copy for reference. It's an even-handed look at the evolution of the movement from an extension of the Catholic Anti-Vietnam-War movement that carefully discouraged the participation of the kind of people who are in the movement now (suburban protestant housewives and the like) by including protest phrasing like "solidarity with the unborn" in their literature, to the takeover by Protestant fundies. One of my favorite parts is the story of a man and a woman posing as a couple seeking an abortion so they could get into a clinic and learn the layout for future vandalism. An exam of the woman quickly revealed that she was not pregnant, but turned up a potentially damaging problem in her uterus. I forget what it was, but it was not good - it either would have made her infertile or possibly done worse things to her health. (Without the story in front of me I don't want to say definitely and risk being wrong.) So the clinic had shown itself to be useful in preventitive care, but of course the woman and her partner returned a few days later with their fellow fanatics and trashed the place. Get thee to a library or Amazon.com, post-haste!

I think the anti-choice teens have undeveloped and, therefore, fundamentally flawed thought processes. "It's not the baby's fault. He's never done anything wrong" is a popular thought among antichoicers who believe that even rape victims should be forced to remain pregnant. They never go that extra step and ask themselves, "Is it the woman's fault she's pregnant?" The same teen from that LA Times article says, "There are plenty of teachers willing to home-school your friend if she doesn't want to go to class when she's pregnant. Or she could go to school, and stand up for herself." Do these opportunities exist for all young women? Not students in poor districts, that's for sure. She obviously hasn't thought this through. Another teen girl blames abortion for people not having as many siblings as she does. That is extremely flawed logic.

Teenagers' moral thinking goes along the lines of "if other people are going to judge you poorly for doing it, it's wrong to do." Furthermore, the human brain, particularly the part responsible for judgment and complex thinking, isn't fully developed until like 25 or 30, right? So I think there's a social and developmental reason for teens' anti-choice (or less developed pro-choice) ideas.

I wrote a post a few months back about a poll I made at a website that's geared toward teens. I asked the question "Which is more responsible? Having 10 abortions or having 10 children?" Here are the results and some of the more interesting responses. I think it shows the flawed thought processes prevalent among teens when it comes to sexuality and repro rights.

http://feministstotherescue.blogspot.com/2007/08/giving-birth-responsible-thing-to-do.html

I didn't really get abortion and the need for it until I was a junior or senior in high school, so I don't think most of these kids/teens involved in the pro-life groups represent a movement or at least an educated movement. I think (well being as I was just a teenager, um like a year ago?) that most people both adults and teenagers are being misinformed about the abortion issue and the people who are pro-life are more outspoken about the issue because they can be. In high school it seems like the only voiced kids are allowed to listen to these days are army recruiters and crazy youth group preachers. Rarely do parents let their kids listen to liberal sex educators or feminist speakers or anyone with an "alternative" point of view. I don't think kids are just copying their parents behavior, but have a very limited range of viewpoints to pick from. It's not until they actually need to access birth control (without their parents insurance) that they start thinking about the abortion issue. Even then the majority of people who claim to be pro-life are pro-birth control, once again because most people don't get the issue and don't know that these people they are supporting who are against abortion are also against birth control.

I actually have a fairly different story. I grew up in a small, conservative town, but I wasn't personally very religious. I stuck mostly with pro-choice and similar beliefs because I was sick of hearing the "conservative" block voice, which usually amounted to a bunch of opinions without educated support (typically one or two guys would stand up in class, say some generalized statement, and be nodded on by the other students). I wanted to push them to see what their actual supports were.

Went to college and completely switched. I'm now involved in our local Catholic group and an active voice for the pro-life movement. The way I see it, I took my high school position because I wanted to prove that I had those "city smarts," or rather that I could think outside of a small town mindset. I was always actively supported by my parents and teachers for this leadership role, and so my gratification came more from my peer group than anything else. My change in college had to do with a lot of things, but now at least I have a position I've come to with long internal debate and questioning; a position with which I can be satisfied.

What I guess I'm getting at is that high school students hardly ever make informed decisions. ;) The pro-choice movement says that it educates its youth with factual information, but kids are either going to believe what earns them the most respect from their community or take the position that pisses off their parents the most. If both sides of the movement really did give a choice to children rather than /leading/ them in the "right" direction, then factual and non-demeaning information about both sides of the debate would be presented to high schoolers who grow up in communities/families with strong ideals. But as I see it, neither side trusts its kids with this information (and as a psychology student, I can't say I disagree) and totes their teenagers as if they were good kids who have made up their minds for the rest of their lives.

It's unfortunate that most kids do seem to have their minds made up as teenagers, if only because when they finally do gain independence, they don't take the time to look at their beliefs and question their motivations.