Free Agency and the Value of Life

I began writing this essay in the first week of May 2022 when the impending

Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade had been leaked and reactions to it dominated the internet. I found myself thinking about a Veteran who lost his life in 2017, and moral lessons from my youth.

Around 11 p.m. on a Friday in late August 2017, no one was sleeping in Corpus Christi. Hurricane Harvey had just made landfall. Somewhere in Corpus Christi, a man in his thirties attempted to enter the home of a stranger. The homeowner shot him.

I first heard of this on Facebook, where the incident was celebrated as an example of a good guy with a gun stopping a bad guy. (“This is why you need a gun!” shouted the comments section.) After all, with hurricanes come looters, right? The story left me unsettled. As someone with a professional interest in disasters, I could think of multiple reasons a person might try to enter a building during a severe storm, and looting was only one of them. When police arrived, they found a naked man who had been shot in the head. He was still alive and transported to the hospital. Early reports assumed the man was a burglar. The homeowner had felt their family was in danger.

I couldn’t stop thinking about this story. Over the following days and weeks, I searched for more information. Finally, I found out what happened. The man who had been shot, 33-year-old Gilbert Soto, died in the hospital four days later. Police investigators said this was not a burglary or theft after all.

Soto was a Veteran who had served in the Marines and the National Guard with multiple deployments, the last of which left him with a traumatic brain injury. He was the father of three little girls and he hoped to become a police officer. Soto’s wife said they had recently moved to the area. They were visiting friends when her husband’s PTSD was triggered. He had a bad PTSD episode and ran off. His wife called the police to ask for help in finding him. She said that her husband had been in crisis and looking for help when he attempted to enter the stranger’s house through a window. Upon learning the rest of this story, I didn’t feel angry. I felt sad.

Do I blame the homeowner? Not really. I respect their right to own a firearm and to use it to defend their family. I have questions though. If the intruder was naked, it should have been easy to see that he was unarmed; maybe it was too dark to see. I imagine his behavior was erratic and agitated and would have alarmed the homeowners. In the heat of the moment, I might have reacted the same way in a similar situation if I had a gun handy.

But what if it had gone down differently? Yesterday I was perusing an old hymn book from my childhood and ran across A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief. It was originally written as a Christmas poem in 1826 by James Montgomery with the title The Stranger and His Friend. The hymn’s seven verses describe various ways of helping a fellow man in need, and end with the Savior saying of these good deeds, “Thou didst them unto me.” I did a double-take when I read the fourth verse, which I had completely forgotten.

‘Twas night; the floods were out; it blew

A winter hurricane aloof;

I heard his voice abroad and flew

To bid him welcome to my roof.

I warmed and clothed and cheered my guest

And laid him on my couch to rest,

Then made the earth my bed, and seemed

In Eden’s garden while I dreamed.

I can conceive of an alternate ending to the story of Gilbert Soto. What if the homeowner had paused just long enough to see this man was naked and unarmed? What if Soto just needed a safe shelter until professional help could arrive? The headline might have read something like, “Startled Homeowner Gives Shelter to Veteran in Crisis.” I’m no expert on PTSD, and I’m sure some will scoff at my pollyanna attitude, but I do not believe this Veteran’s mental battle scars made him deserving of an early death. Even after learning about the outcome, I don’t know how it all went down. I wasn’t there. The decision to act was not mine to make, and for that I am grateful.

The original Facebook post that alerted me to this story implied that looters deserve to be shot; of course, this was before the shooting victim had been identified. This begs the question, do we value property above human life? Does knowing Gilbert Soto’s identity and background change opinions about the tragedy of what happened that fateful night? What if he had been a career criminal instead of a wounded Veteran? Would that have felt less tragic? How do we decide which lives have value, and which lives are expendable? Like so many life-and-death situations, this incident was not a black-and-white, good-vs-evil story. It was complicated.

The story allowed me to consider my own views. At some point in my youth, I was taught in a church setting the wisdom of making difficult decisions in advance. The idea was to decide to refuse alcohol before I went to a party, and have my “no thank you” answer ready. I should choose before a date exactly where to draw the line with a boy, and then stick to it. Better yet, the lesson continued, I should avoid settings where I might even be tempted or pressured to do something that I might regret later. I will admit that I had mixed success with this as a teen. Nevertheless, I still think it is pretty darn good advice that can be applied to a variety of high-stakes situations, including sexual behavior and the use of guns.

