Can We Talk?

Posted: Jan 18, 2011 at 7:30 PM [Jan 18, 2011]

Michigan Voters:

 

Recent tragic events have prompted me to rethink my approach to communicating over critical issues without demonizing anyone who disagrees with me.  I want to see if others have been thinking the same thing.   For whatever reason, we do seem to have lost our ability to regard each other first with respect.  Then if there are disagreements, continue to regard each other respectfully while presenting our impassioned arguments.   Just about every day I see people with less education and critical reasoning skills using cruelty and denigration to make their case;    then I turn around and see educated, analytical and informed people do THE SAME THING.  You'd think all that education and wisdom would teach us to be more civilized, but it doesn't seem to work that way.  I guess our educations don't necessarily teach us to be skilled at getting along with others.

 

I am writing this letter today to ask my fellow humans to step back and rethink your individual stand on the dreaded abortion issue.  I honestly believe that every single one of us begins with the impulse to help, not hurt our common welfare.   Whether our opinions were formed from peer pressure, from religious zeal, from painful life experiences, from the greatest love for our fellow humans I think we all spring from the same impulse:  LOVE

 

 My own experience as a woman who had no access whatsoever to any family-planning resources, education or services when I became pregnant in the 1970's, naturally shaped my under-standing.   The experience of suddenly having to make grown-up decisions about the future and to face choices which were unimaginable two weeks before, terrified me.  The truth is that my personal plans for the future had never been addressed.  I had nothing at all formulated about what I wanted from life, which of my talents, interests and abilities would take me where...   I had never even thought about what I wanted to be when I grew up,  not an uncommon fact of life for girls raised in the 1950's.  No matter what else we were interested in, we were going to get married and raise a family, of course.  We were raised to be taken care of so that we could in turn take care of the next generation. 

 

Well when I found out I was pregnant,  I had just started a singing career and was enjoying success and actually making a living at something I loved to do - an unimaginable stroke of good fortune.   In my blossoming young mind I believed I had found what I wanted to do with my future.

 

I did not want to start raising a child at that time!

 

I am convinced that there are still a great many young women who find themselves in the same dilemma today.  As women, we alone are really the ones who face the serious consequences of an unplanned pregnancy.   I know my handsome bass player split the scene when he heard my news.  Oddly I was not surprised.  I had had enough social and psychological education to know that society saw me as having failed and not enough wisdom to understand that, if that was true, I was not the only one who had failed.  

 

Many girls get pregnant from their first intercourse and in circumstances where they are not at all ready to face serious decisions.  But if a pregnancy happens after that first intense, out-of-control, often scary instance of intercourse, whether a female realizes it or not, the weight of the world just landed on her shoulders. 

 

If, like me, she hadn't really come up with a game plan for herself, that's just tough luck, because the hourglass just ran out.  If she's fortunate enough to have access to health resources then luckily she has assistance available to determine by her own choice, whether to proceed with giving birth, (and if so, to keep or offer up for adoption), or to end the pregnancy.

 

Now, there are those who, without knowing her circumstances or anything about her at all, will hasten to tell her that the decision to carry the fetus to term has already been made for her by God, and by people she doesn't know and who don't know her.   She will certainly have a lot of people who will say that they know better than she does, what she should do.  Most of these people started out as well-intentioned people before forming strict views on the matter of abortion.

 

And here is where push comes to shove.  In my experience, and in my observations, she is in danger of remaining a child for the rest of her life, obedient to those who she allows to decide her fate for her.  It's a role her parents have probably always been prepared to play in her life, one that a great many church folks certainly have already made for her, sight unseen.   Unfortunately our society and culture send her endless messages about what is expected of her, for good or for ill.  The point is, the decision is hers alone; at least for the moment.  This is her opportunity alone to be in control of her future;  to decide which voices, if any, comes from the one/s who love her best.  Her personally, known by name. 

 

 In my opinion, Issues of abortion and birth control are really about control of you.

 It is important here to note that there are a great many Christians in the world who support a woman's right to choose safe and legal abortion, even though the Christians who condemn it are the ones who have succeeded in getting all the headlines.  The God I know, who knows women and loves them, wants us to grow into our future with strength, courage and self-determination over our bodies and our future.

 

Sincerely,

 

Dixie Patricia Cockrell

Ann Arbor, Michigan