I had a dream last night that I was pregnant. Seriously. I was two and a half months pregnant and had just found out. Oddly enough I was sublimely happy about it but also very worried. For two and half months I had been drinking for two without knowing it! My kid was clearly going to suffer for it. In the dream I wasn't thinking about whether or not to have an abortion, but in reality I would definitely consider it. Not just due to the fetal alcohol syndrome but also the place I'm at in my life. My ability to support a child and raise him or her in a stable, responsible way is more than limited at the moment.
My reasons for voting pro-choice, however, are not just about my current circumstances. I vote pro-choice for all the women in this country who are protected by our right to choose. Choosing an abortion is not just about birth defects or money or age or time. The reasons for choosing an abortion are vast, too numerous to list here. To deny a woman her right to an abortion limits her power over her body and her life. It's a human rights issue. It continues the cycle of poverty, it denies violence and abuse, and it can lead to the death of adult women. Adult women have a beating heart. They have fingernails, they have hair, a fully developed brain, and they should also have choices.
For tons more Blog for Choice Day posts see today's Feministing.
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4 comments:
i agree that the reasons to have an abortion are countless, and the importance of voting pro-choice is immeasureable. i think that whether or not to have a child is the most important choice a mother can make. there are already way too many unwanted children in the world, and children are born into hideous circumstances every day. when i think about children in the foster care system, or mothers struggling to raise their children in poverty or without supports, it seems to me that abortions save lives as opposed to taking them.
i just reread my comment and i don't like it. i didn't mean to imply that the children in foster care should have been aborted, or that single impoverished mothers shouldn't have children. i just think that CHOOSING to have her child is the most important choice a mother has.
I agree and think its interesting that the pro-life ers seem to connect pro-choice with pro-abortion. I agree that women should be able to have an abortion if they need to but they also can make any other choice, thats what pro-choice means, or at least what I believe it to mean.
I hope I don't sound pro-life.
I keep having a nightmare similar to that, night after night. I somehow get pregnant, but then abortion becomes illegal, and I have to have the child, leading to a downward spiral of the (innocent) childs life and mine. It's awful.
I agree with you completely, even to entertain the idea of a government controlling a WOMEN'S CHOICE sets us back, oh, I don't know, 50 years? You're absolutely right about the cycle, had abortion ever become illegal, it'd be absolutely disastrous. Over half the population of people who DO have children aren't in a stable enough situation to raise a life, let alone their own lives, and they expect all these women and men who get pregnant to be able to raise a child? For God's sakes, I know 14 year olds who've gotten pregnant, and they're actually DEBATING on wheather or not she should have the right to control her own life, that pratically hasn't even started.
While I hate the idea of terminating a child, the welfare of the mother has to be incorporated too, and considering all the sick, sick people in the world, I can only imagine what horrific childhoods some of the children could go through, if abortion was illegalized.
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