How a Formerly Pro-Choice Nursing Instructor Discusses Abortion with her Students

I have been a labor and delivery nurse since 1980.  During my thirty-six year nursing career, I have also worked in medical units and for hospice. Being a nurse has allowed me to be present with people through their early beginnings of intrauterine life, and with others through their last breaths.  It has been an amazing and rewarding journey. Life is precious and life is fleeting, and life should be respected. I am pro-life.
I am also a nursing instructor and have taught obstetrics to hundreds of young men and women, our future nurses.  My students often ask me what my opinion is regarding abortion.  “Are you pro-life or pro-choice?” they ask me.  I do not ask them the same, as I don’t want them to fear that their position might affect how I grade them.
When I answer that I am pro-life, the students often assume that my position is based on my religious beliefs, and so they respond that “you can’t force your religious beliefs on everyone else.” I explain that my argument against abortion is based on the anatomy and physiology of pregnancy, and on logical reasoning.
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