to the BBQ readership:
Cyrus Javadi (our Representative in our Oregon Legislature) writes a newsletter, “A Point of Personal Privilege.” (or is it a blog? or a substack? whatever, it is HIS telling his constituents what he thinks, what he is doing). This is his most recent.
If only ALL politicians were so principled, so honest.
om peace namaste
lucy brook
nehalem
oregon resident
I Was Wrong About Abortion
Sometimes Changing Your Mind Is the Principled Thing
CYRUS JAVADI
APR 23
From the moment I first considered running for office in 2022 until now, I have been asked, now and then, where I stand on abortion. It comes in the usual binary form: “Are you pro-life or pro-choice?”
Honestly, before I ran for office, almost no one asked me that. Maybe because I’m a man. Maybe because people knew I grew up in the Mormon faith and assumed they already knew the answer. But really, the simpler explanation is that most people avoid heavy conversations. In other words, it’s not the kind of thing friends usually bring up over tasty burgers at The Corral Grill & Tap House in Tillamook.
Why?
Because these conversations tend to end the same way: with strong opinions, personal stories, and a lot of identity, religion, and family history packed into the exchange. And usually, no one is really there to listen and learn. They are there to explain why they are right.
That is part of the problem with the labels. They work well enough as political shorthand. They fit on mailers. They fit on bumper stickers. They fit neatly into our modern habit of sorting human beings into tidy camps and then yelling at them from a safe distance.
What they do not do very well is capture reality.
Sometimes Decent People Are Just Mistaken
When I was asked in 2022 where I stood on the issue, I said that I considered myself personally pro-life. And here is the part I want people to know, because it matters: I did not hold that position because I was cruel, or because I lacked compassion, or because I wanted the government prowling through people’s private lives like a hall monitor with a theology degree.
I held it because my upbringing and life experience shaped how I saw the issue, and I thought, “Well, I must be doing the right thing.” That kind of certainty feels good. It is clean. Comfortable. And it saves you from having to wrestle too hard with the uncomfortable questions that real life keeps putting in front of you.
But I was wrong. Wrong because I did not understand enough.
That matters. Or at least it should. Our politics has become addicted to the laziest possible explanation for disagreement: if someone holds the wrong view, they must therefore be a bad person. That may pass for logic on a playground, but adults should know better.
Because sometimes decent people are just mistaken. Sometimes they are earnest and wrong. Sometimes they need more experience, more humility, and less confidence.
That was me.
Real Life Has a Way of Ruining Simple Theories
What changed my mind was not one dramatic moment where the clouds parted and a choir of political scientists descended from the heavens.
It was slower than that.
It was years in public life. Years of hearing from women across Oregon. Years of listening to stories that did not fit neatly into the moral filing cabinet I had built in my head.
And that, I think, is where our abstract certainty starts to break down. Real people are always more complicated than ideology wants (or hopes) them to be.
Each woman is her own person. Her own history. Her own fears. Her own health. Her own family. Her own beliefs. Her own capacity. Her own conscience.
Some face medical crises. Some face broken relationships or abuse. Some are trying to care for children they already have. Some are weighing diagnoses, risks, trauma, money, timing, faith, shame, hope, and fear all at once.
And the more I listened, the less comfortable I became with the old habit of turning those women into symbols in someone else’s moral argument.
That is when something very simple started to become very clear. This choice does not belong to me. It does not belong to the legislature. It does not belong to a political party, a church committee, a statewide advocacy group, or the loudest guy on Facebook who suddenly becomes a constitutional scholar, pastor, and OB-GYN sometime around 9:30 on a Tuesday night.
It belongs to one person only—it belongs to the woman who is pregnant.
Stripping Away the Illusion and Drawing Conclusions
Let me give you an example.
Recently, at a small meeting with constituents at the Camp 18 restaurant on Hwy 26, a woman asked me some fair but pointed questions about switching parties and whether my views had, indeed, really changed. That is part of the job. People are supposed to test your sincerity.
She asked about my old pro-life position and some of the legislation we have considered over the last four years. But one thing she said has stayed with me.
She told me that because her elected representative was pro-life, she worried that her ability to choose might one day be taken away. So she chose to be, in her own words, “sterilized.”
Now, I am not saying I made that decision for her. But I am saying that hearing those words stripped away any illusion that this debate lives only in theory. To be clear, it does not.
