Non-Negotiable Demand

It's Blog for Choice Day, coinciding neatly with the 33rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade and my godson's 4th birthday. We're on our way to the party for a little person much loved, much wanted, and well planned for. I am blogging for choice for him today.

Choice is about many things: time, space, freedom, self-preservation, self-respect, physical sovereignty, safety, the future, the past, and, let's think about this, options. Ideally, one would want for choices to be positive, healthy, supportive of a life plan, and in a person's or family's best interests.

That said, if 99% of one's material reality is one of deprivation, neglect, limited opportunity, or coercion, then it's not terribly meaningful to consider the remaining 1% a "choice." So while I agitate for choice, I am mindful that I am really talking about a right to reproductive freedom.

My godson's parents spent a long time trying to conceive and just as they were headed toward fertility drugs, they became pregnant with him. When he was born, the word we all reached for was "miracle." He was born happy, healthy, without complications to two people who wanted him, to an extended family and community who were beside themselves, and into a world of resources, opportunities, care, and comfort. It is a miracle.

I believe in making the world a better, more equitable, safer place. I believe in trusting women. I believe that personal sovereignty and physical integrity are basic human rights. I believe with every fiber of my being that no one, nothing, no institution, no government, no husband, no father, no mother, no family, should have power over the mind and body of a competent person of free will.

Torture, rape, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, forced sterilization are crimes against humanity. Vasectomies, tubal ligations, sterilization, birth control, egg harvesting, egg donation, sperm donation, surrogacy, and abortion are the private decision of the person on whose body they impact. This is so basic as to be radical.

I love my godson and celebrate his every giggle and sneeze. His body is his own. The thought that it could be any other way is heartrending and abhorrent. Everyone in his life would fight to the death to keep him safe, to afford him every opportunity, never considering limiting his choices or coercing him into some sort of chattel status and making him a slave to the prejudices and manias of a nebulous, purported power. This is the least we should strive for for every woman.

It's the most basic thing, but sometimes we forget:

I will choose what enters me, what becomes flesh of my flesh. Without choice, no politics, no ethics lives. I am not your cornfield, not your uranium mine, not your calf for fattening, not your cow for milking. You may not use me as your factory. Priests and legislators do not hold shares in my womb or my mind. If I give it to you, I want it back. My life is a non-negotiable demand.

-- Marge Piercy

Protect choice. Protect choice. Protect choice.

[photo credit]

Comments

[Alicia]

Thank you for that, ae, and for that great quote.

[Tata]

Thank you, you mad charmer! I needed that.

[The Fat Lady Sings]

Yes. My life is indeed, a non-negotiable demand. Some years back, where I used to live, a woman was in a terrible accident. She required life-saving surgery, and then her body needed all of its strength to heal. Her doctors recommended to her husband that her pregnancy be terminated or she would surly either die, or find herself in a coma that would likely be irreversible. Her husband chose his wife - until, that is, some 'pro-lifers' got involved and through the courts blocked any medical procedures that would threaten the fetus in any way. A fetus that her doctors said would never come to term anyway, due to the accident. Months of court battles ensued until, way to late for it to really help as much as it should have, the pregnancy was terminated.
There was no gain. That woman and her husband lost their future, all because a few fanatic assholes tried to impose their warped view on the lives of two strangers they didn’t give a damn about. For all those out there who trumpet 'child, child, child' - children were considered disposable until Queen Victoria showed the world how much she treasured her own - a direct reaction to her own, abusive childhood, by the way. Before that, women were even more disposable than the children they bore. Slaughtered or enslaved with the blessing of the Catholic Church the moment they proved 'unfruitful'. Evidently some people want to go back to those times. Well fuck them and the horse they rode in on! I would lay my body down in the streets before I would allow such medieval lunacy to ever codify itself into law!

Great post, my dear. Bravo!

[David]

Protect choice.

[Josef K]

Beautiful post. Thanks, ae.

[ae]

Thank you, Alicia, Tata, TFLS, David, and Josef K. We've got such work to do. (Josef K, can I come live in your basement when the medieval lunacy goes down here?)

TFLS, that is yet another horrible, tragic story. I think about the moral imperatives here. No one would expect that we would have to suffer the invasion, ordered by the state, of a potentially life-threatening medical procedure to, say, generate an organ for another in order to save that person's life. Bodily integrity is understood in that circumstance. Why bodily integrity is not understood in the circumstance of unwanted pregnancy I cannot fathom. We are not "hosts" first and foremost.

[Dharma]

You quoted Marge Piercy, this confirms my adoration of your blog. Thank you.

[Josef K]

No basement, but I'm very slowly clearing out the garage... Perhaps it's best if you hide in the spare room instead. Once I've moved the boxes out of it, anyway. I keep telling myself that slovenliness is a feminist statement, but I think it's more of a Health & Safety issue.

[ae]

Dharma, I love Marge Piercy. I had a t-shirt w/ that quote that I wore and wore and wore to death. Sadly, it's left us now for that great t-shirt farm in the sky. Note to self: get another one immediately. Truest words ever written far as I'm concerned.

Josef K, garage, spare room, I'll take what you can give! And I'm good at organizing others' clutter. Maybe I can help out in exchange for your kind hospitality? A little slovenliness never hurt anybody. Consider it whimsy, eccentricity, a free spirit!

I'm really freaked out by these people, no kidding. I'm working on gaining transferable skills (beyond research; I can do research!) so I'll have more options. Seriously.