Plan B.

It’s the emergency contraception that works in part by not allowing an already fertilized embryo to implant, so an exceptionally early abortion.

It also works by wreaking havoc on a woman’s body, lots of nausea, throwing up, waiting at home by yourself.

I was waiting in the drugstore yesterday and I noticed it sitting there on the shelf. Plan B.

It’s not called Plan A.

Getting pregnant at the wrong time is never your first choice.

When you are asked about your plans for the future they are never “I’m going to complete my degree, but only with difficulty and perhaps by taking longer because I’m going to get pregnant—round about second year?—with someone I don’t love or know that I want to be with for a weekend, let alone a lifetime.”

Immediately you are launched into “Plan B” territory.

I would say Plan B—the drug, and Plan B the idea is a bad plan, and what you want is a new Plan A.

Your Plan A might not be executed in exactly the fashion you thought, but women should not need to have surgery or take pills to be equal and successful in this world.

Doing so means acquiescing to the fact that this is an anti-family world, and that life is only ever played out on sterile terms.

We don’t make accommodations for people who need special circumstances very easily. Why is that?

Perhaps because we rarely ask?

If we are to build a world where women truly thrive, it can’t include abortion, because this cuts life off, and demands that women function as men.

On this idea of creating new plan As—it happens All. The. Time and is fairly non-controversial in practice.

My Plan A: I thought I would be an international diplomat or journalist. I thought I would live and work in Europe, and I spent near two years there trying to build this future. I was actually fairly fluent in German for a time.

My life today? I am not an international diplomat or journalist. My writing portfolio is focused almost exclusively on domestic, social affairs. I live in Ottawa.

The other Plan A from a slightly earlier stage in my life was to be a kinesiologist. I thought I might do water therapy/rehabilitation for people who have suffered accidents, because I lived and breathed the pool in high school. I love swimming still.

I do swim, three times a week. And that’s as close as I am to that Plan A.

Plan As almost never look exactly as we thought, and a good friend, a good feminist, any strong woman in your life will help a younger woman understand that. As we live through the ups and downs of life there is a long term trajectory toward achieving not just your own practical goals, but your vocation—without claiming a false right to kill your unborn child along the way.

I am not where I thought I would be or perhaps even should be today, but I am happy.

We should never acquiesce to a contrived Plan B when we can live a Plan A adventure.

(I’m so far gone on planning these days that there are no letters left in the alphabet.)

I tried to say a version of this as my concluding remarks at the “Stump the Pro-lifer” event yesterday, but I don’t think I really captured what I meant, so trying to post those thoughts here today.

Looking out over the coffee fields of El Salvador. Part of me wishes I could be a coffee farmer. But I realize this plan is more than slightly unrealistic.