Today is Blog for Choice Day. It’s been 36 years since Roe V. Wade, & while a lot of feminists are breathing easier as a result of Tuesday’s inauguration of Barack Obama as our new president, you can’t really ever stop worrying about the way they get our laws all over our (female) bodies.
In a nutshell, I’m pro-choice because
- because this planet is too crowded
- because abortion will always be available, but it will only be available to wealthier women if it’s illegal, which is class discrimination
- because women deserve to decide their own lives & when & how they want to have children
- because they never, ever report on where the father is when a teenaged girl leaves her baby on someone’s doorstep (or in a local dumpster, etc).
- because women don’t always choose when they’re having sex, even if they’re not raped
- because younger women, especially, may not have the self-confidence to insist on safe sex
(But it really is a huge relief to have a pro-choice president. At last.)
One reason that I am pro-choice is that my father made sure that I was. He was a small-town pediatrician, and I guess there is just something about regularly delivering babies to twelve year-olds that makes you feel very strongly about reproductive rights.
But even more than that, I was about 11 or 12 when I read Harlan Ellison’s collection of short stories _Love Ain’t Nothing But Sex Misspelled_. (One of his better collections, IMO and one where about half the stories have no sf elements at all.) For me, the most memorable story in there was “Neither Your Jenny Nor Mine” a story from 1964 for which I found the following synopsis: “With two friends and four hundred dollars, a pregnant teenager travels to Tijuana to take care of her ‘condition’–a harrowing glimpse into the abortion subculture written before Roe vs. Wade.”
Harrowing. I guess, though the work seems a bit mild. A *highly* recommended story.
I don’t know how a person can engage with the actuality of what a lack of reproductive choice means and not come away appalled. I really don’t, and never have. And that was what did it for me.