Friends who work in law enforcement have told me that if I choose to keep a gun for self-defense I should be prepared to use it to kill. I know the value of my property. I have a fair understanding that humans, including myself, can act in irrational ways when they are afraid. After examining my personal and religious values I made conscious decisions about the circumstances under which it would or would not be acceptable to me to take the life of another, and I have planned accordingly. I want to leave as little of that decision-making process as possible for a moment of crisis. I have no desire whatsoever to make that decision for anyone but myself.

That brings me back to the reversal of Roe v. Wade. I will say up front that if I could wave a magic wand and eliminate abortion altogether, I would do it. My personal life has been infinitely enriched through adopting a child, something that would have been impossible had his birth mother chosen abortion. I will always be grateful to her for making that decision. My feelings are not neutral when it comes to abortion. However, we do not live in a perfect world where magic wands can take away the difficulties of life. How much simpler life would be if we lived in a binary world where there is always a clear right and a clear wrong for every dilemma.

The moment when a woman first suspects she is pregnant is different for everyone. For some, it is accompanied by joy, excitement, or cautious hope. And for others, there is panic and fear, not unlike that of the homeowner who thought his family was in danger as George Soto climbed through the window uninvited.

Twenty-some years ago I first visited the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry’s Beginning the Journey exhibit, which shows prenatal development, week by week, using real specimens from miscarriages. When I stepped into the exhibit area a sense of reverence settled over me. It affected me deeply. I have never been to any holocaust memorials, but I expect they would feel something like this, minus the sounds of children playing nearby in other areas of the museum. I found the exhibit both awe-inspiring and deeply disturbing.

The first stations of the exhibit showed early stages of development. I thought back to my college days when I took a course on human reproductive physiology. I remember learning that one of the ways that birth control works is by preventing the implantation of an embryo in the uterine lining about a week after the egg is fertilized. The embryo at that stage is called a blastocyst. It has very little cell specialization and is the size of a grain of sand. It cannot think, make decisions, feel, or love. It is a potential human life, but it is not yet a human being. My college self was satisfied that the prevention of implantation does not constitute a moral breach. That much was still clear as I stood before this exhibit, my sleeping youngest child in a stroller next to me.

Moving around the circular exhibit and observing the oh-so-gradual development of the fetus, I tried to determine where there would be a clear line between acceptable and not acceptable when terminating a pregnancy. I could not do it. The simple thing would be to take an all-or-nothing approach that says conception marks the beginning of human life, and any intervention after that time is unacceptable. But neither biology nor humanity is that simple. There in the museum, the fundamental question about abortion ceased to be, "At what point in prenatal development does abortion cease to be okay?" It is an impossible question. The remaining question is "Who should make the decision about when an abortion is appropriate?"

The Supreme Court leak resulted in a flood of stories about the complexities of decisions around abortion. What if the mother is only 11 years old and the victim of incest? What if the mother is in an abusive relationship that she has desperately been trying to escape? What if, what if, what if?

I recall a long-ago work friend, whom I will call Sandy. She showed me the ropes when I was new on the job and I admired her intelligence, compassion, and down-to-earth manner. After we had worked together for some time, she began to share her personal story with me.

Sandy had been thrilled when she discovered she was pregnant with her fourth child. She was building a beautiful family with a man she loved. They were devastated when the doctor said that this child would have multiple serious birth defects and would likely never walk, talk, or have any degree of independence. His life would be short and painful; the cost of his care would be catastrophic. Sandy’s husband did not take the news well. He promptly abandoned his family and moved to another country, leaving Sandy to deal with these impossible decisions alone while also suddenly being thrust into the role of sole breadwinner and single parent. She prayerfully chose to continue the pregnancy.

