Editor's Note: The following is a submission received during our Pro-Choice Republican Essay Contest. We are delighted to feature the voices of Republican voters who shake off party orthodoxy and embrace pro-choice principles. Their views, of course, are theirs alone, and don't necessarily reflect those of the site.
I am 52 years young and I have ALWAYS been pro-choice and I have ALWAYS been Republican. My convictions concerning women's issues have been central to my identity my whole life. I might even call myself a feminist, though not militant. I feel that if 50% of the population of a country does not have even the simple, basic, most personal right to decide whether to bear a child or not, then most of the other rights we are afforded as Americans are greatly diluted. I also feel that if that same 50% of the population is restricted, by having unwanted children, to never fulfilling their potential as individuals, then the whole world will suffer from the loss.
I believe that bringing children into the world that a parent cannot provide for emotionally or financially is the worst of irresponsibility. I believe that unless women have the right to make their own decisions about pregnancy they will forever be subject to financial and emotional dependence on men, which will keep the relations between the sexes unequal and oppressive. As long as women can make their own decisions their male partners will be more likely to listen and communicate respectfully and treat them with the dignity and equality they deserve. This will improve the parenting skills and participation of both parents raising the next generation and will be more conducive to producing psychologically healthy young people, better capable of designing a world without war.
Our race has gone long enough without women being granted their full rights as human beings, and I am not about to trade those rights (or that of my sisters) just to vote for a candidate who would crush those rights.
This issue and the issue of protection of our environment and the beautiful wild places of our country are the two things I have always voted consistently and insistently for, but I have mostly had to vote Democrat because I was so terrified my own party would fail miserably in these areas.
When I first started voting in college, all the people I respected and admired - my parents, my professors, my bosses, and my mentors - were Republican, so it was natural that I would lean towards that party. But I also asked around about what the differences were between the Republicans and Democrats before I registered to vote as one or the other. I felt most proud of the logic and the principles that were described to me as those of the Republican Party. I understood these principles to especially mean the protection of the freedom of the individual to flourish and thrive, responsible for his own well-being, with the knowledge that his efforts would bear fruit from which he could be sure to benefit, himself. The commitment to a smaller, less intrusive government as opposed to a welfare state seemed most constructive to me, also. Included in the Republican philosophy was a belief in a strong military that would defend our rights, lifestyle, and philosophy of humanity in a world where pacifism is naivete and could mean the destruction and enslavement of all that we love and for which our ancestors fought and died. I also was convinced of our country's unprecedented role as a leader of the world in bringing freedom and prosperity to the average person everywhere through democracy, capitalism, and the protection of human dignity.
When I was in my late 20s, I moved to New York City from another region of the U.S. I was surprised to find a contempt for all Republicans (and all those from outside the city) that was expressed with uninhibited superciliousness. I have now lived here for almost a quarter century and have never heard a Democrat who could convince me that my position was wrong. The vehemence of their sarcasm and pretentiousness just caused me to be even more determined to be true to my principles and beliefs. So here I am, surrounded, a minority, where if I so much as mention that I support the war effort or am proud of being an American, I am looked at with astonishment, as if the real world had suddenly fallen in on the listener who had always assumed his tiny world on this island was the whole world.
But with this pending presidential election I am more torn than ever before. I am repulsed by the New York Democrats' vilifying of the leaders of our country in the middle of a bloody war where young Americans are laying down their lives. I am sickened by the contempt I hear in their jokes about "stupid Americans." I am heart broken and furious at their ignorant hatred of so much that I love and of which I am so proud. I am confident of McCain's patriotism and intelligence and experience and integrity. I believe in the war effort and our need to be in Iraq, and I do not want to betray the sacrifices of the young men and women who have given their lives to protect us here in America. Obama's slip of tongue about the rural working classes who "cling to religion and guns because they are bitter," and his wife's announcement that she has not been proud of her country until recently, and their 20-year alliance with a preacher who screams racist sermons from the pulpit, and the trip to Europe to apologize for America when we are trying so hard to do the right thing - all this makes me shudder! For the first time in my voting life, I cannot vote outside the Republican Party. It would feel as though I was voting against my own country. I'm sick of this! I hope I have not caved in on my convictions concerning women's rights and the protection of the environment, because those causes are so vital to me that I would feel that I was betraying myself if I abandoned them. But now I have to choose between my love for my country and betraying myself.
What am I to do? It seems perhaps the only real option is to fight the anti-choice and the rape-the-land factions from WITHIN my own party. I've stood for what I believed in and spoken out loudly and strongly many, many times when my opinion was not the currently popular one. What have I got to lose? I haven't died from it yet. And besides, I am now hearing that the majority of Republicans are pro-choice and pro-environment like me. Is this so?
Being peri-menopausal and therefore no longer concerned about my own reproductive rights is no reason to give up the fight now! There are generations of young women to come who deserve the inalienable right to their own bodies. And as I age I will appreciate the forests and mountains of my country's wild lands more often than ever before. I cannot stop now. It's time to regroup and embrace a new strategy! No more riding on the fence between the Democrats and the Republicans! Maybe there's hope inside my own party! The battle has only just begun!
