From Pro-Life to Pro-Choice

When I tell people these days that I was a Pro-Lifer, I get told that it wasn't something that they had expected me to ever be. Not sure why, but I can guess. I've always been a bit of an outspoken person. I don't really mind who knows my opinion, nor do I care if they disagree or wish to distance themselves from me because of it. Opinions are, after all, opinions.

I used to participate in the Pro-Life marches, phone into radio stations, appear in TV debates. I had the obligatory Pro-Life bumper sticker and the little silver feet that I used to clip to my school blazer and then later, my work clothes.

I was about twenty one when I began to enter the twilight zone of my Pro-Life years. The first Marie Stopes clinic had opened around that time in Johannesburg and it was considered to be the most evil of all evils by Pro-Lifers. We were fed information about it, about what went on in there.

Shortly after the clinic opened, a woman who used to be a friend did something very stupid. She had unprotected sex while she was ovulating. The guy was a one night stand. So she asked me what she should do. I found myself telling her about the Marie Stopes clinic and let her know that she had 72 hours to get the morning after pill. All that Pro-Life information feeding had not been for nothing, eh?

Pro-Lifers are not only about anti-abortion. They are also anti-euthanasia

. My singing teacher, Angela, a vibrant, quirky and absolutely beautiful and active human being, was struck with motor neuron disease. Most people with the disease end up immobilised in their beds, unable to communicate, but being fully aware of what's going on around them. I couldn't think of a worse possible fate for Angela. It would be a nightmare from which no one would be able to release her. Seeing her suffer as she did, my ideas on euthanasia began to quickly change. Luckily (and I know it doesn't sound lucky) the disease killed the nerves in her lungs before she reached the completely immobilised stage and she died a few merciful months after the diagnosis.

I began to distance myself quite a bit from the Pro-Life movement when abortion clinics in the US were being bombed and doctors who advocated abortion were being murdered. I thought it was a huge hypocrisy: someone who believes life is so sacred that they campaign against abortion, yet murder innocent human beings. Ever the one to open her mouth and say something, my concerns were met with with a ridiculous response: "Of course we distance ourselves from people who do that. They are fanatics. Still, a dead abortionist is a good abortionist and in a sense they've done us all a favour."

Hmm. And ALL human life is sacred, eh? I didn't want anything to do with a bunch of hypocrites. Mainly because after the advice I gave my friend, I was being a hypocrite by still pursuing the Pro-Life ideals.

After seeing other friends having to make the choice of whether or not to have an abortion, I revised my views.

Today I hold the view that we have a basic right over our bodies. We decide how we treat the bodies we are given and no one has the right to enforce any restrictions on that at all. I support euthanasia and I would like to draw up a living will. If it comes down to it, I don't want to be kept alive by machines and I know that it would be difficult choice for my loved ones to make. So, I choose to make that decision easier for them.