mild rant-thing

[skellywag]

I saw a bumper sticker the other day. It said, "Aren't you glad your mom was pro-life?" or something similar. I found myself unaccountably annoyed. Or maybe I can account for it. Just because a woman has a baby, it doesn't make her pro-life in the political sense. My mom sure isn't. I wasn't an accidental fetus (as she's told me a million times), so it's not like she even contemplated aborting me, but I do know she ended up accidentally pregnant about ten years ago, and had an abortion then. (At 40-ish, she wasn't interested in having a second child, and if you consider the risks of Down's syndrome and other defects for older pregnant women, in addition to the fact that she wasn't going to be able to quit smoking and drinking again, I find I can hardly blame her. It would have been far more irresponsible for her to keep it, I think.) But anyway, back to my original point. Giving birth to me sure as hell doesn't make my mom pro-life. It means she exercised her choice to have a baby. The end.