What were the questions, Marie?
It went something like this:
he: (after establishing that I was pro-choice) would you ever have an abortion?
me: no
he: why not?
me: I couldn’t kill a child of mine.
he: alright. Would you kill your mother?
me: no!
he: why not.
me: it’s murder
he: is it alright, in your eyes, for me to kill my own mother?
me: no
he: why not?
me: it’s murder (duh)
he: so it’s murder for you to kill your mother and also murder for me to kill my mother, right?
me: yes....?
he: then why, if it’s murder for you to kill your own baby, is it not murder for me to kill mine?
me: oh....
he: murder is murder, no matter how you look at it. you can call it by a different name, play with the idea, try to justify it; but, in the end, when you take another innocent human life, it’s murder. there’s no way out of that fundamental truth.
In retrospect, he had me before the conversation started. I’d always wanted to be a mother and already identified with my un-conceived children. I watched my mother grieve the loss of her miscarried children as if they were known.
So his arguments made perfect sense to me. Sometimes things really are black and white.