Her son was indeed born with severe physical and mental disabilities. A long series of surgeries kept him alive during his first two years. Sandy tried taking care of him at home for a while but it proved too much. He needed round-the-clock, specialized care. She had three other children who needed her, and she needed to work to keep a roof over their heads. She reluctantly placed him in a nursing facility, where he had been institutionalized for 7 years by the time I met Sandy.

Every aspect of Sandy’s family life revolved around this child. She still spent time with him regularly, relieving the nurses of feeding and other basic care when she was there. He had never been able to communicate anything beyond distress. He could not give even the smallest indication of recognition. Sandy looked into his face and hoped he was in there, but she had no idea if he even knew who she was. One particularly hard day, when one of her older children needed something she could not give, she told me that she regretted her decision to carry that last pregnancy to term. She could not have imagined the high price the family would pay. Her son, while alive, had been in pain and imprisoned by his body every day of his life. If she could go back and spare him all those years of pain, she would. If she could give her other children a normal life with at least one parent who was fully present for them, she would.

I never had to choose between the welfare of my existing children and the potential life of an unborn child. I have never had to choose between my future and that of another. I cannot imagine how difficult such a decision would be.

I have said for years that I believe the choice to have a child should be made by both parents before conception whenever possible. Birth control is a thing. Abstinence is a thing. Consent is also a thing. When the ability to make this choice in advance has been stolen through rape, coercion, and/or incest, a girl or woman needs to decide for herself how to manage a resulting pregnancy, and she deserves support no matter what she chooses to do.

This brings me to the men. It may not make me popular among my fellow feminists, but I believe any productive conversation about abortion needs to include men. We cannot remove them from the equation and expect conditions to improve. Their participation in procreation is mandatory, even in cases where their role is limited to sperm donation. And of course, men vote, so their opinions very definitely do matter when it comes to the law. While I believe the person who is pregnant should make the ultimate decision about whether to carry it to term, there is so much that the rest of us, including men, can do.

We need men to pull their chairs up to this table and say “I have an interest in this. What can I do to provide protection and support for pregnant women? How can we make reproductive healthcare and education accessible to all women and girls to facilitate early, healthy decisions? What can we do to prevent pregnancies that occur without a woman’s consent? How will I ensure that my actions do not result in pregnancy unless I am ready to be a father? Am I doing everything in my power to support my wife or partner in such a way that she feels joy, not fear or despair when she discovers she is pregnant?” This is how we need men to be men.

An informed decision is not always possible before conception. Critical medical or family issues may not be identified until well into a pregnancy. An agonizing aspect of this is that it is impossible to predict the future with 100 percent accuracy. I know women who have carried pregnancies to term against medical advice. Sometimes that turns out miraculously well. A mother’s life is spared. A child is born and deeply loved, medical problems and all. Sometimes, the anticipated problems do not even materialize. For those positive outcomes, I am grateful. I also acknowledge that miracles are not guaranteed and grace is needed for those who choose differently in the face of the best information they have at the time.

I grew up believing that free agency is sacred. Being a human on this earth carries with it the right and responsibility to make tough decisions. We need law and order, but our government can’t and shouldn’t make every important decision for us. Advocates of gun rights and abortion rights oppose government intrusion into places where the decisions should be personal.

So, what is my position when it comes to taking or stopping a life? Generally speaking, I am adamantly against it, of course. Are there times when exceptions could be justified? Yes. Our country is divided about how abortion and stand-your-ground laws should allow for legal exceptions to the broadly accepted religious and moral edict, thou shall not kill.

The challenge for someone like me is that I see these situations from too many angles. There are times when one life must be sacrificed for the sake of another: An active shooter or a classroom of children; a wounded veteran or a frightened family; a fetus or the woman carrying it; an unborn child or its already-born siblings; a rape victim or the embryo a rapist forced her to carry. Which life matters more? It is an impossible question to answer completely by statute.

When there is a threat to life or family, it may come down to a moral decision that is between an individual, their conscience, and/or their God. Our laws need to reflect that reality. I don't presume to have the right or the authority to make such a decision on behalf of another person. To do so flies in the face of my foundational belief in personal agency and responsibility. Individuals who find themselves in the heart-rending position of having to make these choices have my compassion; they do not need my condemnation. I am called to love, not to judge. That is why I am pro-choice.