By the time I found out that my colleague, Jo, was pro-life,
it was too late in the game to consider her the enemy. We met when Jo was hired
as part of a team campaigning to have her local District Attorney drop homicide
charges against a woman who had had a stillbirth and tested positive for
methamphetamine. Up until then we hadn’t been having a whole lot of luck with
the DA, who had recently won his seat against a more conservative incumbent in
a tight race. His predecessor had brought the original charges, and he wasn’t
willing to back down on them, perhaps believing that his constituents required
tough-on-crime-say-no-to-drugs-and-protecting-the-babies credentials.

A host of organizations including the American College of
Obstetricians and Gynecologists have an official stance against such
prosecutions, citing research that shows no causal link between meth and
stillbirth. Still, the DA was only willing to reduce the plea offer of 25 years
in prison to 15 years. He wasn’t moved by the arguments of medical
professionals who noted the statistical frequency of stillbirths/miscarriages
in general (one in five pregnant women have one). He didn’t credit the
prosecution’s likely chilling effect on addicted pregnant women who would now
avoid prenatal care altogether or decide against disclosing their addiction to
health care providers and seeking help, believing these sort of prosecutions
necessary as deterrents to drug use during pregnancy. Besides, these medical
and scientific experts weren’t the DA’s base.

Which is where Jo stepped in.
Because unlike the rest of us working on the case, Jo was one of the DA’s
constituents — a voting citizen who knew the lay of the land and greeted the
woman working the desk at the local YWCA by name. Working as the local organizer,
she spent several sleep-deprived nights organizing
an educational outreach event open to the whole community. She papered the town
with fliers and gathered signatures for a letter supporting the accused woman
from prominent local medical professionals and a broad swath of local nonprofit
organizations. Sometimes getting those signatures meant multiple calls and long
phone conversations; once it meant camping on the doorstep of a prominent
official’s office.

Always it meant coming out in support of a low-income,
drug-addicted woman who wanted to have her baby, had continued using meth during her pregnancy, had a stillbirth,
and been charged with murder — in a tight-knit conservative city in a Midwestern state. It was only later that I learned
that for Jo, this set of circumstances amounted to the state putting itself in
a position that required
drug-addicted women to get abortions or run the risk of being charged with
murder when they attempted to carry the pregnancy in spite of their addiction.

Jo’s efforts were key to the larger communications and
education effort that turned the tide. Now the arguments against the DA’s
prosecution were coming from people who were his constituents. People who had
voted for him and met him in the local schoolyard each morning dropping off
their kids and ran into him at the local diner urged him to drop the case.
People who had held fundraisers for him in their homes and tended to his
family’s medical needs editorialized against his treating a public health issue
— addiction — as a crime in the local paper, the largest in the state.

Often the person who gets lost in these kinds of cases is
the client. While everyone is busy talking about her, rounding up local
support, strategizing her prosecution and defense, and contacting media
outlets, she languishes in jail. (In this case, the client couldn’t afford the
pennies to buy the local newspaper.) Looking after her was part of Jo’s duties,
too. She began visiting the woman in jail, listening to her, offering
encouragement, ensuring that she had something to read, and bringing her copies
of her other children’s pictures.

It was after my sole visit to see the client in jail that I
learned that Jo was pro-life. I don’t remember how it came up, only that I
reflexively fell into “If only you knew better” mode. I instantly told Jo the
story of what a relief it had been in the seventies to be able to get someone close
to me a safe, legal abortion when she accidentally became pregnant as a
teenager. Surely she’d understand then! Jo listened and nodded. She said she
thought the abortion solution to the problem of an unwanted pregnancy
represented an act of violence that frees the man involved, but can tie the
woman up for the rest of her life. We didn’t try to convince each other — just
respectfully stated our opinions. Years
later, we’re still tight.

We don’t live in the same part of the country, so we chat by
phone and on Facebook. I know about her morning yoga sessions with her Rodney
Yee tape and how proud she is of her son; about her vacations with her family
and the remodeling job on her bedroom. I’ve learned more about her devotion to
her church and its social justice work on behalf of women, children, families,
and the poor. About her trip to Africa last year, where she spent her time tending
to nurses who are doing missionary work, giving them manicures and pedicures, and
rubbing their feet. About her commitment to health care reform and her concern
for the millions of uninsured people in this country.

I’ve never explicitly asked Jo to explain further why she’s
pro-life. But watching her live a life committed to helping others, and serving
some higher good — consistently, compassionately, and generously — I think I
can guess. Nor does it appear to be a mystery to her, though she has never
asked me explicitly, that I try to lead a similar life but am pro-choice.

When
I tried to find words for our friendship, I wrote to Jo, “We are joined at the root. Our differences don’t shake that
foundation.” She responded, “The bond
formed by our compassion for others means that we are joined at the root. Our
respect for each other’s genuine belief in different means of expressing our
compassion represents divergent stalks arising from that common root. It also
represents a unique (dare I say feminine) gift we give each other: we care for
and about another who is not a carbon copy of our self.”