I was born in 1973--July of 1973, but still the seminal year that Roe v. Wade made abortion legal in the United States.
It was because of this coincidence of timing that I used to get mad when anti-choice activists would confront me (either while I was manning the reproductive rights booth at the State Fair or passively through their seemingly omnipresent-in-Montana bumper stickers and billboards) and say things like, "Aren't you glad your mother didn't believe in abortion?"
Well, actually, my mother did and does believe in abortion, and what's more, thanks to the Supreme Court, she could have chosen abortion in the case of my pregnancy. She didn't, because I was a wanted child. The answer is not that I'm glad my mother didn't believe in abortion, it's that I'm glad to know that I was a welcome, desired addition to the family.
It used to be most amusing when someone would ask me that question when I was manning the fair booth with my mother at my side (or vice versa). Or even my father. (My father and his ersatz uterus often took his turn at the booth as well. My brother, too, although it disturbed his easily disturbed psyche to do his duty in a booth that often sold buttons containing the word 'vagina'. Good sports, my brother and dad.)
My feelings about abortion have changed as I have gotten older, but I have never wavered from my belief that abortion services should be easily available and very affordable for any woman who needs to make that decision. I thought perhaps that my views would change when I became a parent, especially since I went through a painful miscarriage before I had a successful pregnancy. They didn't and they haven't.
If anything, I would call myself more strongly pro-choice now, as a mother, than I was when pregnancy and childbirth were little more than far-off concepts. I know what a woman's body goes through during the nearly 10 months of pregnancy (that's right, nobody tells you about that great 10th month!) and the next 6 weeks to infinity of nursing. I know what a woman's mind goes through in worry about whether the baby will be healthy, happy, and supported. I know how a woman's hormones can wreak havoc with her mind, making her spacy and weepy for no reason. And I most of all know how once you have a child, your life will never, ever be the same again. Anyone, *ANYONE* entering into a mother-child relationship should do so with her full heart. I cannot imagine how my husband and I would have made it through those first few weeks--to say nothing of the rest of our lives--if we had in any way resented the presence of our son. We wanted Connery with every fiber of our beings, and that kept us going.
I am pro-choice in part *because* I am a mother. I believed in the right to choose long before the motherhood part of my life began, but it is only now that I feel I truly understand why that right is so crucial to every single woman--and to every child born into the world.