Pro-Choice, Pro-Life, Pro-Everyone

by Rosie Kuhn, Ph.D.
– USA –

My husband Todd and I traveled to Colorado recently to facilitate the 2nd Annual Colorado Wonderful Women’s Retreat in Estes Park. But first we went down to Colorado Springs for an overnight visit with my daughter Elissa. We loved the city’s small town feeling. Tucked into the side of the mountains the city is cozy; pockets of neighborhoods, each with their own unique qualities, and the small scale of the downtown area, full of interesting shops, engaged us to be curious about what might be right around the corner.

While having our tea at a local coffee shop, Todd perused the newspaper. What he found almost stopped his heart. In the State of Colorado, Proposition 48 is up for vote, which in essence defines legal personhood at fertilization and gives rights to a zygote, or premature fetus, that supercede those of the woman who happens to be carrying it. If this proposition goes through, a woman in Colorado will be committing murder if she aborts a pregnancy. Not only that, if there is any kind of unusual occurrence in the pregnancy, the woman legally can’t do anything to save her own life until an emergency presents itself. By law, the pregnancy must take its own natural course.

While Todd’s reaction was anger, confusion and frustration, I had my usual knee-jerk reaction – an anxiety attack. It’s what initially happens when I hear information that shatters my sense of what is right and good and loving. I melt into a pool of powerlessness, hopelessness and despair. In that brief moment it felt as though that great, big Colorado sky was falling down around me.

As a woman, and as a human being, there is no place on this planet where I am safe from the potential of a reality that is different from mine. Just when I think that we’ve come to a collective level of awareness that is pro-life (as in pro-everyone) something manages to shatter my reality. But my work as a spiritual counselor, coach and facilitator of a transformational coaching training program has given me the practical skill of bringing order to mental and emotional chaos. I begin to breathe again and to construct a bigger picture of this reality. In these moments I reconstruct what is truth for me. And as I return to what for me is a clear reality, I begin to exercise muscles that allow me to look at the situation with a compassionate heart.

I’ve learned lessons over the past 50-plus years that have thus brought me to an astounding place – one I never knew existed growing up in the Midwest. It’s a place where there is no right or wrong, no good or bad. Many spiritual traditions, especially eastern traditions, encourage this kind of thinking. Vastly different from the Catholic sin-based and fear-based reality I was raised in, it allows for wisdom without judgment or punishment. As I recover from my momentary anxiety attack, I remember this place of suspended judgment and begin to piece together a reality that supports my essential knowing that everything is in service to the greater good. Sometimes it just doesn’t look like it.

Instead of thinking that Prop 48 is a throwback from the last century, I begin to wonder what values it is serving in our culture and our times today. What are we missing that needs attention and requires a Prop 48-type intervention to bring it to us? What is happening in our society that we would make laws that keep women from making choices, that more likely than not, prevent unwanted births by women who don’t have the capacity to nurture and care for unplanned children?

I was raised to fear fear – and the individuals imposing fear. I learned that bad things would happen to me if I thought for myself, or allowed myself to have needs and wants that were different from other people. I learned to not trust myself and to listen to others because they were older and supposedly knew something that I didn’t. I learned to love based on what I had seen demonstrated in my family. Ours was a passive, yet angry, controlling household. It wasn’t safe to have divergent thoughts; there was no sharing of ideas, nor were we allowed to explore any kind of individuality. Though my parents were “good” Catholics, something was obviously missing since all of nine of us kids experienced a reality that did not reinforce the feelings of being valued or worthy or loveable. Instead I was tormented for years by the feeling that I was not enough, not knowing my own truth and believing I would most likely go to hell regardless of how hard I tried to be “good.”

In this presidential election, as in all elections, we are asked to listen to our fears – to make choices and vote based on what could go wrong if the other party gets elected. But my work in the world is to dissipate fear-based thinking and fear-based living. I coach people to make choices from something other than fear.

At some point, I pose the following question to almost every individual who comes into my office seeking a more fulfilling life: If you let go of your fear of bad things happening, what would you choose? I want to empower people to be courageous in facing fears that, up until now, have formed and shaped who they are. Even with chaos staring us in the face, we are constantly given opportunities to follow our deepest internal impulses to find what is true – for ourselves. The profound concept and task of taking back one’s life, truth and individual power is bigger than any government can legislate for.

Back in California, Colorado’s Prop 48 is still with me. It has given me an opportunity to assess my truths and determine whether I am in alignment with its cause. I believe we all have the capacity to be both pro-life and pro-choice. My hope is that we can find the essential truth that supports both positions through dialogue rather than legislation. By remembering our connections as human beings, perhaps we will cultivate thoughts that translate into kinder, world-changing policies.

– Photo by flickr user whartonds used under Creative Commons licenses. – Ed.

About the Author
Rosie Kuhn, Ph.D. lives in the United States and has worked in the field of human development for over 27 years. She is a personal and professional coach and the author of the book Self-Empowerment 101, a culmination of her work as a life coach, marriage and family therapist, spiritual guide and facilitator of the Transformational Coaching Training at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, in Palo Alto, California. She is a key note speaker and guest on many radio shows around the country. Rosie also facilitates The Wonderful Women Retreats now held in Colorado, Washington and California.

When not teaching, Rosie lives on Orcas Island in the Pacific Northwest. She enjoys the best of the urban world of Silicon Valley and the natural world of the San Juan Islands.