Life Choice

From: Justin Escher Alpert <[email protected]> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>; "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Cc: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>; sencodey <[email protected]>; Jasey Asw. D. O. <[email protected]>; asm McKeon <[email protected]>; "[email protected]" <[email protected]>; "[email protected]" <[email protected]>; Chris Christie <[email protected]>; "[email protected]" <[email protected]>; Jeanne Ashmore <[email protected]>; michael.drewniak <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, October 12, 2012 12:51 PM Subject: Re: Pro-Choice and Pro-Life, Working Together in The Garden State

Dear Ms. Tasy and Ms. Jaker:

It is interesting to see the source of an individual’s morality be informed by his life

experiences. On one hand, we don’t say that I had a chocolate and vanilla swirl cone on the

boardwalk last summer and it was wonderful, and therefore everybody should have one. On the

other hand, we consistently hear public officials who are Pro-Life, as I am, become informed by

the first moment that they see their child’s heart beat on the ultrasound monitor. That is certainly

a life-altering event. It even has the ability to change minds and core convictions.

I question though, whether the door could swing the other way… could someone who is

ostensibly Pro-Life become Pro-Choice? Could a growing, learning human mind learn to

empathize with the plight of others?

We all have life experiences and we sit around dinner tables and break bread and drink sweet

wine with friends. We intimately know too many mothers and sisters and daughters and friends

who have had diverse experiences. A child’s heartbeat does not always reveal itself for the first

time when a prospective parent is pushing thirty, educated, and well-employed. Sometimes it

happens quite younger. In a society that expects a young woman to take on the burden of debt

for an education and work and learn throughout her prime reproductive years, people whom we

know and care about sometimes get lost, at least temporarily. A kiss to the neck makes her hair

stand on end. She closes her eyes and all of her protections fall. Her guard is let down because

millions of years of evolutionary process have designed her to let herself go, against what

otherwise might have been better judgment. And mistakes happen as she sits there in a paper

robe, in a cold doctor’s office, after crying for three days straight. And she is truly alone.

Twenty-some-odd years go by, and she is sitting across the table from us, a slight wrinkle in her

eye and strand of gray peaking out. Her oldest child, at the tender age of ten, looks a lot like his

father. If we are to accept that the choices she has made in life are wrong and morally repugnant,

do we need to sit in judgment of our guest, or are we capable of forgiving her for her sins? Can

we empathize with her and the Path that she has taken? Can we look to her sense of pride in her

children and thank the Good Lord for the Path that brought her good company to our abundant

table?

It’s funny when you think about it. In an alternative universe, it could have just as easily been

the Democrats who took to the team of defending the right to live at all cost, casting a well-

reasoned exception to the rule that bureaucrats should not come between a patient and her

doctor. It could have been Republicans fighting for the freedom of every adult woman to choose

her own course in life. But as it is, we get caught up in labels. And we fight from the safety of

our armchairs for points that we think our team can win. But we stop talking with each other.

How do we come to common ground? How do we reach out to the next young woman sitting in

the cold gray doctor’s office and treat her with compassion? How can we give her intelligent

choices so that she may actually choose life? Can we begin to actually save lives, together? And

if she weighs her options, and makes a choice that we, at the tender age of thirty, educated,

married, with a good job, would not have made when we first saw that heartbeat, can we learn to

respect her decision?

I am proud that our Governor is Pro-Life, as I am. I was genuinely moved when I saw my

daughter Skyler Rose’s heart beat for the first time some ten-odd years ago. I believe that life

begins at conception. I believe that the choice to terminate a pregnancy is filled with moral

implications. I believe that intelligence is the ability to make a decision when you do not know

what to do. I have been blessed in that I was pushing thirty, educated, married, with a good

job. When I saw Skyler’s heart beat, I did not need much intelligence… it was clear that I was

going to be a father.

We are capable of moving forward under Governor Christie’s bold leadership. We are capable

of declaring Peace in this heartbreaking generations-long argument. We can work together to

save lives. We can work together to create a society wherein people make informed choices with

better options. We are all Pro-Life. We all recognize that a life is measured by the accumulation

of choices. This definition of Life is so important to us, that we have conceived our nation in

Liberty and, here in New Jersey, we stand in her personified shadow. We are all Pro-

Choice. We all want the government out of our very personal decisions. We are all on the same

team in New Jersey. We can respect each other’s opinions so much that the Governor back a

Pro-Choice candidate for the U.S. Senate.

And we are all tired of fighting this battle. Can the two of you, Ms. Tasy and Ms. Jaker, can the

two of you please lead us forward, together, in a new direction, where we may actually save

lives, while at the same time, not scaring these mothers, and sisters, and daughters who may

share our dinner table as guests by passing eternal judgment on the choices that they may have

made when they were young, alone, and scared, and did not know what to do?

Thank you. We are truly blessed to be sharing this promised land of The Garden State together.

Justin Escher Alpert

Livingston, New Jersey

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Life Choice