Blogging for Choice
Today is the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade. It's also been designated as Blog for Choice day. Unfortunately, the word "choice" is too closely entwined with abortion in our nomenclature, and it assumes that all women are able to make the same choices or that all choices are considered equally valid within our society. I thought about blogging for reproductive freedom instead, but I'd rather reclaim the word choice for all possibilities.
I have never been pregnant, so I have no direct experience with pregnancy, abortion, childbirth, or child-rearing. I'm almost at the age where becoming pregnant will be a non-issue anyway. This leaves me with a whole lot of "I don't knows."
I don't know when life begins.
I don't know what I would have done if I had become pregnant.
I don't know how I'd feel if I became pregnant now.
I don't know the experience of raising a child.
I don't know how painful giving birth is (or isn't).
I don't know how I'd feel if I had an abortion.
Most importantly, I don't know why any of that should matter with respect to reproductive choice. It should only matter with respect to what I would do, because I'd be making the decision for myself. For my body. I should never be making that decision for someone else; for someone else's body.
That's what it comes down to. Having the right to make decisions about what we do with our own bodies. For example, no father is required to give a bone marrow transplant to save the life of his child, wanted or unwanted. No one at all is required to do that under any circumstance, even though it will kill the other person. We simply do not have the right to unilaterally use someone else's body to survive. The very idea that a fetus (or if you prefer "unborn child") should be allowed to do so would give them rights far above those the rest of us enjoy. The decision about whether or not we're willing to allow someone else to use our bodies for their survival rests wholly with us. As it should and still would in every other situation should those who wish to outlaw abortion get their way.
Choice goes beyond just abortion, though. We live in a society that stigmatizes and penalizes women of color, poor women, and/or unmarried women for having children. The only "choice" we leave WOC, poor women, and/or single women is the "choice" to not have sex at all. For them, that is the only societally "valid choice." Unmarried women who do dare to have sex are reviled. In other countries, poor women are forcibly sterilized. Welfare "reform" forces parents to abandon their children, a phenomenon that hits black women most. A lack of federal funding for abortion means that poor women who want to have abortions can't afford them. If they are also on welfare, depending on how many other children they already have, this could also mean a reduction in their welfare benefits. To make matters worse, public funding for contraception is poor as well. Add this all up, and it means that only affluent, married, white women have a choice. For everyone else, the only "proper choice" is not to have sex at all. That is no choice.
True choice. Safe, affordable, legal abortion. Public assistance for women who need it, regardless of how many children they have. A federal mandate that contraception, like Viagra, be funded by insurance. An increase in public funds available for contraception (prescription and/or OTC). Birth control pills, like EC, available OTC. Opposition to forcible sterilization programs in other countries. No stigmatization of unmarried women who have sex.