Life
by C. Jenny Walbridge, June 27, 2022-October 5, 2023
If I get angry at you, I can cause a bullet to wound or kill your body. But why don’t we work out our emotional problems using words? Children and adults possess the right to life in other countries—even if they anger another. Why isn’t that a given for Americans? The right to life is in our Bill of Rights! The Second Amendment gives us the right to own guns; maybe what’s missing in our Bill of Rights is a prohibition of using them!
The term “pro-life” has a visceral appeal, especially to people who are scared to look at themselves and their own relationship to living. If life means something scary to you, controlling it and asserting that you “value” it makes you not only right—and morally so–and to feel better. It gives you something to cling to, and becomes a way of mastering the issue that threatens you. The cost of this is other peoples’ lives and interiors and their resentment in the future. But when one is terrified to look inside oneself—to learn about who one is, and maybe to learn that one needs to do some work to get psychologically healthier—it is VERY appealing to “own” other people in this way, to force them to do something so you can feel in control of your own self, pushing the issue away from you and into others’ bodies.
I am “pro-choice.” But I am also supportive of life: I care about the environment we share with the animals and plants; I support groups that work for a greener future, and in my relationships I try for positivity. This last aspect of my being is more than some people can lay claim to, because it entails introspection and self-awareness, tools I have learned from my parents and my therapists, social workers whose very existence probably threatens many of us. Let me tell you, they have worked for me! Although I was extremely screwed up in 1980 when I entered high school, due to parenting and worldly mistakes, I started seeing therapists and kept that up my whole adult life. Finally, I found one therapist who could help me do the profound work on myself that I needed to do, and have seen her for the last 30 years. It took a long time of simply talking with her, but we have been successful.
However, the education I had to have to learn how to fit in with Americans was mindboggling. I must say, the study of anthropology—of different peoples from around the planet—was extremely helpful; I thank Loyola University Chicago, as well as my therapist, for that, but a couple of years at Reed College and the School of the Art Institute were life-giving as well.
Wouldn’t it be nice if all human life was wanted life? Yes, it would. It would also be nice for our children to get a decent world to play in—not to work on. That sounds good for us, adults, too, doesn’t it? I loved Amy Shumer’s standup routine about sexual matters. How about some more of this, America? We love being the entertainers of the world—let’s act like it and work out these issues on stage!
The other thing is that there are MANY PEOPLE here now, and we live together on a limited area home that can be screwed up permanently. Talk about gifts for the kids! How about a place to run around and breathe clean air? How about a clean river to swim in?
We need a NEW DIRECTION. I see it! Let me help let us live peacefully. My faith in myself as a woman tells me that we can do it! We need to fly like butterflies from our cocoons, with every wing flap bringing the people of the world to a brighter day.
For starters, miscarriage is natural. Some foods and spices cause the period to start back up. We should utilize these natural, noninvasive methods for birth control. I myself got progesterone shots, which were great because not only did my body not conceive, but they completely halted my period! That was a freedom worthy of the name! And I come from Libertyville, Illinois, so I know of what I speak.
Anyway, I love life. What I don’t mean is “every sperm is sacred,” as Monty Python joked: of course each one is important, as every fetus who comes to term and get born is a baby, important to love and care for; they and each child and adult are part of the cycle of life and deserve protection and help (yet these are denied by those who oppose abortion). Those with eggs must be held as even more sacred than men because there are such a limited number for each woman. I’m not disputing that life is sacred, but if it is, we are behaving hypocritically–even sinfully–when we pollute God’s Earth.
I support women’s choices about our own needs, while recognizing that our future species has needs that we can meet or ignore—our offspring will be living HERE, and our choices will affect them! We need to get ourselves in excellent psychological shape so we can anticipate those needs—to SEE our kids and—wait—look out and around, to see how ELSE we can contribute, rather than just through family. Call me a Jehovah’s Witness, but I see that God is on our planet now, trying to live WITH Her recalcitrant offspring. There is no Heaven after Earth. Eden is here! This road may be new, but it is a path with heart!