Reasons I am Pro-Choice

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.” - Alice Walker


1). Back-alley abortions.
Yes, it's a trite, overused expression. No, I don't give a fuck. It's a legit term for a legit worry. I'll be the first to admit that people turn to abortions way too readily, but I'll also be the first to tell you that the trule desperate women will go to any means necessary, and that includes unsanitary, unprofessional abortions that killed and maimed thousands of women before it was legalized, and they all were forced to act like criminals. No good, y'all. How the hell can we call ourselves the greatest country in the world if we don't even allow access to safe, clean medical care? Seriously, folks. This is kinda a no-brainer.
2). Big government.
Excuse me, but aren't the Republicans for SMALL government? LESS governement interference? They're already telling us government helathcare is "socialism" (and if you think I'm getting into that, you're nuts). And yet they want the government to be allowed to have control over the bodies and healthcare of literally half the American population- the women. Excuse you? You can't get much more invasive than having Uncle Sam telling you what you can and can't do with your uterus.
3). Women's rights.
You wouldn't think this would need explanation, but it does. My body. MINE. Not yours. That's as simple as I can make it.
What is a fetus? At a few weeks? It's a mass of cells. Admittedly, it's a mass of cells with a potential to become so much more than just that. But so is a tumor. No one's marching in the streets of the capitol for tumors' rights. No one's trying to pass personhood amendments for your lung cancer. I mean, I can't even write that with a straight face.
Think back to your ninth-grade health class. Remember what happened? This little thing that looked weirdly like the pictures of worms they have on the posters at the vet's office stuck itself to a blob that looked like a golf ball.
Seriously. You're gonna tell me that's a person? It's two cells. (Although my brother, who is much more a science nerd than I am, informs me that they're tehnically each half of a cell, called haploid cells? Or possibly diploid cells, I wasn't really lsitening.) If you take those two cells out of a woman's body, what are they? Nothing. They're an egg, and a sperm. Nobody's doing protest marches for the rights of all the poor little sperms who die every time a teenage boy jacks off. Nobody's screaming that I'm killing a person every time I have my period. But it's eggs and sperms dying! Cells with the potential to become a human life are being destroyed!
...Right.
Take those cells out of the body, and no one gives a fuck about them. They're two cells. But in a woman's body, they're precious! You can't get rid of them! You have to keep them, no matter what the cost!
Sure is convenient that saving human life means someone else gets to control what happens to my body, dontcha think?
4). The irony is just too much to handle otherwise
"Land of the free! We're the best in the world! Liberty! Awesomeness! Et cetera! Oh, except you're not free to make choices considering your own body. But we're still Number One, right?"
Too much irony.
Anti-choice laws are not compatible with free society. Ever. (This is another one of those "Shouldn't need explanation, but apparently does")
5). Outlawing abortion is forcing women to have children
Um, what the fuck? Seriously, what the fuck? The day a government forces women to bear children against their will is the day women have become nothing more than slaves. Outlawing abortion again is as much as telling women that they're only good for making babies. If I can't decide what to do with my own body, then essentially, I'm being told that I don't matter, at all, except as a little baby factory. Thanks, guys. That's sweet.
6). Health
Women with certain medical conditions (cancers, heart disease, blood disorders) can be endangered by a pregnancy. Delivering a child could kill them. If abortions were made illegal, women would die when it could have been preventable, because the government would force them to have children. A woman's options would be illegal abortion (risking her own death) or childbirth (risking her own death).
Fuck that.
7). America is still not a theocratic government.
"America's founders were Christian, though!" Yeah, and my Mom's friend believes in the Moon Goddess. What does any of that have to do with anything?
America's CHRISTIAN founders wanted people to have a place where they felt safe, where thye felt they had a voice in the ruling of their home country, where they could feel they were not simply ignored. America's founders gave us a country with FREEDOM OF RELIGION. You're free to practice your religion. I'm free to not have one. Stop putting your religion's laws in my country's laws. Seriously. It's rude. Not to mention destructive, ineffective, and wrong.
8). A woman is more than just a body
If fetuses are granted "personhood", then that means they become more important than I am. Their rights come before mine. They have equal rights, too- more equal, in fact than mine.
What the fucking fuck???
9). Women can and should make decisions on their own.
Thank you, America, for trying to make my decisions out of my hands. Thank you, America, for telling me that I am incapable of making the right decision. You trust me enough to have and raise a baby, but not enough to deicde if I want it? Well, that clears that right up. OBVIOUSLY, being but a poor, pitiful woman, I can't possibly make my own decisions. That would be crazy! Where would society be if you let me think for myself? Chaos.
10). WE CAN'T ALL AFFORD ANY FUCKING BABIES
Hell-O??? I'm seventeen. I'm unemployed. How the fuck am I supposed to raise a kid?
What about the single moms working fourteen and sixteen and eighteen hours a day to afford electricity? Yeah, I'll bet they really want a kid right now. Raising a baby is totally in their budget. *sarcasm hand raised We should just leave them in the lurch, right? Because all life is sacred to God, after all. (But only as long as it's a cute li'l baby, we don't actually care so much once they grow up. They can fend for themselves. *sarcams shoulder popping from raising sarcasm hand so high)
11). Overpopulation.
Seriously? There aren't enough starving and dying and unwanted children out there? There aren't enough mommies in Africa dying in childbirth, while their kids die of starvation and disease and lack of fresh water? You don't see enough kids in the streets, running drugs for money? Not enough child prostitues earning money for food?
If every life is sacred, buy some fucking condoms, and adopt. Don't just talk about the world's fucking problems and then ignore them the rest of the time.
12). Women are not just mothers
Without a kid, or several kids, there are so many more options for me. Right now, I'm set to go off to the Navy in August. If I have a kid, that's not happening. Babies are wonderful and awesome and miraculous- when they're planned for, or if you have the means of taking care of them, or if you want one. For someone who doesn't like kids, who's trying to finish school, who wants to be able to get and keep a job, who doesn't want her life interrupted for something she never wanted in the first place? That's not a miracle, folks, that's a damned pain in the ass (literally and figuratively)
Telling me I have to have a kid is telling me I'm not good for being anything except a mother. Forcing a woman to have a child devaules her. All the political and economic and social gains women have made aren't going to be worth much if we aren't even allowed control over our bodies.
13). Teen pregnancies
Yeah, I really want to scew up my entire teenage life by having a baby at the age of, oh, fourteen, or fifteen, or hell, THIRTEEN, for Christ's sake...what's that you say? I should have used protection? Well, maybe instead of forcing abstinence-only sex ed on me you should have GIVEN ME SOMETHING USEFUL TO WORK WITH HERE before you also force me to HAVE A BABY!
Seriously, right-wingers. What the fuck? Don't teach kids how to avoid pregnancies, then don't let them out of it when-shocker!!!-they get pregnant anyways...
Yeah, that's a great idea.
*sarcasm hand raised really high so everyone can see me flipping them the bird
14) Child abuse
Yeah, child abuse. Child abuse sucks. And it ends when parents actually want their kids, when they treat them the way they should-like something precious, and miraculous, and wonderful. When parents love thir kids, child abuse ends.
When parents look at their kids and think, "I never wanted you. I dropped out of high school because of you. Dad disowned me when he found out about you. I can't afford you. I lost my job over you. You're just a burden to me," that's where child abuse starts.
And you're going to tell me that you're "pro-life" because you believe every life is sacred?

Whew, longest post ever. And you know the worst part? That's nowhere near everything I could've said.

Next up: My friend Sam's pro-life perspective.