There is an unsettling vagueness to these one-line proclamations. For every choice is more complex than a slogan. As Francine Prose notes in her essay for our anthology, Choice: True Stories of Birth, Contraception, Infertility, Adoption, Single Parenthood and Abortion, which I co-edited with Nina de Gramont, the language of Roe V. Wade describes the decision to have an abortion as influenced by "one's philosophy, one's experiences, one's exposure to the raw edges of human existence."
What is it like, after all, to make any sort of reproductive choice? What is it really like to use birth control, to have an unplanned pregnancy, to give birth, to use the morning after pill, RU-486, or have an abortion? What is it really like to adopt a child, to place a child for adoption, to be adopted?
As writers and teachers of writing, we believe in the specific. We tell our students to stay away from name-calling, clichés, and vague writing. For when a story becomes specific, we find out what it is truly like to make any sort of choice -- we find out the faces behind the slogans.
Listen to Professor Janet Ellerby, who was forced to place her child for adoption when she became pregnant at 16. When she finds out she is pregnant, she says, "My body was not my own; perhaps it had never been. When it had escaped my control, Alec had immediately taken it up, and when he had abandoned it, a baby had claimed it. I did not completely understand that my body was my own dominion, that I could say what did and did not happen to it. In significant ways, women were not led to believe that they owned their bodies."...