Why I’m Pro-Choice
I’ve done it. I’m successful.
And I’m feeling it.
I’ve entered the third trimester.
With the third trimester has come serious growing pains—literally. I no longer have ankles. I have tree-trunk legs. Beautiful, motherly tree-trunk legs. My belly is huge (no stretch marks yet, thankfully), and last time I checked I had about 4 chins. My favorite thing in the world is chocolate milk—I drink it by the gallons—and I have become head-over-heels-over-head-over-heels (since I was originally head-over-heels) in love with my husband all over again and again and again. It could be the oxytocin and other deadly combinations of hormones flooding my system, but I prefer to think of it as the evolutionary need to stick by your baby daddy (rather than standing by your man).
Things are going well here, though, on the whole. In less than three months, I will be bringing a child into this world—and I’m loving every minute of it.
And this has elicited some interesting reactions from those who know me, both online and physically. They ask me, “Are you still pro-choice?”
I have never been more pro-choice than I am right now, if that’s even possible.
I admit that I find the underlying reason for the question a bit ridiculous. After all, they’re asking me this because they’re assuming, somehow, that carrying to term makes a person anti-choice by default. Don’t all pro-choicers want to kill babies?
One truth of the matter is that I used to be a counselor. I was a counselor at a women’s clinic. I counseled women pre- and post-abortion. If they chose to carry to term, I helped them as best I could. Perhaps they needed to find a parenting class or adoption agency. I helped them. Or, if they chose to terminate, I would go through their procedures with them, holding their hands and supporting them every step of the way, if they needed it. It was the most rewarding job I ever had.
Another truth of the matter is that the stigmas and stereotypes surrounding abortion—the disinformation, the propaganda, the religion-driven emotivism—cloud the actual argument. No matter how complicated people want to make the discussion, no matter how complex they claim this debate actually is, the truth is that it’s really simple: Should a pregnant woman be forced, by law, to carry to term? If you say yes, you’re anti-choice. In other words, you don’t want the option of abortion available, legal, and accessible. If you say no, then you’re pro-choice. You want the option of abortion available, legal, and accessible. You are not “pro-life.” I don’t even know what that means. I assume it’s a nice euphemism for “anti-choice,” or worse, that contradictory and morally disgusting position that rests on the premise that “abortion is acceptable if the pregnancy is a product of incest or rape.” (Since when did context of conception determine whether someone or something has rights?)
People can muck everything up by claiming that a fetus has rights (which it doesn’t because it can’t), or that women who have abortions do so for “convenience” (which is pretty much the driving motivation for everything we do) and are thus “morally lazy,” or that a six-week fetus looks like this (and only a cold-blooded killer would harm something so precious), but all of this is nothing more than distraction from the actual argument.
They can use emotion and disinformation all they want. They can try to convince pregnant women to change their minds via guilt, coercion, religion/supernatural bullshit, or anything else. But one thing they don’t have as a tool is the truth.
The truth is that abortion needs to be accessible, legal, and safe for a myriad of reasons, some based on pragmatism, some on principle, but all rational thought leads us to the same conclusion: abortion is a social necessity, even a social good, and to deny women the option of abortion is to force them to carry to term.
The criminalization of abortion is diametrically opposed to the tenets of a free society. Any element of force that has no rational basis in reality is unethical. The criminalization of abortion forces women to carry to term. That in itself is unethical. It infringes on the right to liberty. That in itself is unethical. It lays the private and emotional decision at the feet of the government rather than the individual. That in itself is unethical. It gives more rights to a fetus that cannot have rights than to the sentient being carrying the fetus who already has rights. That in itself is unethical.
People may want to frame these as follows: women should carry to term and be willing to give up nine months for a pregnancy they themselves created, the right to liberty is not as important as the right to life, the government makes the laws, and the fetus can have rights.
And this is all bullshit. No one should be forced to sacrifice anything; the right to liberty cannot be arbitrarily denied (especially by some phantom “right to life” someone thinks a fetus has); the government may make laws, but it doesn’t have the Constitutional power to force women to carry to term; and two entities—one sentient, one not—occupying one body cannot have equal rights, so thus the nonsentient entity has no rights.
Pregnancy is a sacrifice—a very important one at that—and it has to be a sacrifice women are willing to make, to work through, and to bear—both the benefits and the suffering. No one else can make the decision except the individual herself. Carrying to term or terminating a pregnancy should never be forced upon anyone. The decision rests alone on the person carrying the pregnancy. To advocate for anything other than the absolute legal status, complete accessibility, and utter safety of abortion is an injustice and a slap in the face to women everywhere.
I could never imagine what it must be like to be forced to carry a pregnancy to term, to be forced to have to make the decision to either carry to term or risk my life in order to terminate the pregnancy, but someone told me about it. I recently received this email, which was a response to another article I wrote on abortion:
im really happy about what u said, that Pregnancy should not decide anything—pregnancy should be decided and desired.
im 26 year old woman, from the philippines, im 5 weeks pregnant now, and abortion is not legal, so many young girls were trapped in their unwanted pregnancies..it was really terrible, i wanna terminate my pregnancy but no clinic or medical help is available, that’s why women like me are forced to have self induced abortion or to go illegal abortionists just get the work done..it endangers the life of the mother but no choice, that’s the risk we have to take..
im planning to have a self induced abortion on my 6th week of pregancy for at that time the drug that i ordered thru the internet will arrived, for these kinds of drugs like misoprostol is banned here in the philippines, i dont even know how to take it, or what to do…ill just take it orally and see if sumthing happens, .. i hope to hear back from you again..thanks..
I just turned 27 this past Saturday, and I’m entering the third trimester. This woman is my age and halfway around the world. I made the right decision for me. I chose to try and conceive. I chose to carry to term. I made the best choice for me. This woman deserves that as well.
Women need to be trusted to make the best decisions for themselves. In the 21st century, it pains me to think I even have to write that, but I do. I have to shout it from rooftops, rationally and linearly explain it step by step, and assert myself at every turn, but you know something, in the end it doesn’t really change anyone’s mind. It pains me to think there are people out there who need to control women, their reproductive options, their bodies, and their minds, and this need supersedes the rational. It pains me to think anyone in a free country such as America could possibly think criminalizing abortion, protesting at abortion clinics, trying to end safe access to abortion, and trying to lie to women in the hopes of coercing them to make another decision is somehow the epitome of moral behavior.
This pregnancy has been a sheer joy for me, and it’s because I want to be pregnant that makes it so joyful. And that’s why I’m vehemently, rabidly, unabashedly, and adamantly pro-choice.
I too am adamantly pro-choice. I don’t believe I — or anyone else — has any right to tell someone they must have a child. Moreover, I think most women make the decision that is right for them. After all, they are the person closest to the situation and the best informed on it.
“Why I’m Pro-Choice”