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Ten-Foot-Pole Dance
"The test of the first rate mind is the ability to hold two opposing thoughts at the same time while still retaining the ability of function."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
Today, while on a late-mid-afternoon smoothie run, I passed by the downtown Planned Parenthood office. There was a small, silver-haired woman standing by herself just off the sidewalk, holding a rosary and singing a hymn in a soft soprano.
I've noticed groups standing vigil outside that office before, looking like an uneasy amalgam of a church picnic and an angry mob. But it was a chilly day today, not Rochester-quality frigid or anything, but cold, with the kind of crisp, dry wind that seems to poke holes through your skin. So she was there alone, her voice and talisman shivering, her spirit stoic. It was stirring, in a number of ways.
When I was in eighth grade, my first-period Social Studies teacher, Mr. Bianchi, devised an ill-conceived lesson plan on the topic of abortion. I don't remember the point he was trying to make and I can't imagine what kind of truth he was expecting to divine from callow 14-year olds, but his great idea was to separate everyone in the classroom according to their own position, "anti-abortion" and "pro-abortion," and have a debate.
As it happens, my hometown had a large and vibrant Catholic population (Mr. Bianchi, also the school football coach, was himself large, vibrant and Catholic, and as I recall not altogether bright) and was socially rather conservative. So when the 25 students split up, 23 of them were on the "anti-abortion" side of the room and I was on the other, along with "Maresh," a gentle soul whose Hindu parents had emigrated from India.The lack of sufficient seating on that side of the room forced half of the class to stand, creating the illusion of a gathering posse.
For "some" reason, Mr. Bianchi also sat on the "anti-abortion" side of the room. He then attempted to poke and prod us into a free exchange of ideas.
As a 14-year-old I was just worldly enough to understand that I was pro-choice but not nearly practiced enough to enunciate my philosophy. (I vaguely recall blabbering something about "orphanages.") As I struggled to explain myself, the exercise turned sharply prosecutorial. I remember Mr. Bianchi asking me, "what about all the mentally challenged kids out there? Should we round them up and kill them, too?", the rhetorical equivalent of a battering ram. At one point I turned to Maresh as if to ask for a little help, but he just shrugged and whispered that he thought he was on the wrong side.
Eighteen years later, I still have trouble mustering a rebuttal to the anti-abortion crowd. It isn't and has never been a lifeblood political issue for me. I'm not even sure if I think about it as a women's rights issue.
I think of it as an issue of science, based on the practical (if spiritually flimsy) supposition that a first-trimester fetus is not an independent or sentient creature. A cold and antiseptic rationalization this may be, but I find it an effective defense against an argument based mostly on heat.
I think of it as an issue of public health, under the realistic premise that a world without legal abortions would be a world with thousands of illicit, unsanctioned and dangerous abortions -- and thousands of avoidable deaths.
And I think of a personal experience, a few short years after that Social Studies class, sitting on my girlfriend's bed and waiting for the pregnancy test to come back negative. We were fortunate (although that seems a weird way to put it), in that a teen pregnancy might well have ruined at least two promising futures.
But even as I sat on that bed, seriously mulling the unsavory alternatives, I thought about the idea of that child, part-me and part-her, and the whole beautiful humanity of it all. And that same instinct, writ large, is at the heart of a notion I can't escape: It is hard to reconcile the idea that any country, much less this one, tolerates the killing of an unborn child.
It is difficult for me to imagine either side, each so thoroughly and profoundly invested in the righteousness of their cause, ever ceding the moral high ground and coming around to the other's way of thinking. It is a fight without a compromise, solution or attrition.
Today, at the corner 16th and L Streets, I saw soldiers on the front lines of that battle. That standoff stirred me morally, emotionally and intellectually. And it made me so proud of this country, which extends freedom of protest to all philosophies.
