I've been having a spirited discussion with "Skullcrusher" over on the columnists' blog section over same-sex marriage, contraception, abortion, and other hot topics, and Skullcrusher's comments got me to thinking about the nature of the beast.

I said that preventing unwanted pregnancies was hardly only a 20th century issue and that as long as humans have known what caused pregnancies, we've been looking for ways to prevent them (See: "A History of Sex"). The arguments of the anti-abortion crowd on the right echo those of the anti-gun crowd on the left: "If we make them illegal, they'll just go away!" No, but black markets will thrive and women will die.

I've read "The Handmaid's Tale," and I wonder how many anti-abortion (or pro-life, if you prefer) advocates have read it. To pro-choicers, it reads like a dystopian nightmare, and I wonder if that's where our country is headed. In such a world, I'd be an "Unwoman," sent with the other infertile women to labor in the nuclear waste dumps. A woman's only value in this world would be her ability to get pregnant and have babies. Not surprisingly, some would rather die, and that's the issue that always seems to escape the anti-abortion advocates. Just because a woman can't go anywhere to get a legal abortion, doesn't mean she won't find a way. Underground networks exist, herbal knowledge can't be taken away, and a woman will go the rusty-coathanger route if she must. I don't believe these people have ever known the uncertainty and outright dread of fearing that one may be pregnant and the timing and circumstances are all wrong.

"Well, keep your legs closed!" they say. "Don't have sex!" It's not always that easy, no matter how good your intentions or godly your upbringing. They have a name for teenagers who are given abstinence-only sex education: parents. If we teach our children that the ONLY sexual release for them is to come after they are married, and that masturbation is wrong, and contraception is wrong, and abortion is wrong, but we don't give them any facts on teen pregnancy or STDs, I think we are doing them a horrible disservice, because kids will have sex, regardless of the consequences. The only thing that has changed over time is our attitude toward it.

Even just a quarter of a century ago, a teen pregnancy was regarded as something shameful and scandalous, to be kept secret, the ruination of a young girl's life. Nowadays it seems that girls aren't encouraged to give their babies up for adoption, just told that welfare will take care of everything. I don't care how many anecdotal examples you give me to the contrary, nothing will ever convince me that a teenaged girl or boy is mentally or emotionally (not to mention financially) ready to become a parent or raise a child. And I say that even knowing that my husband was a teenaged father with his first wife. He even admits that yeah, he should have waited.

Two teenagers in private Christian schools, taught abstinence-only sex education, doing all the right things...but the girl doesn't get along with her parents and she picks the first lonely sucker who comes along and says that if she can get pregnant, she can get married and therefore get out of her parents' house. Nightmare, right? What do you think the teenaged boy hears and thinks? "Oobie doobie, I get to have sex!"

That's what happened to my husband, and although he beat the odds and was and has been a good and steady provider and father for his three sons, how many stories do you think turn out like that? There's something very wrong with our culture if we have women becoming grandmothers at 30.

But now I've gotten off the subject of contraception and gone off on an anti-teen-pregnancy rant. A mind once expanded can never contract, and you can't put the genie back in the bottle. I do NOT think that it is a good idea to ban contraception or abortion, and I've yet to talk to the person who can convince me otherwise.

My background on the pro-life/pro-choice issue: I'm adopted. I was once a member of my county's Right to Life organization. I used to wear the "Precious Feet" pin. And at the age of 14, I had a letter to the editor published in the local "big" paper, denouncing abortion.

What changed? At 19, I had a boyfriend who was a sailor and who wanted to marry me. I wasn't so sure about whether I wanted to marry him, but my parents thought he was a good match and somehow overlooked the fact that we didn't get along so great when he came to visit me on leave. He talked me into having sex, and he didn't use protection, because he knew where he'd been, in his own words.

When I turned 23 and got married (not to the sailor), I was first told by a gynecologist that I would probably never be able to get pregnant without fertility drugs. I didn't know that at 19. All I knew was that I was late, and I was terrified that my parents would make me marry the sailor and I would have to move away and become a wife and mommy, two roles I definitely wasn't ready to play. And I was about as far from the stereotypical roundheels party girl as you can get. I lived through about two weeks of complete terror, and only my best friend knew.

Well, I wasn't pregnant after all, just irregular, but it definitely put the fear of God in me. And it changed how I felt about abortion. I still didn't think I could ever make that decision, but I realized that I didn't have the right to make the decision for anyone else, or remove their right to do so.

And I guess that makes me something of an oddball in a place like TownHall. That's OK; I'm used to playing the oddball. I'm a Libertarian who's pro-Second Amendment, pro-choice, thinks welfare needs HUGE reform, anti-illegal immigration...I could go on, but I've probably babbled enough by now.