1.22.2007
Because...
Today is the 34th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, and in commemoration feminist bloggers are celebrating in our own way: we're blogging for choice. This year's topic is so straight-forward and simple, I almost feared I wouldn't have much to say. After all, isn't obvious why I'm pro-choice? I'd think that anyone that knows me, or reads this blog with any regularity, would recognize immediately why I work so hard to maintain reproductive freedoms.I don't remember a time when I was anything but pro-choice. From the moment that I was aware of and able to conceptualize the issue of abortion (back when I was a wee little one of ten or so), I understood implicitly the importance of recognizing that women are and should be the guardians of their own bodies and reproduction. I used to wear buttons in middle and high school that looked like this:
It was an indelible image, and despite never having lived in a time when women were forced to resort to back alley butchers and dangerous home remedies, I still felt with passion and conviction the belief that we cannot, will not, go back. My Catholic upbringing did nothing to disabuse me of the notion that it is simply just and moral to recognize a woman's right to choose. I argued with priests and Catechism instructors, I argued with teachers and friends, and I went to college and volunteered at clinics, and argued with protesters bent on shaming women but not lifting a finger to help them. But in all that time, in nearly 20-years of feminist consciousness, never once have I articulated precisely why I am pro-choice. I never had to; it was enough for me to know that I am. So here is my attempt to remedy that.
I am pro-choice:
Because I trust women. I trust women as rational creatures to evaluate the circumstances of their own lives and decide for themselves if they are ready, willing and able to have a (or another) child. I trust that women understand the risks and consequences of pregnancy, motherhood and abortion, and to weigh those risks and consequences according to what is best for them. I don't trust outsiders, no matter how earnest or kind-hearted, to fully recognize the impact that unwanted pregnancy has on a woman's life. I don't trust that people wholly unrelated to any individual woman can ever have her best interests at heart when forcing her to make a decision contrary to her own feelings and reality.
Because the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the United States is murder. For some women, the decision to continue a pregnancy will literally put their lives in danger.
Because there is a inverse relationship between laws restricting reproductive rights and the quality of women's lives. In every country that recognizes women's bodily autonomy, women are safer, make more money, are more educated and generally happier. The ability to determine when, if and how many times she becomes a mother is the leading determinant of every other factor in a woman's life: her level of education, socio-economic status, her ability to escape an abusive relationship, and her overall health.
Because babies are not a punishment. Right-wing rhetoric, you know those moral people who constantly blather about family values, is rife with accusations of women avoiding the negative consequences of sex by having an abortion. They argue that these women made their beds and now they must lie in them, as if children are some punishment from on high for failure to live by someone else's moral statutes. Children are cute, they're adorably naive and often say funny things without meaning to. They make life better for those around them because they bring with them the promise of hope and a better world. They remind us that our time of this planet should be filled with wonder and joy. They make messes and sometimes smell funny, but that's okay because they also laugh at butterflies and give us kisses with chocolate-smeared mouths simply because they felt like it. They are not scarlet letters to be worn as evidence of moral failure. They're too precious. And their lives are too precious to forced upon someone unable to care for them as they deserve.
Because I believe that pregnant women are to be supported by society, not co-opted. Pro-choice activism in the United States often centers around the termination (or prevention) of pregnancy, but inherent in the belief that women should not be forced to continue a pregnancy, is the concomitant conviction that women who choose to remain pregnant should have the full resources of society available to them in that choice. That means pre-natal care for poor women who often go without due to lack of access or resources. It means the availability of midwifery for women who would rather not submit to the often patriarchal nature of obstetrician/hospital birth. It means calling a ceasefire on the public shaming of pregnant women: if a pregnant women is addicted to illegal substances, she should have the ability to get treatment for both her addiction and her child. No more arresting women post-labor for the presence of alcohol or drugs in her system—the crack down on addicted mothers does nothing to help children and everything to prevent these women from seeking quality pre-natal care for fear of imprisonment. And most importantly, it means helping women and their children after pregnancy—public housing and assistance for poor families, access to inexpensive yet healthy food, government funded or subsidized quality day care, paid family leave, flexible work hours, asserting the right of mothers to nurse in public, etc.
Because I am pro-life. I respect life, and more importantly, I respect quality of life. I believe that women's lives have value, that we are important, we are human and we contribute more to society than simply our ability to populate the earth. Treating pregnancy and child-rearing as a yoke to prevent women from fully participating in the public sphere oppresses not only women, but men and children as well. It prevents men from fashioning for themselves an identity beyond breadwinner and monetary provider. It treats men's relationships with their children as secondary and incidental, particularly as concerns a child's emotional development. It tells men that their ability to be an effective and loving father is not natural, that they will never be able to bond with their children in the same way, or to any degree similar to, a woman's ability. And as I've blogged about before, children who are the result of unwanted pregnancies suffer as well, even into adulthood:
The adverse health consequences of teenagers' inability to control their childbearing can be particularly severe. Teenage mothers are more likely to suffer toxemia, anemia, birth complications, and death. Babies of teenage mothers are more likely to have low birth weight and suffer birth injury and neurological defects. Such babies are twice as likely to die in the first year of life as babies born to mothers who delay childbearing until after age 20.Both unintended and unwanted childbearing can have negative health, social, and psychological consequences. Health problems include greater chances for illness and death for both mother and child. In addition, such childbearing has been linked with a variety of social problems, including divorce, poverty, child abuse, and juvenile delinquency. In one study, unwanted children were found less likely to have had a secure family life. As adults they were more likely to engage in criminal behavior, be on welfare, and receive psychiatric services. Another found that children who were unintended by their mothers had lower self-esteem than their intended peers 23 years later.
The biggest lie anti-choicers tell is that they are pro-life. When they fail to recognize that mere existence is not a life, all they achieve is making the lives of others more difficult, more miserable and less fulfilled. When they argue that the only moral abortion is my abortion, they betray an hypocrisy that undercuts any semblance of integrity or virtue. They show themselves as they truly are: zealots who fear and hate women for not being afraid or repentant or cowed by a misogynistic worldview.
Labels: Blog for Choice, Feminism, Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries
annamaria at 6:34 AM
