Trust Women

 The Catholic school just down the street from me puts up this display every election cycle.  I pulled over just long enough to get this picture.  It is meant to be a memorial.  The sign reads that all of those white crosses represent the unborn fetuses lost to abortion. 

I am not questioning anybody’s deeply held beliefs. 

Let me say that again:  I am NOT questioning or condemning anyone’s belief systems.

But every time I go past this I feel compelled to point out to whoever might be listening that all of those white crosses could also represent a woman who died in childbirth after carrying a high risk pregnancy. 

Every one of those crosses could represent a single mom stuck in poverty and needing public assistance for years to come.

Every one of those crosses could represent a woman now tied indefinitely in some way or another to the abusive jerk she had been trying to get away from.    

And, yes, one of those crosses just may represent a woman who died or injured herself permanently trying to do a home abortion.

I am not questioning anybody’s faith or beliefs.  I am just pointing out that the abortion debate is a lot more complicated than our political leaders make it out to be.

The decade long study of a thousand women seeking abortion care outlined in Diana Greene Foster’s book The Turnaway Study fleshes out some of those nuances and dispels many of the “abortion myths” that are prevalent in our society still.

The end conclusion, though, was one I had intuited myself many years ago:  When a woman says she just can’t cope with a pregnancy right then – Believer her.

Protect Roe.

Trust women.