Blog for Choice

Today is national Blog for Choice Day.

I did not sign up because I was not sure whether I'd have the time, but I think it's really pretty important to get the word out anyway. The topic this time around is: Why is it important to vote pro-choice?

Here's why I think voting pro-choice is important: We're all going to be faced with tough choices at some point in our lives, and with a lot of those choices, we can never know how we'll react until it happens to us. It's easy to judge, and it's easy to rationalize and theorize, but ultimately all of that means very little when the situation arises. And when we're in those situations, it's always best to have as many options as possible, and to have information about all of them, and to then be able to make the decision that is best for us at the time.

I'm pro-choice because I love my daughter.

It's hard to imagine my daughter who is only 6 weeks old today, going to pre-school, let alone ever becoming pregnant. But I know that because she is a female, she will have to encounter all sorts of challenges that her male counterparts never will. And one of those challenges may be an unplanned pregnancy. I want the choice of having an abortion to be open to my daughter:

For her health.If she ever has a complication during a pregnancy she has decided to continue and abortion of her fetus may save her life, I want her not only to be able to have access to an abortion, but to have it be performed by a doctor who is well trained and experienced. While many people who proclaim to be pro-life say they will always defend the right of a woman to have an abortion to save her life, by protesting hospitals and harassing doctors who perform abortions these same individuals are discouraging medical students from learning how to perform the procedure.

I was just mentioning today that while it is, absolutely, positively vital to talk about backalley abortions, to talk about what abortion was like before Roe vs. Wade (and what it still is like in areas where abortion is illegal or inaccessible), it's equally important to talk about what choice as a whole was like and still IS like, even with the help of Roe and other supports. I think many often forget or simply don't know the combined impact Roe vs. Wade,Title X and other feminist initiatives had when it came to reproductive choice no matter the choice a woman made. More accurately, no matter what a woman did or what was done TO her when she became pregnant before she had any sort of choice.

A couple of years ago, if you had asked me how I feel about abortion I would have called myself a fence sitter. Today, on the day before the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, I find myself sitting to write down three articles in defense of it. I am pro-choice, let me tell you why.

I am pro-choice because I am a feminist, and I truly believe that women cannot achieve the same status as men in our society until we have full control over our own bodies. In the many countries across the world where this has been acknowledged, abortion is legal. Here in the United States a woman’s right to choose is under constant attack, and all over the world women are forced to undergo illegal abortions because their nation has refused to recognize or protect their rights.