Pro-life, pro-choice, pro-whatever. I strive to resist labels. Life is freedom. Freedom is choice. It's all the same. I'll just imagine that that's what they're fighting for.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
Today, while on a late-mid-afternoon smoothie run, I passed by the downtown Planned Parenthood office. There was a small, silver-haired woman standing by herself just off the sidewalk, holding a rosary and singing a hymn in a soft soprano.
I've noticed groups standing vigil outside that office before, looking like an uneasy amalgam of a church picnic and an angry mob. But it was a chilly day today, not Rochester-quality frigid or anything, but cold, with the kind of crisp, dry wind that seems to poke holes through your skin. So she was there alone, her voice and talisman shivering, her spirit stoic. It was stirring, in a number of ways.
When I was in eighth grade, my first-period Social Studies teacher, Mr. Bianchi, devised an ill-conceived lesson plan on the topic of abortion. I don't remember the point he was trying to make and I can't imagine what kind of truth he was expecting to divine from callow 14-year olds, but his great idea was to separate everyone in the classroom according to their own position, "anti-abortion" and "pro-abortion," and have a debate.
As it happens, my hometown had a large and vibrant Catholic population (Mr. Bianchi, also the school football coach, was himself large, vibrant and Catholic, and as I recall not altogether bright) and was socially rather conservative. So when the 25 students split up, 23 of them were on the "anti-abortion" side of the room and I was on the other, along with "Maresh," a gentle soul whose Hindu parents had emigrated from India.The lack of sufficient seating on that side of the room forced half of the class to stand, creating the illusion of a gathering posse.
For "some" reason, Mr. Bianchi also sat on the "anti-abortion" side of the room. He then attempted to poke and prod us into a free exchange of ideas.
As a 14-year-old I was just worldly enough to understand that I was pro-choice but not nearly practiced enough to enunciate my philosophy. (I vaguely recall blabbering something about "orphanages.") As I struggled to explain myself, the exercise turned sharply prosecutorial. I remember Mr. Bianchi asking me, "what about all the mentally challenged kids out there? Should we round them up and kill them, too?", the rhetorical equivalent of a battering ram. At one point I turned to Maresh as if to ask for a little help, but he just shrugged and whispered that he thought he was on the wrong side.
Eighteen years later, I still have trouble mustering a rebuttal to the anti-abortion crowd. It isn't and has never been a lifeblood political issue for me. I'm not even sure if I think about it as a women's rights issue.
I think of it as an issue of science, based on the practical (if spiritually flimsy) supposition that a first-trimester fetus is not an independent or sentient creature. A cold and antiseptic rationalization this may be, but I find it an effective defense against an argument based mostly on heat.
I think of it as an issue of public health, under the realistic premise that a world without legal abortions would be a world with thousands of illicit, unsanctioned and dangerous abortions -- and thousands of avoidable deaths.
And I think of a personal experience, a few short years after that Social Studies class, sitting on my girlfriend's bed and waiting for the pregnancy test to come back negative. We were fortunate (although that seems a weird way to put it), in that a teen pregnancy might well have ruined at least two promising futures.
But even as I sat on that bed, seriously mulling the unsavory alternatives, I thought about the idea of that child, part-me and part-her, and the whole beautiful humanity of it all. And that same instinct, writ large, is at the heart of a notion I can't escape: It is hard to reconcile the idea that any country, much less this one, tolerates the killing of an unborn child.
It is difficult for me to imagine either side, each so thoroughly and profoundly invested in the righteousness of their cause, ever ceding the moral high ground and coming around to the other's way of thinking. It is a fight without a compromise, solution or attrition.
Today, at the corner 16th and L Streets, I saw soldiers on the front lines of that battle. That standoff stirred me morally, emotionally and intellectually. And it made me so proud of this country, which extends freedom of protest to all philosophies.
Pro-life, pro-choice, pro-whatever. I strive to resist labels. Life is freedom. Freedom is choice. It's all the same. I'll just imagine that that's what they're fighting for.