Saturday, March 15, 2014

The Two Lia Mills

One Lia Mills is now 17 years old and became famous at age 12 for the anti-abortion speech that won a school speech contest in Canada.

http://beforeitsnews.com/opinion-conservative/2014/03/lia-mills-7th-grade-pro-life-speech-lia-is-17-today-disqualified-from-competition-until-2829502.html

The other Lia Mills is an Irish novelist who was raped at age 17 and was very grateful that abortion was legal in Ireland.  

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/i-was-raped-when-i-was-17-where-were-the-abortion-experts-and-commentators-29241620.html

I wish the two Lias could meet.  

The younger Lia is being trained in the fine arts of feminism, though her family may not realize it.

By encouraging her to speak out and take positions and be all she can be, they are unleashing forces that may go far beyond the issue of abortion.  

For example, in the first 40 seconds of the speech she gave at age 12, she uses the words "choosing" and "choice" a total of four times.

"What if I told you that right now someone was choosing if you were gonna live or die?  What if I told you that the choice was not based on what you could do or not do...and what if I told you you could do nothing about it?  Thousands of children are right now in that very situation.  Someone is choosing whether they are going to live or die.  That someone is their mother, and that choice is abortion."

This is a kid who values choice, and as she grows older there's no guarantee that she will continue to oppose choice for women who face an unplanned pregnancy.

 It's apparent that her mother or perhaps both parents chose what view she would have on the issue of legal access to abortion.  Later on, she may make her own choice, and it could go either way.

Lia, consider the following scenario:

*What if I told you that right now someone was choosing if you were going to complete a pregnancy that you desperately did not want--or whether you were going to be allowed to end it?  

*What if I told you that the choice was not based on what you could do or not do about taking care of that baby... and what if I told you you could do nothing about it?  

*Thousands of women are right now in that very situation.  Someone is choosing whether they are going to spend the next eight months pregnant and bear a child or whether they are allowed to search their own soul and make that decision.  

*That someone making the choice is the federal government in the form of a room full of men, and that choice is whether access to abortion will remain legal or not. 

*The only choice these women will have is whether to entrust their baby to an adoption agency or try to raise it themselves, perhaps with no income and no partner.  

*Oh, there are a few more choices that some of them will make--to end their own life, to throw the baby away at birth, or to risk a dangerous and illegal abortion. 

As Lia grows up, she will come to understand the importance of adult women having legal access to reproductive choice.  She may still come down on the side of the anti-abortionists, but at least she will know what she is talking about.

I didn't really think about choice until I entered my first pregnancy.  Suddenly it hit me that no one should be forced to complete nine months of gestation and go through childbirth except by choice.  

Later, when I had a third pregnancy, unplanned, I was so grateful for choice that I decided to write a pro-choice book.

I kept the baby--completed the pregnancy--but that baby became a wanted baby, even though unplanned.

Abortion--My Choice, God's Grace: Christian Women Tell Their Stories (Pasadena, CA: New Paradigm, 1994).  Available on Amazon.

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