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:
Nothing I have said here should be shocking. When faced with the reality of an individual woman's life, only a tiny minority of people still cling to the but it's a baby! point of view. Any society that aspires toward freedom and justice must recognize when women do well, society as a whole does better. And the only way to ensure that women are successful in every other area of their lives is to ensure that women are given the respect and moral authority to control their health, bodies and lives. And that's why I am pro-choice.

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annamaria at 6:34 AM

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