Knowing I Become My Enemy The Instant That I Preach !

Knowing I Become My Enemy The Instant That I Preach !
There are pieces of a baby doll covered in blood in a plastic bag on my parent’s fridge alongside a mock music video set to a Dylan song that prominently features my mother and her cohorts talking on those 3 inch thick prehistoric cell phones about clinic protection. Abortion is not a new topic, nor is it particularly interesting to people who have spent years so intimately married to their stance on it. However, like any field, there are things you only learn on the inside. I was brought up by a front-line fighter in the battle over keeping abortion clinics open with about 5 of my formative years spent working intermittently at various locations. Among other duties I spent hours standing outside of the door in a green vest, a beacon of protection to women scurrying in for procedures. I memorized the birth control chart we had on the bathroom walls. One thing that became more commonplace toward the end of my stint there was the decreasing age, of girls stopping by to procure birth control. It was more surprising every time. The trepidation with which a 13-year-old would ask if we had to tell her mom about this was one of the most touching moments of my job. I wanted to hug and slap her every time. Hug because she was taking control of her life and health. Slap because she scared me, with her barely pubescent acknowledgement of sex. Saying abortion still feels like increasing the electricity coursing through the air. Perhaps on a nationwide level the discussion has been relegated to the back burner due to economic uncertainties but tea partiers are still obsessed with our over-sexualized, cell-phone talking girls who are growing up too fast; never mind what their male counterparts are doing, it’s these young sluts who will be our destruction. However readily accessible conversations about serious issues facing women is never a bad thing. Though abortion took up thousands of hours of my family’s time, it also prepared me so strongly for a life open to discussion and debate of any difficult issue.