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Politics
How You Can Be Pro-Life and Pro-Choice at the Same Time
And why Biden’s platform shows a greater respect for human life than Trump’s does
In 1973, the year that abortion became legal in all 50 states, I was 15 years old. Having been raised Catholic and attending a Catholic high school at the time, I was decidedly pro-life. So was Joe Biden. I suspect like me, he still is, but also like me, he has changed his position on its legality. Here’s why I changed my stance on the abortion issue.
Life is sacred, except when it isn’t
Anti-abortion advocates talk a lot about the sanctity of life. They maintain, as I once did that abortion is murder. When the abortion issue was on the table back in the 1970s, a lot of the pro-choice rhetoric focused on the notion that a fetus was less than human — thinking of someone as less than human may make ending a life a little easier. But if a fetus isn’t human, what is it?
I’ve been fortunate enough never to have to consider abortion. Now that I’ve experienced pregnancy, childbirth, and raising a child, I’m much more sympathetic to those who choose not to than I once was. There are certain circumstances where I now realize I might have chosen to end a pregnancy, particularly if…
