I was working on the BlogSheroes site when I noticed on the feed this post by Jill over at Feministe | The Rights of the Born. It's a beautiful piece written by Anne Lamont on abortion from a liberal Catholic perspective :

[via The Rights Of the Born - Los Angeles Times]:

Pall is a good word. And it did not feel good to be the cause of that pall. I knew what I was supposed to have said, as a progressive Christian: that it's all very complicated and painful, and that Jim was right in saying that the abortion rate in America is way too high for a caring and compassionate society.

But I did the only thing I could think to do: plunge on, and tell my truth. I said that this is the most intimate decision a woman makes, and she makes it all alone, in her deepest heart of hearts, sometimes with the man by whom she is pregnant, with her dearest friends or with her doctor --but without the personal opinion of say, Tom DeLay or Karl Rove.

I said I could not believe that men committed to equality and civil rights were still challenging the basic rights of women. I thought about all the photo-ops at which President Bush had signed legislation limiting abortion rights, surrounded by 10 or so white, self-righteous married men, who have forced God knows how many girlfriends into doing God knows what. I thought of the time Bush appeared on stage with children born from frozen embryos, children he calls "snowflake babies," and of the embryos themselves, which he calls the youngest and most vulnerable Americans.

And somehow, as I was answering, I got louder and maybe even more emphatic than I actually felt, and said it was not a morally ambiguous issue for me at all. I said that fetuses are not babies yet; that there was actually a real difference between pro-abortion people, like me, and Klaus Barbie.

Then I said that a woman's right to choose was nobody else's goddamn business. This got their attention.

As a former Catholic it's easy for me to see why the Church of Men would rather use women as reproductive slaves in the name of Jesus than acknowledge our autonomy : Because in the end, it was not God who gives man life. In the end, it is woman.

God did not say in the beginning there was the word and with the word, man.

No. It was woman.

On the day I knew I was pregnant it was me who said, let there be light, let there be life and a baby.

It was me speaking not God.

I give the gift of life. Not man. Not God.

I say of a fetus, you shall be my child.

It's me not God who decides when a fetus is a baby. Which is why giving life is a joy but it is also a horrible burden.

I am an atheist because I have come to realize the good and bad of humanity are not the doing of a god or the sole agency of man. The good and bad of humanity start in my womb, in my flesh, in the innermost of my core.

To give that responsibility over to a higher power, whether god or man, is to deny myself the full exploration of my power and abilities to effect the here and now with my family, my babies, my choices, my life.

"The DaVinci Code" was brilliant for making the battle of the church of Man against the life of Woman easy to understand for the many, not the scholarly few. What struck a nerve with me was the fact it centered around Mary Magdalene's agnostic gospels.

Mary Magdalene being the ultimate autonomous woman. Mary Magdalene, she who was a prostitute, a prophet, a lover, a mother. Mary Magdalene who lived and loved and changed the world by the choices she made. Mary Magadalene, she who said in the end, let there be life. And thus, there was.

I am not an agnostic because there is no doubt in my mind, my body and soul that it is Woman, not god who makes life possible.

I am life.

I am god.

In the church of Man, that thought is impossible to bear.