Blog for Choice Day 2008

Today is the 35th Anniversary of Roe V. Wade and the second annual Blog for Choice day. I feel quite fortunate that I've never had to make that choice, but I am grateful that, unlike my mother's generation, choice has always been an option for me. I'm worried, too, that many young women today have become complacent and don't realize how close we are to having the freedom of Choice taken from us. It only takes one more Supreme Court Justice stepping down while Bush is in office or a Republican winning the 2008 presidential election, to get the conservative majority needed to overturn Roe V. Wade.

I also wish to state that I don't know anyone who's pro-choice who thinks abortion is a wonderful thing. The pro-lifers paint us like people who think everyone should just run out and have an abortion, like we take delight in it. If no one ever had to have an abortion ever again that would suit me just fine. And maybe someday we can get there--or, at least, much closer to there--but for now we have issues to tackle. I was going to write up a more formal essay, but I decided not to. I'm passionate about this issue, and making it more perfect and sterile, takes the heart and soul out of it. So, here are my off the cuff thoughts about Choice tonight.

We need comprehensive sex education for all children and teens--taught in an age appropriate manner, of course. It's all well and good to teach abstinence. I think everyone agrees that abstinence is best, but statistics show that these programs don't work. Teens say one thing and do another. That's what being a teen is all about, right? Testing boundaries? Thinking you know it all? Yeah. And when teens decide to have sex, if they haven't been taught about condoms, birth control, sexually transmitted infections (STI's) and pregnancy, they're left in the dark. Since Bush took office and funding has switched to Abstinence Only Education, teen pregnancies and STI's are on the rise. 'Nuff said. Teach kids what they need to know to be safe.

Adoption is a great option as well. But the thing about adoption is that I don't know anyone who's pro-life whose actually adopted a child. I often ask why people don't consider adoption, and I'm usually told it's because, "I can have my own babies." That's all well and good, but if a pro-lifer won't adopt children, who will? Your average pro-lifer votes Republican and the Republican party regularly cuts funding on all the programs that poor children and single mothers need like WIC, Head Start, foodstamps, welfare, etc. If you won't take in one of these children you are trying to save, and you won't fund the programs to help the children who you are "saving," then are you really saving this child at all?

I used to work with a woman from Romania and she told me why she'd never go back to live there. In Romania, someone from the government came into the office where she worked once a month and gave all the women a pregnancy test. If your test came out positive, they made note of it. Next month they came back and tested everyone again. If you weren't pregnant the next month, you better be able to pass a physical examination by a doctor proving you miscarried or you'd be arrested! Abortion was illegal in Romania when she lived there. (I haven't investigated the legalities today.) I cannot imagine living somewhere like that, somewhere women are forced to give birth to a child against their will. I can't even begin to fathom what that must be like. She said that to be a woman in Romania was like being a second class citizen, with no right to her own body. She, like me, was pro-choice.

If abortion is made illegal in America, would the government resort to something like this? I wouldn't put it past some of the passionate pro-lifers I've met. Most of them care more about the unborn child than the woman whose life is going to be turned upside down. Her own life with her own unique set of circumstances, not theirs. It matters not to most of them if the woman's life is at risk, if she was raped or molested by a family member, or if the child is severely deformed. Well, it matters to me. It matters a great deal to me that a woman not risk her life for a child whose not even here yet when she may have other children depending on her, that someone who was raped not be forced to re-live her experience by being forced to give birth, that a deformed child not live a short, painful, unnecessary life because some people think sparing him the pain is murder.

I also wonder who the pro-lifers think are going to adopt these children they "save" if they overturn Roe, when more and more people are able to "have their own babies" with techniques like in vitro fertilization. I wonder why they don't think the extra embryos that are destroyed after the in vitro process is over (and the couple has produced their desired amount of children) are not human lives too. One would think that if you did consider them to be human lives, you'd want their lives to have meant something by allowing them be used for stem cell research, but that's another topic for another day.

Happy Anniversary Roe V. Wade. Remember, complacency kills. Fight the good fight, every day in every way.

Peace.

Please check out the others who Blogged for Choice today.

I blogged for choice last year as well- HERE.