mama's pro-choice

Why am I pro-choice?

When I was 16, I worked at a Christian retreat center; it was an awesome job that deserves it's own post, but there were a lot of groups that came through there for week-long or weekend-long retreats for work, family gathering, etc.

One year we had Planned Parenthood stay; they had tables set up with all kinds of information on birth control, STDs, pregnancy, abortion, HIV/AIDS (the first time I saw the terms "fisting" and "rimming" were at work during the Planned Parenthood meeting!), etc... It was very interesting for me, a sixteen-year-old virgin.

I clearly remember a booklet I picked up; it was a bunch of stories written about women and written by women who aborted pregnancies before Roe v. Wade protected their right to choice. Some women died; some suffered horribly because of the conditions of their surgeries (unsanitary, untrained people performing the surgeries).

I'm fortunate; Abortion has been safe, legal and protected, for the most part, since I was a small child. I can honestly say that if I were to become pregnant now, I would definitely consider aborting my pregnancy. That is my right. This is my body, my life, my choice. No one else gets to decide if I will bring another child into this world or not.

It makes me sick to my stomach that there are people in our nation who want to remove a woman's right to choose to NOT be a mother. To NOT be pregnant. It is insane.

What really makes me mad, too, are the parental consent laws. Ugh.

So, I guess I am pro-choice because having safe and legal abortion available to any woman protects me, protects my daughters, protects so many women from making a choice that may kill them. I want the back-alley abortion stories to be a part of our sordid history-- not a current event.