By the time I found out that my colleague, Jo, was pro-life, it was too late in the game to consider her the enemy. We met when Jo was hired as part of a team campaigning to have her local District Attorney drop homicide charges against a woman who had had a stillbirth and tested positive for methamphetamine. Up until then we hadn't been having a whole lot of luck with the DA, who had recently won his seat against a more conservative incumbent in a tight race. His predecessor had brought the original charges, and he wasn't willing to back down on them, perhaps believing that his constituents required tough-on-crime-say-no-to-drugs-and-protecting-the-babies credentials.
A host of organizations including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have an official stance against such prosecutions, citing research that shows no causal link between meth and stillbirth. Still, the DA was only willing to reduce the plea offer of 25 years in prison to 15 years. He wasn't moved by the arguments of medical professionals who noted the statistical frequency of stillbirths/miscarriages in general (one in five pregnant women have one). He didn't credit the prosecution's likely chilling effect on addicted pregnant women who would now avoid prenatal care altogether or decide against disclosing their addiction to health care providers and seeking help, believing these sort of prosecutions necessary as deterrents to drug use during pregnancy. Besides, these medical and scientific experts weren't the DA's base.
Which is where Jo stepped in. Because unlike the rest of us working on the case, Jo was one of the DA's constituents -- a voting citizen who knew the lay of the land and greeted the woman working the desk at the local YWCA by name. Working as the local organizer, she spent several sleep-deprived nights organizing an educational outreach event open to the whole community. She papered the town with fliers and gathered signatures for a letter supporting the accused woman from prominent local medical professionals and a broad swath of local nonprofit organizations. Sometimes getting those signatures meant multiple calls and long phone conversations; once it meant camping on the doorstep of a prominent official's office.
Always it meant coming out in support of a low-income, drug-addicted woman who wanted to have her baby, had continued using meth during her pregnancy, had a stillbirth, and been charged with murder -- in a tight-knit conservative city in a Midwestern state. It was only later that I learned that for Jo, this set of circumstances amounted to the state putting itself in a position that required drug-addicted women to get abortions or run the risk of being charged with murder when they attempted to carry the pregnancy in spite of their addiction.
Jo's efforts were key to the larger communications and education effort that turned the tide. Now the arguments against the DA's prosecution were coming from people who were his constituents. People who had voted for him and met him in the local schoolyard each morning dropping off their kids and ran into him at the local diner urged him to drop the case. People who had held fundraisers for him in their homes and tended to his family's medical needs editorialized against his treating a public health issue -- addiction -- as a crime in the local paper, the largest in the state.
Often the person who gets lost in these kinds of cases is the client. While everyone is busy talking about her, rounding up local support, strategizing her prosecution and defense, and contacting media outlets, she languishes in jail. (In this case, the client couldn't afford the pennies to buy the local newspaper.) Looking after her was part of Jo's duties, too. She began visiting the woman in jail, listening to her, offering encouragement, ensuring that she had something to read, and bringing her copies of her other children's pictures.
It was after my sole visit to see the client in jail that I learned that Jo was pro-life. I don't remember how it came up, only that I reflexively fell into "If only you knew better" mode. I instantly told Jo the story of what a relief it had been in the seventies to be able to get someone close to me a safe, legal abortion when she accidentally became pregnant as a teenager. Surely she'd understand then! Jo listened and nodded. She said she thought the abortion solution to the problem of an unwanted pregnancy represented an act of violence that frees the man involved, but can tie the woman up for the rest of her life. We didn't try to convince each other -- just respectfully stated our opinions. Years later, we're still tight.
We don't live in the same part of the country, so we chat by phone and on Facebook. I know about her morning yoga sessions with her Rodney Yee tape and how proud she is of her son; about her vacations with her family and the remodeling job on her bedroom. I've learned more about her devotion to her church and its social justice work on behalf of women, children, families, and the poor. About her trip to Africa last year, where she spent her time tending to nurses who are doing missionary work, giving them manicures and pedicures, and rubbing their feet. About her commitment to health care reform and her concern for the millions of uninsured people in this country.
I've never explicitly asked Jo to explain further why she's pro-life. But watching her live a life committed to helping others, and serving some higher good -- consistently, compassionately, and generously -- I think I can guess. Nor does it appear to be a mystery to her, though she has never asked me explicitly, that I try to lead a similar life but am pro-choice.
When I tried to find words for our friendship, I wrote to Jo, "We are joined at the root. Our differences don't shake that foundation." She responded, "The bond formed by our compassion for others means that we are joined at the root. Our respect for each other's genuine belief in different means of expressing our compassion represents divergent stalks arising from that common root. It also represents a unique (dare I say feminine) gift we give each other: we care for and about another who is not a carbon copy of our self."
Re-posted from RH Reality Check