I'm pro choice. I always have been. I have had one of those in the trenches motherhoods that taught me not everyone is cut out to be a parent and it's not a decision that should ever be forced on anyone. When I was a teenager, my mom gave me a book on Christian abstinence, but also made sure I got birth control if I needed it at the doctor. I had boyfriends, and I didn't always practice abstinence. I had tried every temporary form of birth control available before I finished high school. With the amount of time I spent peeing on a stick, it's miraculous that none of those tests were positive until Kid1, 8 years after losing my virginity and after getting married.

I think back to the possible fathers in my expression of experimental irresponsibility and I'm grateful that I never had to face a pregnancy with the boys that were all ephemeral ideals of lust with hope for love. It was usually infatuation. I liked the boys that liked me back, and it's only in my late 30's that I realize how much better it feels to be selective and picky.

When I imagine what life would have been as a teenaged mother . . . In a relationship that was built on teenage hormones . . . During a time when I was unable to take care of myself. . . A pregnancy created out of irresponsibility is what I escaped and I'm so grateful I never had to choose when I was unable to make a decision from a place of empowerment. In my youth I was never put in a position to have to choose. That only came once I was married.

I never had anyone force their decision for my fertility on me. The parts considered private have always been under my control. I couldn't imagine the way I would feel about a pregnancy resulting from incest or rape. Still, we have politicians trying to use "Beauty from Ashes" as a natural consequence disguised as a euphemism to help stomach the idea of being brutalized and further victimized by legislation enforced by men who will never experience the consequences of their control. Thank you George Faught.

It's not just a financial decision. It's emotional. It's religious and ethical. It becomes physical and affects families. No one person's ideals should force itself on people they will never meet.

I would want the women I love to be able to choose when or how she has a child. I would want her to feel safe and protected in making choices for her body. I say this but as for me and my body, I'm pro life.

When I was pregnant with Kid3, I felt extremely lonely. My poor OB doctor stood uncomfortably as I sobbed and contemplated a late term abortion over several appointments. Late at night I would sit on the floor next to my sleeping husband and cry. My son would kick and remind me of how much he wanted to live, and so he did. My reward has been his light and love and hope. He has inspired me and encouraged me with his sweet smile and the way his tiny arms would wrap around me for a hug, patting my shoulder with his tiny hand. I made the decision then, that any child trying to fight for life within me, would have every opportunity I could offer.

The test of your belief is how firmly you stand on your word as difficulties and finances assert their authority over you. When you say you believe in life, do you put your money where your mouth is? Do you pass judgement from the high tower of the distance you keep from your own life? If you found a young mother in need, would you try to support her with a kind word, or anything she might need?

A pregnancy for me would involve daily injections of blood thinners and be high risk. I know this. My last pregnancy delivered prematurely. I'm 39 this year. The risk of birth defects jumps with that 50% fertility drop once a woman hits 40. My youngest is 10 and I have long gotten rid of all baby gear and maternity clothes. I would need a bigger car for my minor children. All of this said, my personal stance is pro life. A child trying to stick to my womb deserves every chance I could offer it, but the point is, it's a choice I would make, no matter the cost.

A woman should have the option to do as she chooses with her body.

Part of my adolescence was fighting through patriarchal ideals that I couldn't fit around me. I grew up in a strict Christian home where Dad held the bible over us. We were taught the 10 Commandments and that our body is a holy temple. Tattoos would send me to hell. Then I got older and he would threaten that if anyone ever gave me drugs he would kill them, and he had PTSD from Viet Nam. I was convinced he would get away with it. The joke was on him because the childhood trauma was unnecessary. I hated being high the couple of times I tried pot. Growing up, my parents were okay with me going to other churches. Dad grew up Baptist, but I was at a Foursquare (pentecostal Christian) Church on Sunday mornings and at a Thai-Presbyterian Church on Sunday afternoons. I visited Baptist and Catholic Churches with friends. My Dad followed our family tree to find we are Sephardic Jews. It makes sense because my maiden name is a typical Egyptian name. I've never read the Torah, but it's important to my Dad and in his reclamation of a lost heritage, I have a prayer shawl, Chumash, and Mezuzah at my front door. The family recipe he guards is a challah recipe. Before I was born, he was studying Hebrew and there is no "J" sound in Hebrew. To honor what he was learning, he picked my name that typically starts with a "J" and made it start with a "Y" as in Yeshua. He calls me God's gift. He would be so tickled if I brought home a nice Jewish boy. I would be too. Actually, my ex was part Jewish, but it was a forgotten and discarded heritage for him as well.

For a while, all of my crushes had one thing in common . . . They were all born in 1976. It was a thing and my thing. I liked boys that were a couple of years older than I am. And I went through plenty of them, or rather, let them go through me. I was looking for something more and something greater.

I was 21 when I first learned about Wicca. It was beautiful in female empowerment. There was dancing naked under the moon and it appealed to me. There were colored candles and intoxicating scents that were part Catholic church and part eastern tradition. There was intention and ceremony and traditions that had order and it was centered on being female. I read books and set up an altar and after all of that performed only one spell and it was a spell to love myself.

It was more about learning how beliefs and religions borrow from each other. I had grown up seeing a vesica piscis in trinity form printed in gold leaf on my Dad's bible. It was circled, and stood for the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. In Wicca, that symbol stood for the Mother, Maiden, and Crone. I started to see that it had meanings in other traditions too. I was all different and borrowed from each other. It was the same for the pentagram. When I was a kid, it meant devil worship, but in Wicca and elsewhere, it is a symbol of protection. I read about the many high holy days of Wicca and saw the Christian overlap. After a few months of trying to clear Chakras I couldn't see and Astral Project, but ended up falling asleep, I let it go. I figured I had been there and done that, and even got the tattoo.

My tattoo is a garter on my thigh, made up of symbols. I wanted to remember that the trifecta's meaning is about the intention of the person using it. I wanted to know that the symbols were what I made of it, whether it be my roots in patriarchy or the transformational learning through Wicca. I chose the vesica piscis because I loved that one translation listed it as a symbol for a vagina. It was empowering to me. The band is made of the ing symbol and it wraps around my thigh. It's a symbol for fertility. I wasn't planning on ever having kids at that point, and I wanted fertility in thought and creativity. I needed to feel like belief was not control, but a source of empowerment and freedom.

I put my figurative broomstick up after a couple of months. I am open to understanding about other religions and beliefs but my God is real to me, and I understand that it is all a matter of interpretation and faith and it's not something that could be forced on another with meaning. I realized that faith and religion and beliefs are what you make of it. I believe that my pentecostal roots were born of a kabbalistic Jew and what Jesus would do covers love, healing and kicking a few tables around. The reward reflects what you've put into it. I have no problem with other religions because I find people that are accountable to an omniscient being or authority greater than the self are generally more likely to behave in a way that makes them good people. I won't mock or dismiss what brings meaning to someone else's life because I would hope my God was serious about loving others.