Shifting Views on the Big A, and consequences thereof

[editor's note: this is a very scary post for me in terms of broadcasting my preliminary thoughts on this topic, but I think it's important. I'm very willing to talk about this further on- or offline.]

For the past few months a very serious topic has been on my mind. Gradually my views on abortion, once staunchly on the feminist, pro-choice side, have begun to shift. This makes me kind of uneasy, because for a while I haven't really known what to think about this. Little by little, the viewpoint has become clearer, to the point that I think I can make some attempt at articulating it. I have been in the privileged position of having a baby when I wanted to, with a supportive co-parent, and adequate financial means. It's true that I have no idea what it's like to become pregnant in less than ideal or even awful circumstances.

However, there are also a couple of notions that I can no longer think of as less than absolute truths: 1) killing is wrong and 2) life begins at conception. What would a world that truly and thoroughly supported women with unplanned pregnancies look like? Monnica Terwilliger makes a curious move in her discussion on abortion by stating that it's a patriarchal world that offers abortion as a possibility for women. This is something I want to think about further, but it would really stand the usual feminist logic of abortion as a liberating option on its head.

This shift stems from a couple of major events in my life: having a baby myself, and working toward re-establishing a relationship with Jesus. Both of these things have the power to completely alienate me from many people currently in my circles if I'm not careful, and so far I've been careful to retain as much normalcy as possible. But this shift from pro-choice to anti-abortion--that's a biggie that's pretty frightening for this good liberal educated Californian feminist who's proud to live in a blue state. What do I do with that?