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I am pro-choice. I am pro-life. That is not a paradox, contrary to popular belief. How does this work?

I am pro-life. I believe that all life is sacred, so sacred that it should not be given or taken frivously or without good purpose. It is a gift, and the most precious gift that can be given. Every life, from the plants that give of themselves to nourish my body to my own, is precious in its own unique way, and that there is a place for life and death in the cycle. I believe hunting should only be done for food purposes and to keep animal populations in control, rather than allowing them to starve and die because we have as a species destroyed a great many of their natural predators. I believe that screwing over nature for a selfish reason is immoral.

I am pro-choice on abortion. This means that, when it comes to abortion, it's no one's business what the woman does when she finds out she is pregnant. If she decides that she wants to continue the pregnancy till it ends (be the end at miscarriage, stillbirth, or live birth) she has the right without any one taking it away from her, regardless of age or finacial status. When the pregnancy is ended, and if the child is alive at the end, she has the right to care for it herself or give it up for adoption, and she should not be forced into either decision. Consequently, it's her decision if she wants to stop the process of reproduction before it ends in live birth, via medical and surgical abortion or herbal and physical abortions (though as long as the first is avaliable, I would rather she take the safer route that will ensure her the highest chance of survival). There are other things that I am pro choice on, but for the sake of the moment, we're going with abortion here.

As a friend of mine said: "Pro life means you support all life, whether its a zygote or a death row inmate. It means that quality of life is important. It means that [her] life or [her] daughter's life is just as important as any potential life [they] could produce." That's the definition of "pro-life" to me. This is why I refer to those against abortion as anti-abortion, because I am for life. I'm just not against abortion.

That's what I refer to as anti-abortion personally, pro-choice politically.

But if you were to call them one or the other, you would call them pro-choice.

Because I see abortion as part of the cycle of life and death. Some things are meant to live, some are meant to die, and in the case of a woman who wants an abortion and sucessfully gets it it was meant for the fetus to not continue on the path to completeion. Life is sacred, but no life is so sacred as to be demanded, no questions allowed, without full consent of the one who will give it. Then it become profane and warped, as life forced without being given freely is obsceneity of life. It becomes nothing more than another meaningless part of humanity, and all the sacredness is destroyed. It's one thing to accept a pregnancy and keep it. It is quite another to force it to continue.

As for deer and raccoons: we as a species have encroached on them and destroyed their predators. Since we took away thier natural predators, we are now the appointed balancers of nature and have to keep them from destroying themselves.