And now, Bookstore Conversations Part II (go here for
Part I), the true story of an anti-choice, virulently misogynistic customer whom I met at the bookstore where I work, and to whom I failed to impart the beauty of
choice, despite his being halfway unwittingly pro-choice before he met me.
And so when his daughter confessed to him in tears that she was pregnant, he decided upon the moment that he would
pay for her abortion. He made the appointment, drove her to it, and stayed in the waiting area during the procedure. He even arranged to have time off from work to care for her afterward. The two of them managed to keep the entire incident secret from the rest of the family by renting a room for her to stay in during her convalescence. A "fanatically" religious wife would have tried to put a stop to their mission had she known, he said.
Today John's daughter teaches math and science at a well-known southwestern university, is a locally celebrated painter, has two children and is married to "the right sort of fellow--smart, like her." Not the "deadbeat" who got her pregnant when she was nineteen. Incredible, I thought. He's pro-choice and doesn't know it.
Naturally, before he left the store I was determined to return to this story and ask how was it okay for his daughter to have an abortion and yet absolutely out of the question for the remaining females on earth. When I finally got the chance to ask, he replied with a true heart and soul rendition of the pro-choice anthem, to wit: his daughter's life would have been ruined; she was born be educated, born to study and teach; it was the wrong time; it was the wrong partner; she was too young; it would have been a crime to force a "smart girl like that" into motherhood before she had fulfilled her potential.
But what about "life begins at conception?" I asked. Isn't it a life she aborted? Didn't you abet that taking of a life? (The only question I asked in this exchange that produced a scowl.) He thought a moment and said, "She's got plenty of kids now." In other words, it just wasn't the right time the first time. Any reasonable person would see that.
Yes, any reasonable person would see it, and I thought by the same reasoning I could change his heart, turn him pro-choice, perhaps on the spot. Emboldened I asked, "What about women today who find themselves in your daughter's shoes twenty years ago? Surely they deserve access to a safe and legal abortion that she had, if abortion is their choice?"
As I said, all quotes are from memory and therefore approximate, but this is close to his exact words: "Men have a right to know if a woman's rough, but my daughter was never like that, and I wouldn't like anybody thinking it." But, you're not answering me, I said. Your daughter had an abortion when she was nineteen because it was the wrong time to have a baby and abortion was legal. Why would you deny other women the right to choose when it's the right time for them? "They wouldn't be pregnant if they knew how to control themselves. My daughter was taken by a con-artist, an unscrupulous individual." The only one, apparently, that ever lived.
There was nowhere to go, nothing more to say. Personal experience left him without any advances in insight or compassion for other women, other lives, other tragedies. He hit an wall at the precise point where his "worthy exception" could so easily have been extended to imagine the same situation in another family and the tragedy of forced motherhood that so many girls just like his daughter will face if alternatives are outlawed. A perfect example--the perfect lesson, so near to heart and hand. And yet so far away.