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Monday, January 22, 2007

Happy Birthday, Roe v. Wade (and Me)

filed under: Strange Bedfellows by Melissa Gira

Today’s my birthday, too. I’m five years Roe v. Wade’s junior, and, in a moment of teenage brazen behavior, I informed my mother that this must have meant that I was a wanted child. My mother, a reasonably devout Catholic, was understandably taken way, way aback.

My mother didn’t directly raise me to have any beliefs about abortion, though she did send me to a Catholic after-school program where we were shown graphic slideshows of fetuses in utero. My one other queer friend bought into the whole nine, even going to “pro-life” rallies, but later it was found out she only did this to gain brownie points towards her Catholic Youth Group’s trip to Ireland where a girl named (I swear) Brigit took her lesbian virginity.

My mother, while not knowing how intensely Dark Ages my Catholic school lessons around the dangers of sex would get (read: hold this plastic fetus in your hand, and could you kill this, girl, you very bad girl?), did me good by hooking me up at fifteen with a pediatric gynecologist. My mother did me good when she drove me to the pharmacist to pick up birth control pills. My mother did me good when, after listening to my complaints about the fetus slideshow and fetus dolls and fetus fetishization, let me leave Catholic education, skip out on my Confirmation, and reject the Church.

I am pro-choice because my mother had a choice, and she chose to raise me, and trusted me to make, when the time came, my own choices. She gave me the tools to control my own body, my own sexuality, my own pleasure, and ultimately, my own power. She may still be with the Church herself, and may still not understand my sexual values, but she understands that they are mine. My values, really, are her values: independence, sure, but above all, integrity to one’s own truth even as it bucks what’s comfortable, what’s easy.

Thanks, mom.

And happy birthday, baby. You’ve made my generation and all that follow so proud.

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