People hear what their elected officials say and draw conclusions about what kind of power may one day be used over their lives. In her case, that fear was real enough to shape a permanent decision about her own body.
That stays with you.
The Government Is Not Your Conscience
That is really the heart of it for me. And despite the best efforts of people who want to use government to impose their religious or moral certainty on everyone else, it is also at the heart of the Constitution and the spirit of the American promise.
I do not believe the government should make reproductive choices for women.
I do not think the state is wise enough, gentle enough, or humble enough for that assignment. Government is many things. Occasionally useful. Frequently clumsy. Rarely modest. But it is not your conscience. It is not your family. It is not your doctor. And it is not God.
You see, I believe one of the biggest mistakes in politics is confusing moral seriousness with legal compulsion. We assume that if an issue is deeply important, then government must control it. But that does not follow. In many cases, the more intimate and morally weighty the decision, the less appropriate it is for the state to force a single answer.
It is the same basic principle behind a lot of liberty. You may hold deep beliefs about what people should do. That does not automatically mean you should hand the government the power to compel it.
In fact, one of the marks of a free society is that we recognize the difference between “I believe this is right” and “therefore the state should make everyone obey.”
Freedom Is Not the Absence of Moral Weight
I think some people hear a position like mine and assume it means the issue is being treated lightly. As if defending a woman’s right to choose means pretending the choice itself is easy, painless, or morally empty.
But that is not what I believe at all. In fact, quite the opposite.
Abortion is serious precisely because, well, it is serious. It involves health, consequence, duty, belief, grief, risk, identity, and the future.
It is not a consumer preference. It is not ordering lunch. It is not casual. That is exactly why the decision belongs to the person whose life is most directly bound up in it.
I need to say this next part slowly for emphasis: Freedom is not valuable because it removes moral burden. Freedom is valuable because it puts moral burden where it belongs. On the human being who must actually live with the decision.
And that is what I did not appreciate well enough before. I thought I was defending life in the abstract. But I had not fully reckoned with the life of the actual woman standing in front of me. Her body. Her future. Her circumstances. Her responsibilities. Her judgment.
Her.
A Recent Court Case Is a Reminder
A federal judge recently ruled against part of Oregon’s Reproductive Health Equity Act in a challenge brought by Oregon Right to Life, and state officials have said they plan to appeal. They have also said reproductive health coverage in Oregon remains unchanged for now while the case continues.
That matters for a couple of reasons.
First, because it is a reminder that rights people assume are settled have a nasty habit of becoming unsettled the minute people stop defending them.
Second, because it reminds us that public policy is not abstract. Court rulings affect real people. Real coverage. Real care. Real decisions made under pressure.
So no, I do not treat this as a symbolic debate for partisans to shadowbox over while collecting applause from their side.
This is about whether women retain the authority to make private medical decisions for themselves.
They should.
On Being Wrong
Let me say something unfashionable in today’s political realm—Changing your mind should not automatically be treated as evidence that you have no principles.
Sometimes changing your mind is the proof that you do.
Sometimes it means you have actually listened. Sometimes it means experience corrected theory. Sometimes it means you became a little less impressed with your own certainty. Sometimes it means you finally understood that saying, “I would make this choice,” is not the same as saying, “therefore the government should force everyone else to live by it.”
I did not change my mind because it became politically easy.
I changed my mind because I came to believe that liberty, humility, and respect for individual conscience matter here more than my prior certainty did.
That is not a small thing. And it is not something I say casually.
Where I Stand Now
Ok, even after this lengthy explanation, I can hear some of you asking: “So, where do you stand?”
This whole article could be boiled down to one 90-second answer on a debate stage like this: I do not believe the government should make reproductive choices for women. I believe those decisions belong to the woman who is pregnant.
And if she chooses to involve her spouse, her doctor, her pastor, her family, or no one at all, that should be her choice too.
That does not mean everyone will agree with every decision. It does not mean people stop having moral convictions. And it definitely does not mean difficult questions disappear.
It means we recognize the limits of government. It means we trust women to make their own decisions. It means we stop pretending politicians are the rightful owners of other people’s most personal choices.
And when I go back to Salem, I will continue to support protecting those healthcare freedoms and keeping government in its proper lane.
That is not where I started. But it is where I am now.
And I think it is the more honest place to stand.
