Today is the 34th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, and I am participating in a day of blogging for Choice. I was 13 years old when it was signed into law. At the time I had little understanding of what it meant. I do however remember that sometime in the early seventies my mom gave money to a pregnant young woman -- a friend of my older brother -- to go to Toronto for an abortion. That's what women did in the days before Roe. (Years later, out of the blue, my mother received a check in the mail from that woman to repay her for the expense. My mom was very touched by that gesture.)
I am fervently pro-choice, largely because I believe that every child born on this earth deserves to be wanted. I am also well aware that contraceptives fail despite anyone's best intentions, and yes, sometimes people fail to think about the consequences of their actions. However I do not believe that a woman should be forced to carry an unplanned and/or unwanted pregnancy to term under any circumstances when we have the means to safely terminate a pregnancy in its earliest stages.
Beyond being "pro-choice" I want to say that I support reproductive freedom. By that, I mean that I also fully support a woman's right to carry her pregnancy to term in any circumstance. I was acquainted with a woman who knew early in the pregnancy that her child did not have a brain and wouldn't survive outside the womb, yet chose to carry him to term, without a lot of support from the medical establishment. I don't think I could have done that, but it was clearly the right choice for her.
What we do with our bodies is an intensely personal choice, and must remain the choice of each individual woman.
My own personal childbearing story spans a wide spectrum: I've been pregnant 6 times. I joyfully birthed 3 beautiful daughters. My middle daughter had a congenital heart defect and died in infancy. I lost one pregnancy in the first trimester. And then I had another healthy baby.
And I've had 2 abortions. That was the biggest surprise of all. I was baby crazy in my teens and twenties. I couldn't wait to be a mom. I had a child, lost another child, went through a period of anxiously trying to become pregnant before I had a subsequent child. And then when she was still very young ... my birth control failed, and I felt AWFUL. I could not see how bringing another child into our family was going to be good for any of us, and I chose to have an abortion. A year and a half later it happened again, and I still could not see my way clear to having another child. I had another abortion.
I do believe that biologically, life begins at conception, but a baby lives in your heart and mind. Would I have loved those babies had I chosen to carry them to term? Of course! But deciding that I could not do it was also an act of love for all of us. I think about them sometimes, as well as the pregnancy that I miscarried; I wonder who they were/are. And I am completely at peace with my decisions.
Sometimes people will state, "I'm pro-choice and I think abortion should be safe, legal, and rare" or they'll say, "I believe in abortion, but some women use it as a form of birth control."
Well I'm here to say that having an abortion is no picnic in the park, and at $500 each time it is mighty expensive birth control. Abortion should be safe, legal, and as common as it needs to be. Period.
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6 comments:
Hi Suzy,
What a cogent post. What you say makes a lot of sense, and the mix of personal history with rational thought makes it even more powerful.
Luckily I've never had an abortion, but I did have a miscarriage (spelling?), and what a shock that was.
I used to be patently pro-choice, anti-abortion. Later I started to look at the grey area. We live in such a disposable culture. Need I expand on that?
It hurts me when people make jokes about roadkill, or say "Oh, it's just a dog." Or when newscasters report on the nationality of people killed in bomb blasts: "78 people were killed, 2 of them Americans." As if some kinds of lives are more valuable than others.
I agree with you that life begins at conception. I also agree with you that each child should be wanted. I worked with homeless women and children in Cincinnati. It was heart-chilling to see so many unwanted children being brought up in cars.
It's a complex issue for me. In the end I support every woman's right to an abortion.
I agree with you once again! I believe our bodies are our own and we should be the only ones to make choices that concern them. I, too, had an abortion but very few people know about it. I think it's my own personal thing, my decision, and my life. There are just too many unwanted children born every day.
That is a gutsy and honest blog. I am pro-choice but I agree with Caroline that it is a very complex issue.
A new blogger "Stuck on Survive" has a very interesting post today on this same subject.
In some ways I think that the anti-abortion movement is about a much bigger issue, and that is anti-meeting women's health needs.
Hey thanks for responding, sister bloggers.
Brave and moving post, this really touched me and moved me because it is so hard to be that blatant, honest and personal about this topic. You are very courageous and I support you 100%. I am a passionate believe in a woman's right to choose as well and agree, the pro-life movement has more to do with religion most of the time than it does with what these women are personally going through. I support you and the choices you made. All of them. That's the beauty of feminism. Choosing what's right for us, individually.
Beautiful, passionate, and honest. Simply PERFECT!
When women aren't allowed to have complete control over their reproductive lives, they do not have control over any other domain either, since childbearing affects a woman in every way possible.
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