Me, the Anti-Abortion Mouthpiece Who Became Pro-Choice

I was 14 years old, living in my Mexican border town, and our high-school teacher had organized a debate on abortion. He asked us who wanted to be on the affirmative and the negative side of the discussion. Other kids and I quickly raised our hands to say we wanted to be “against.”We were given a day to prepare.

The next morning, we took our place on opposite sides of the classroom, and off we went. Everybody presented their case, trying to explain to the other faction just how wrong they were.

One of the girls on the affirmative side passionately argued, “This is about every person deciding what’s best for them. We cannot impose our beliefs on other people. People who are against abortion shouldn’t get one, but they don’t get to tell the rest of us what to do.”

And me? Well, I had a whole array of arguments ready to use. My Sunday school teacher had taught me well. I recited lines on the sanctity of life, and I explained how it should be protected from the moment it was conceived.

I finished my case by pulling out a book from my backpack. I opened it on the page I had previously selected. It showed a newborn baby. I lifted it so everybody could see. “Anybody willing to hurt this innocent person has no soul,” I said.

Yep, that was me. And no, I had no idea what I was talking about.

A very Catholic country

With 86.67% of the population claiming to profess this religion, Mexico, my country, ranks amongst one of the world's most Catholic countries. Not only that, but religion heavily influences people’s social life. From baptism to confirmation and, of course, marriage, religion dictates the different stages of a person’s life.

Childbirth is not an exception.

From a very young age, all Mexican children sent to Sunday school learn that it is wrong to kill a baby while in his mother's belly. All pregnancies should be carried to term.

And the Mexican legislation tends to agree. In fact, Mexico City remains the only place where a woman can decide to have an abortion, provided it happens during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. For the rest of the country, it can happen only if certain requirements are fulfilled, such as:

- The pregnancy is the result of rape.

- The mother’s life is in severe danger (except for the states of Guanajuato and Queretaro)

- The abortion happened by accident or spontaneously.

However, even though rape is acknowledged as a basis for abortion all over the country, there have been situations in which a person is coerced into carrying the pregnancy to term, or doctors refuse to perform the procedure.

Yes, in my country, abortion is a touchy subject.

Becoming a mother made me wake up from my pro-life indoctrination

Like most kids in my country, I was sent to Sunday school. I didn’t really understand why. All I knew was that I needed to do this and to get all of the answers right.

Our teacher would ask us, “Who created life?” We were supposed to answer God every single time. Then, we were quizzed on the Ten Commandments and other relevant issues.

I learned to be obedient. Respectful. To not challenge what my faith informed me was right or wrong. This, of course, included sex before marriage, homosexuality, and abortion. Guess what? All of that was wrong wrong wrong.

No questions asked.

Wherever I went, I would recite my anti-abortion teachings. It was easy because it was a script already written for me. No thinking was required. However, something important happened along the way, something that would forever change my views on abortion.

I became a mother.

For the most part, I had a healthy pregnancy—nothing extraordinary to report in that aspect. However, once my pregnancy became quite evident, I noticed a change in the way people treated me.

It was as if, suddenly, I had become everybody’s property.

Wherever I went, every person I encountered would require information from me. They all wanted to know my due date, whether or not I had taken my vitamins and my assurance that I wasn’t doing any heavy labor.

At first, I took it with humor and attributed it to people wishing me the best. I’m sure that was the case. But I also noticed there were others who, due to my condition, started to make choices for me. Projects I wanted to be involved in as a teacher suddenly were forbidden for me because they would require me to move too much. The fact that I argued I was healthy made no difference. People would smile and say, “we just want you to be safe.” I don’t think there was any ill intent, but I couldn’t stop thinking, “shouldn't this be my choice?”

Yeah, that got me thinking, but the biggest lesson of all came when my son was born.

We deserve all of the power over our bodies

Never have I felt more pain than the day my child was born. Never. And this comes from a woman who has hurt her ankle and neck several times.

It is not an exaggeration when I say there were a few moments I wished I could just die so I could stop feeling the contractions. Add to that, in my country’s public health system, epidurals and C-sections are not elective procedures unless your life is at risk. Otherwise, you have to suck it up.

And suck it up I did.

I was lucky, though. It only lasted 12 hours. Having my child was worth it. Still, I promised myself that, should I ever became pregnant again, I would make an effort to give birth at a private hospital. I don’t care if I have to sell my car to achieve it.

You see, it wasn’t just about the pain. It was also about all the ways my body autonomy was violated in those 12 hours. I was coerced into getting an enema; later on, I found out I was given drugs to accelerate labor without my consent; in the delivery room, there were additional people besides the doctors and the nurses, staring at my private parts, even though no one asked me whether or not they could be there.

And all of that happened because my body and my choices were not relevant anymore. I was just a vehicle to bring a baby into this world.

As if that wasn’t enough, in the weeks to come, I was hit by a brutal postpartum depression. Yes, once again, I wanted to die. It was debilitating beyond belief.

Now I fully understood that, yes, pregnancy could be a dangerous venture. I had seen the data before but, sadly, it wasn’t until I experienced it that I grasped just how bad it could get.

We put our lives in danger to bring a human being into the world. It seems to me it is our right to have more of a choice in the matter. All of the choices, actually.

Final thoughts

As a teacher, I have seen several students quit their studies because of an unplanned pregnancy. It’s not only about anti-abortion policies. There’s also huge pushback against sex education in Mexican public schools, with some parents actively protesting about their children receiving the information that could transform their lives.

For lots of Mexican people, the only acceptable contraceptive advice is, “Cierra las piernas.” Keep your legs closed.

There’s rarely any mention of the man on the other side of the equation, you know, the one who contributed with his semen to create this fetus. No one tells him he should have put his penis away.

Yes, I can see it very clearly now. Women need the freedom to decide what happens in their bodies. All women. All the time.

We deserve to receive all of the information we need on contraceptive methods. We need full access to them. And we need abortion to be an option, should that be our choice.

Motherhood is one of the most transformative adventures in our lives. To enjoy it, we need to experience it freely, in full control of our bodies. We need to call all the shots. That’s what I have come to understand after all of these years, even if, in the beginning, I was nothing but an anti-abortion mouthpiece.

Originally published by me in An Injustice. Image by Chanikarn Thongsupa from rawpixel