Why I'm Pro-Choice
In celebration of the 34th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I've signed up to blog on the issue of why I'm pro-choice. After thinking about how I was going to approach this, it started coming to me in list form.
-- Because my best friend was raped, and she didn't deserve to have to carry that baby if she didn't want to.
-- Because I know a girl whose father got her pregnant at 14 years old--why should she have to get his permission to have an abortion?
-- Because sometimes things go horribly wrong inside the uterus, and the parents should get the choice as to whether they want to go down that road or not.
-- Because sometimes even the most composed people aren't ready to have a baby yet.
-- Because even the most reckless of people are still owners of their bodies.
-- Because I am the owner of my body, and I either own it or I don't. There is no such thing as a suspended period of nine months during which my body does not belong to me.
-- Because if you take anti-choice to its logical extreme, it means you are willing to lock women up in jail and force them to deliver. Think about that mental image for a while.
-- Because I don't care if you contributed the sperm; you don't have to carry it for nine months and nourish it with your own flesh. I do 99.9% of the work of a pregnancy; I'll not be told by men what to do with it.
-- Because rarely will you find anti-choicers who have had to face abortion (except for the few who have had an abortion and have been made to feel extremely guilty for it) with limited income and resources or support networks.
-- Because so-called "pro-lifers" are not in favor of the life that already exists; they (in general) oppose free healthcare for pregnant women and benefits for those who are likely to be hit hardest by lack of access to abortion (low income women), yet they want to hold those same women responsible for giving those resources to the unborn. They are anti-mother while demanding that she become one. Go help ease adoption restrictions, or something, if you really want to help.
-- Because it doesn't matter if you want to label it a zygote, a "clump of cells", a fetus, or a baby. It is still a part of my body. The argument is still about whether or not I have the right to have control over my body. All other anti-abortion/pro-choice arguments boil down to this irriducable fact.
-- Because I don't want any woman to have to have an abortion; I want her to have had choices available to her along the way to the point where women don't even need abortion as a choice anymore. Until that glorious day happens, if she wants an abortion, I will help walk her to the clinic.
-- Because I have the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." I'm sorry that pisses you anti-lifers off. No, actually, I'm not.
I have a child. I had a choice. I made the right choice for me. I would never presume to have the right to make that lifetime choice for someone else.
-- Virgil
posted by contemplator at Monday, January 22, 2007
7 Comments:
"-- Because I don't want any woman to have to have an abortion; I want her to have had choices available to her along the way to the point where women don't even need abortion as a choice anymore. Until that glorious day happens, if she wants an abortion, I will help walk her to the clinic."
I'm confused by this one. Doesn't need abortion as a choice?
mad dog: a good example of this is the newly released OTC Plan B, which can be taken within 72 hours. If a woman has access to that, she wouldn't need to go through with an abortion. You used to couldn't get it without a prescription, and most pharmacies and offices aren't open on the weekends, creating the scenario where it would be too late to take Plan B once you were able to get it in the first place. Then, your only option would be abortion.
Likewise, if more women had quality sex education and access to other birth control methods, they wouldn't need an abortion in the first place. For that matter, if more support was given to adoption practices in this country, some women may choose to go that route. There are likely some scenarios where you can't entirely remove abortion as an option, such as when you get back a devastating ultrasound.
If other choices become easier and more available to make, abortion wouldn't even need to become a choice. Does that make more sense now?
Yes, now it makes more sense. What truly makes me angry is that the dumbfuck catholics in my area are even opposed to birth control, and condoms too. They just carry it to the highest levels of insanity and fanaticism. Some of these jerks make it the only political issue they care about, and don't give a fuck about the real social and economical problems of our society.
hey, heads up. Carrie's back. I KNOW how you like to argue with her, heh heh
http://carrie-luce.livejournal.com/9750.html?view=150550#t150550
You made a very handsome choice, btw, I usually read via blog reader and never get to see the pictures!
One of the things that really bothers me is how many women have been co-opted into the misogynistic wing of this "pro-life" movement.
My view is that, given how difficult and controversial this issue is, the decision needs to be between the woman, her doctor, and her god/conscience. Some have chosen abortion and regretted it. Some have chosen to carry, and regretted that. Ultimately, we have to either trust women to make these decisions - or not.
When there is opposition to family planning and realistic sex education, then it is obviously more a matter of controlling women than protecting a developing life. This same movement is responsible for many lives lost or ruined because of their interventions in international and domestic programs.
Under Clinton, abortions went down.
Under Bush, abortions went up.
When people have experience witnessing poverty and drug issues, when they have known someone victimized by sexual violence or domestic violence or incest, they tend to understand the range of possibilities that might make a woman consider abortion.
The only reason that anti-abortion activists would also be opposed to birth control is because of their views on women and sexuality.
I am aware of a case in which an (anti-abortion) doctor actually withheld information from the woman about a problem with the fetus. He knew she would probably abort - so he didn't tell her. The baby was born, and lived for about a year - in terrible pain. There wasn't any legal case that could be made.
Some of the fringe of the anti-abortion movement consider even a ruptured ectopic pregnancy to be a form of abortion, although at 8 weeks there is no way for the fetus to survive. Some medical programs are no longer training for the procedures, which means that the D&C might not be around for its other applications...
doc: you realize you're my dealer of idiot crack, don't you? I'm trying hard not to relapse...
virushead: the story about the doc is just unbelievable. Why are some people so arrogant that they think they have the right to make choices for others?
I don't know when the baby develops a brain, but for me, its perfectly okay to abort it up to that point
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