Writer: “Why I Lost Faith in the Pro-Choice Movement”

Once all of this set in, I thought of all my friends who had ended up sitting in the waiting rooms of abortion facilities, and mourned for them anew. In each case there was an unspoken but palpable question of, “How could this have happened?” These young women played by the rules. They tried to do the right thing. None of them slept around, none lived careless lives. They had dutifully used contraception, just like they were supposed to. They were told that this was the path to a life of freedom, and were dazed and traumatized when they found themselves without real choices, backed into a corner by their circumstances.

I believe that most people who are pro-choice hold that viewpoint because they want to help women. I was pro-choice out of loving concern for my sisters all over the world, and, on the surface, it seemed that this view was the most compassionate. But when I took a hard look behind the closed doors of the pro-choice movement, and demanded full information, and acknowledged the dignity of women of all ages (even those not yet born), and asked hard questions about what women’s reproductive freedom really means, that is when I became pro-life.

–Jennifer Fulwiler, in Why I Lost Faith in the Pro-Choice Movement