Blog for Choice

I was reminded today that it's Blog for Choice day.

The instructions were simple:

This year's topic is a simple one: tell us, and your readers, why you're pro-choice.

The foundation of my pro-choice stance is a little different from what I pick up around me. Though, by presenting my point of view, I am in no way invalidating any of the other importnat and necessary pro-choice positions.

For me, the issue is religion. Scratch the surface of an anti-abortion argument and you'll find a religious argument underneath. For instnace, we're told by some that "life begins at conception." Ok, fine but other religions may have different definitions of when life begins. Which definition is the one to become law? For those seeking to impose abortion restrictions, it's obvious to me that they're seeking to impose a specific metaphysical doctrine on the rest of the population.

That's something that the First Amendment expressly forbids. The government can not take sides, as it were, in a religious debate.

When is the Sabbath? Is Mary, the Mother of Christ, really the Queen of Heaven? Does God exist and if He does, what authority does he have over the rest of us? All these may be important theological questions, but they could not be settled (if indeed they could ever be) by a majority vote in a state or federal legislature.

And neither is the answer to the question, "When does life begin."

If you doubt this, imagine yourself living as a religious minority (say in Kabul) where the legislature votes overwhelmingly to impose a set of beliefs with which you disagree.

In a truly free society, each woman (for let's all remember who we're talking about here) would be free to make her own decisions regarding faith (which one, if any, she decides to follow) and thus she would be free to make her own decisions regarding her health, her privacy, and whether she should continue a pregnancy.

It's all about freedom, pure and simple.