I agree with Exodus 20:13: “Thou shall not kill.” I am “pro-life.” But, I am also “pro-choice.”

All the years of Bible study and worship as a child, I never understood why this commandment was placed sixth on the list. It seemed fairly obvious that even though times were pretty different when (as The Bible claims) God gave Moses the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, out of them all, this one had the most weight.

And even though my religious views have altered, this commandment is a principle that religious and secular people can both agree on: it’s wrong to end another human being’s life.

Unfortunately, many who label themselves as “pro-life” are referencing a term that represents a perspective in medical ethics opposed to the advocacy, practice or legalization of abortion. In very “black and white” terms, this group generally believes that destroying an embryo (and sometimes even preventing the formation of an embryo with birth control) is murder.

My intention is not to dispute this belief – there may never be a universal agreement to when life begins.

Rather, I argue that these terms are not “black and white”; that those who are “pro-choice” are also pro-life; and that some who are blind to anything but “pro-life” doctrine are also hypocrites.

In the mid-to-late 1800s, states began passing laws that made abortion illegal.

Motivations for such laws varied from state to state. According to research found in Rachel B. Needle and Lenore E. A. Walker’s “Abortion Counseling: A Clinician’s Guide to Psychology, Legislation, Politics, and Competency” (2007), a central reason was the fear that children of newly arriving immigrants would dominate the population (birth rates were dramatically higher than those of “native” Anglo-Saxon women).

It was around this time that the number of “coat hanger” or “back alley” abortions (procedures performed by unskilled persons, including self-induced attempts by pregnant women) exploded.

In a June 2008 New York Times essay “Repairing the Damage, Before Roe,” Waldo L. Fielding, an 80-something retired gynecologist, explains her experiences during the “bad old days” where she saw and treated “almost every complication of illegal abortion that one could conjure.”

She lists some of the primitive and unsanitary implements used: darning needles, crochet hooks, cut-glass saltshakers and soda bottles (sometimes intact, sometimes with the top broken off).

“Another method that I did not encounter, but heard about from colleagues in other hospitals, was a soap solution forced through the cervical canal with a syringe,” she wrote. “This could cause almost immediate death if a bubble in the solution entered a blood vessel and was transported to the heart.”

Women were so desperate to not be pregnant (because of social creeds defining proper and natural womanly behavior, roles and obligations) that they risked their lives.

Studies show that prohibition of legal abortion from the 1880s until 1973 did not reduce the numbers of women who sought abortions. In these years, estimates of illegal abortions ranged as high as 1.2 million per year (according to “Induced Abortion: A World Review” (1986) by C. Tietze and S. K. Henshaw).

Although accurate records could not be kept, researchers approximate that several thousands of women died or suffered serious (and painful) medical problems after attempting to self-induce their abortions or going to untrained practitioners.

The 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade – ruled that Americans’ right to privacy (14th amendment) included the right of a woman to decide whether to have children, and the right of a woman and her doctor to make that decision without state interference – made it possible for women to get safe, legal abortions from well-trained medical practitioners.

In the years that followed, pregnancy-related injury and death significantly decreased.

Since that decision, supporters of legal abortion celebrated while many who were/are opposed directed their aim at disrupting clinics where abortions were/are being provided.

In addition to general harassment of abortion doctors and clients seeking their services, the amount of anti-abortion/”pro-life” violence escalated (visit to read NAF’s (National Abortion Federation) violence and disruption statistics against abortion providers in the U.S. and Canada since 1977).

The most recent example was the murder of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller by “pro-life radical” Scott Roeder on Sunday, May 31. Tiller was shot while standing as an usher in his church.

Prior to his death, Tiller’s family suffered years of harassment and threats, his clinic was bombed in 1985, and an abortion opponent shot him in both arms in 1993.

Tiller’s wife Jeanne, his four children and 10 grandchildren issued the following statement the day he died: “This is particularly heart-wrenching because George was shot down in his house of worship, a place of peace.”

Roeder, who was charged with first-degree murder, also made a statement to the Associated Press: “I know there are many other similar events planned around the country as long as abortion remains legal.”

I am not suggesting that all “pro-life” individuals are prone to violence. Like me, there are countless groups that are made up of people who support the 6th commandment.

(Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition said that while it was likely Tiller’s killing was motivated by anti-abortion beliefs, the movement itself did not support violence. Another “pro-life” group called Operation Rescue (who was particularly outspoken against Tiller) also denounced “vigilantism” and said that they were praying for Tiller’s family).

However, I also believe in the 14th amendment.

Making it legal for medical personnel to perform abortions confers on women the full rights of first-class citizens; allowing women a (safe) choice is supporting life.

Originally published Sunday, June 26, 2009