You can be BOTH pro-life and pro-choice

This has been weighing a lot on me the past couple of months.
Everyday it seems there is some meme or an article blasting one side or the other.

Sometimes I roll my eyes, sometimes I cringe, sometime I think a re-astounding YES!

But, one thing I often think, is social media rarely is going to change anyone's mind on a debate people feel so much passion for. Maybe that's okay. Maybe changing someone's mind never was the point.

Often times we share things we feel strongly about as a way to connect with others who share our own feelings. Knowing someone else "gets it" feels good.

But I am here, somewhere in the middle. I have transitioned a lot the past couple years. My thoughts and beliefs have flipped and flopped as I've come to terms with my own values and beliefs.
I find any extreme to the far left or the far right to generally be too rigid.

I am angry at the far right for dragging Planned Parenthood through the mud of an age-old debate, based off of a smear-campaign that has been proven to be false.
It seems to me the sources should have been proven accurate before people throw down the gauntlets to de-fund Planned Parenthood. And, honestly it makes me very suspicious that none of this is actually about fetal tissue selling, but actually is just about a personal agenda for ones dislikes of Planned Parenthood.

The stories have been rolling in from real people who contribute their lives to PP.
PP goes much beyond abortions, in fact abortions are a very small portion of the services they offer.

I think the numbers in this chart are quite profound. When you look at the services provided by PP, 97% have nothing to do with abortion.

In fact, I dare say you could call Planned Parenthood PRO-LIFE. Because they are putting the health needs of people who are currently LIVING, first.

The thought of fetal tissue being used in a lab, breaks my heart. However, this has been happening before my time. I was lucky, some might even say blessed, enough to be born into a time with a vaccine for a disease like Polio. Fetal tissue made that possible.

Lives are saved with STI and STD screenings. Unwanted pregnancies are prevented with contraception, and lives are saved with cancer screenings.

In Utah, PP even gives abstinence teachings. Now I think that's a ruckus.
I think back to when I was a teen and young adult. I certainly made some pretty short-sited and dumb choices.
I knew abstinence was the expectation. My mom had told me multiple times, that she wanted me to wait, but that if I was going to have sex, I should let her know, so I could be put on birth control. And ya know what. No. No way would I have told my mom.

Teens need a safe place to get help with adult choices.

I haven't ever been in the place where I would ever consider abortion. I can't pretend to imagine the complexity of emotions that would lead to such a choice. I do wonder how many women feel that an abortion is saving their lives. And I know this gets into sticky terrain, it's where things get nasty and snide. But I don't know, and if you haven't been there, you don't know either.

I don't like the idea of abortion myself, but it seems the best way to decrease abortions is to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place. Look it up, the numbers show that is what happens.Abortions have been on the decrease.

Planned Parenthood saves lives everyday.  Sometimes saving lives comes in the form of the pregnancies they prevent. They put the living first. If you are pro-choice, you don't have to think abortion is ethical, but you really should consider caring about the lives of the living too, or really you are only pro-pregnancy.