I am a Christian. I have had an abortion. I am pro-life from birth to death.

I was 23 when I noticed my jeans cutting into my tummy while taking orders at a steakhouse in Rockingham County, North Carolina. A few months earlier, I sat across from the Dean of my college and gave up my academic scholarship. Bulimia was ravaging my life. I was in a dysfunctional relationship, living at the poverty line and working my way out. Later that week, my hands shook as I purchased a pregnancy test at the Texaco gas station. I crouched in the corner, crying, waiting, terrified of what that test was about to tell me. Sure enough, it was positive.

I'd always wanted to be a mother but not under these circumstances. I called an abortion clinic and, the next morning aborted my first baby.

As a young Christian, I was naïve to the politics of evangelicalism. In my childhood's tiny and precious North Carolina Southern Baptist church, the people were gas station attendees, waitresses, janitors, foster parents, teachers, and field and factory workers. We came to church for comfort and community. No one told us how to think or how to vote. We debated, disagreed, and did our best in my family of origin. None of us voted the same, and free-thinking was encouraged in our household. Until my thirties, I had no idea there was an entire group of Christians devoted to telling people how to think and vote. The idea still remains preposterous to me.

18 sober years later, as a mother of three, I have been able to share my abortion and addiction story with women in recovery. I have worked to advocate for a more nuanced pro-life conversation. Not only am I one of the ""one in four" women who have had an abortion, but I have sat with hundreds of women in recovery groups and listened to their stories. Women with partners who punch their stomachs. Women who can see on ultrasounds that their baby will not survive the pregnancy, or learn the unbearable news that their infant will suffer for a few hours before death, must make the agonizing decision to carry to term or not. Women in poverty. Women whose partners will not take responsibility. Women with no community or support. Women who have suffered sexual assault and rape.

In my work, I've also met abortion survivors, babies born into difficult and painful circumstances, and mothers who persevere and endure. Texas's passing of the cardiac activity abortion law turns difficult decisions into impossible ones. It effectively makes abortion illegal, even in cases of rape, infant loss, and medical complications for the mother. This is true of the Mississippi case before the supreme court, one of 28 states with trigger laws. If Roe v. Wade is overturned, abortion will be decided by the states.

As per usual, men are absent from responsibility, stigma and accountability, aside from making and passing legislation. Men impregnate women. If women are required by the state to take on the lifelong task of mothering, in all of its joy and hardship, why will the state continue to free men from partnering in the expense, care and decisions of raising a child from birth to death? I am deeply disturbed by Justice Alito's references to the history of female incarceration to prove his point. If this leads to the criminalization of women, and I am inclined to believe it will, the father will not go to jail. He will not pay fines. Only women will suffer in America's legal system, and vastly worse, pending their economic class and race.

Pro-birth is not pro-life.

In the past, in the fight for a more nuanced conversation about abortion, evangelicals labeled me a baby killer. They attacked me for not automatically voting Republican. Because they are the "pro-life party" and the "family party."

Pro-life for who? What is pro-life if we only mean unborn children? Family party for who? Couples with money who have insurance, daily childcare, or the choice to stay home? Because the reality is that safe and affordable childcare is next to impossible to find; maternity leave is nonexistent; medical care in America is embarrassing. What do parents making $7.25 per hour do? What about single parents? What about rape victims and widows? For policymakers and pro-life Christians, the abortion conversation should include preventative, prenatal, postnatal, family, and child care in every economic bracket. Why can't we look at policies that make abortion unnecessary? As Pro-life Christians, we need to push ourselves to think beyond the single issue of abortion, challenge our pro-life words, and hold men accountable for their sexual choices.

The bills passed across America, and even the leak of the draft of the supreme court opinion, caused many Christians to celebrate. I am not one of them because I am intimately acquainted with women's pain, their stories, and their doctor's reports. Removing all hope of choice from women, with no accountability for men, in a country where access to insurance, medical care, childcare, and education is limited to those who can afford it, is an indictment, not a celebration.

I choose pro-life policies when I vote for affordable healthcare because I know what $28,000 of medical debt feels like after having a healthy delivery and baby. I am pro-life when I vote for a living wage because, like many Americans, I lived at the poverty line for years, even though I worked 50-60 hours each week. I am pro-life when I advocate for universal childcare and tax credits because I know what it feels like to live without help for years at a time.

Mother Teresa, known for her pro-life values, from birth to death, said," "If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other "" We are not a people at peace. Selfishness is growing, right alongside the pursuit of individual rights. Ideally, governments exist to serve the people. Our tax dollars pay their salary. This doesn't give us the right to demand they bend to our political will, but it does mean we need to advocate for societal changes that will create the most good.

As Christians, we have a higher calling: to feed, clothe and care for people whether they agree with us or not, remember the incarcerated as if we were in chains with them, and love the foreigner, every neighbor, and even our enemy. We belong to each other.

When we vote, we must ask if the policies our congressional representatives support are good only for us and the people who look like us, or do they favor the greater good? If we hope to live in a society where abortion is unnecessary, we need to deal with poverty, hold men accountable, provide livable paid leave, affordable healthcare and childcare. If we've learned anything from recent years of volatile politics and divisive rhetoric, it should be that single-issue voting is hurting our communities, not helping them.

Ashley Abercrombie is a writer and author of Love Is the Resistance: Learn to Disagree, Resolve the Conflicts You’ve Been Avoiding and Create Real Change. For more than 15 years, she worked in non-profit spaces, leading faith-based initiatives, serving as a prison chaplain and pastor, speaking at conferences, churches, and events. She is cohost of the hilarious and helpful podcast Why Tho, works as an Editorial Producer, and currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband, two sons and baby girl.