Shannon Dingle

Opinion contributor

I used to be a Republican. In every presidential election until 2016, I voted Republican, just like most of our friends.

Our Republican friends supported our adoptions in 2012 and 2013. Many exalted our decision more highly than we ever deserved, calling it an explicitly pro-life choice when all we did was choose a less conventional way to add to our family. Most have "unfriended" me now.

Why? Because I got too political, they said. Politics were acceptable when it came to restricting abortion through the courts, something I used to champion. That’s not really about politics, they said, it’s about life. Yet once I spoke out in favor of life-sustaining policies for our children, it was about politics not life.

Policies to keep my kids alive are too political?

House Republicans proposed a budget in June with cuts to entitlement programs, including Medicaid, to balance spending. Our daughter is kept alive and flourishing because of a Medicaid waiver program for medically complex children.

The president fired his entire HIV advisory council in December. One of my children has HIV.

People with U.S. birth certificates — citizens — have been denied passports in Texas; people across the country may have their legal status in jeopardy if they use government benefits. We’ve used public assistance in the form of reduced lunch and early intervention services, and four of my children are immigrants.

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Republicans in the U.S. House pushed through H.R. 620, a law that would have gutted the Americans with Disabilities Act if Democratic senators hadn’t stalled it. My daughter uses a wheelchair, and my son is autistic.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that if Republicans win enough seats this election, they may revisit repealing Obamacare. Five of my six children live with pre-existing conditions that would make us vulnerable medically if my husband ever lost his job and his employer-based insurance.

Anti-racist justice is too political for my old friends and dismissed by those they’ve elected. But research overwhelmingly shows that my black children would be treated more harshly for the same crimes than my white children.

A recent leaked memo suggests that the Trump administration is considering redefining gender as a strict binary, rolling back protections for trans and nonbinary people, and the Department of Justice has deemed that businesses can discriminate against trans employees. I have a child who identifies as gender creative.

Our old friends say the adoption of our children was about life not politics, but somehow the policies to keep them alive are too political. I don’t understand. Everything about politics is about life.

I don’t agree that it’s pro-life to insist politically that children be born (or adopted) and then abandon the politics to sustain their lives. That’s how it felt on election night in 2016, as if we had been abandoned by our Republican friends who didn’t want to vote for Hillary Clinton but didn’t have to vote for Donald Trump.

Lay down your armor — my family has

After the presidential election, I grieved deeply. Then, uncomfortable with the depth of that pain, I began to armor up. At first, anger hid my profound sadness. Soon, my armor of anger faded to a shield of snark, a breastplate of superiority, a helmet of cynicism and a sword of sarcasm.

My old friends were also armoring up when they called me too political. Rather than seeing my fears and hearing my voice shake, they dodged our pain by hiding behind a shield of individualism, every man, family or subgroup for themselves. For those in the dominant culture — white, male, cisgender, straight, Christian, abled, U.S. born — a helmet of privilege kept them from seeing that the issues that are mere politics for them are the same ones that are personal to us, literally functioning to keep us safe and alive.

I’m trying to understand. "Both sides" rhetoric isn’t what will help here, though. I’m not calling for civility in the face of pipe bombs. I am calling for truth and integrity.

A cheap justice that glosses over injustice in the name of civility fails to be just, after all. I’m reminded of a verse from the prophet Jeremiah in the Hebrew Bible: “They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. 'Peace, peace,' they say, when there is no peace.”

Lately, I see so many serious wounds with insufficient dressing. As for me, I hide mine behind the armor. Today, I want to set it down, to reveal the bloody bandages behind the shields, to admit how much pain I’m hiding, and to acknowledge that we’re all bleeding out as we continue to battle one another.

As I show my pain, I’m begging my Republican friends, those I have left and those who have left. Please, consider the lives of my children holistically. Consider the ways conservative pro-life warriors — maybe yourself included — validated the importance of our children’s lives during the adoption process. Thank you for being there for us then. As you examine candidates now for midterm elections, though, consider what it would look like to see that same validation for the lives of each member of our family.

We all laid down our armor to see our family grow. Is it too much to ask you to do the same to see our children and all other children thrive? Is it too much to ask you to vote like our lives depend on it? Because they do.

Shannon Dingle is a teacher and mom turned disabled activist and writer in Raleigh, North Carolina. Follow her on Twitter: @ShannonDingle