Blog for Choice Day

It's Blog for Choice Day, and the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and my godson's 5th birthday (happy birthday, sweets!), and I'm blogging for them all. Let's hear it for basic human rights!

You know what I was thinking the other day as db and I were driving to Raleigh for a party and tooling around our old neighborhood? "Planned Parenthood" is a damn smart name. I mean, there you go: planned parenthood. Two words, right to the point. Parenthood that is planned, not forced on you, not left to chance, not out of one's control,  even possibly not ever to be. Brilliant. I'm a big fan.

At various times in my youth, I didn't have health insurance and Planned Parenthood was my medical provider of choice. I went there not only as a client, of course, but as an ally and supporter, and I have happily supported Planned Parenthood since. I consider it my duty to help ensure they remain visible and effective, because I am buoyed by every Planned Parenthood clinic I see, heartened that a network exists where women can find a community of care, support, and information. It is a living, breathing testament to the women's movement, and, frankly, I could use more of those.

I have had to be vigilant about birth control for two decades now. As a result, I've not become pregnant. Neither have I ever considered myself pre-pregnant; that is, I did not live my life w/ the expectation that pregnancy was an eventuality. Quite the opposite. Had I become pregnant when I was younger (high school, college, twenties), I would have had an abortion. I don't feel the need to offer any justification for that beyond an unwavering desire to determine the direction of my own life.

The women I know who had abortions are not crushed people living lives of constant penance, so let us please dispense with the theatrics. They are highly motivated and well-adjusted people who made the best decision for themselves and their families. Period. Are there some people in the world w/ regrets? I'm sure there are, and I wish them solace. In support of them, let's work to ensure that the circumstances of other women's lives and choices are happy ones.

People need information, education, community, safety, respect, hope, purpose, security, love to survive. In the meantime, as we work toward the noble goal of creating a society in which informed choices are made in safety, we need to save Roe v. Wade. Anything less is fascist. I'm not afraid to use that word. It is most fitting.

"Choice" is about more than abortion. It's about being a parent or not, finishing school or starting school, determining the size of one's family, not being bound to another person's ideas about one's purpose or another authority's rules about one's fecundity; it's about being freed from your biology, expressing the full measure of your potential, whatever that means for you -- PhD in astrophysics and/or mother of 6 -- rock on.

If any reproductive rights activist could magically snap her fingers and do away w/ the need for abortion, I'm sure we would all happily do so. To that end, I invite all the moralists, fundamentalists, and anti-choicers to join me in advocating for a comprehensive sex education program in schools, medically accurate information for our children and sexually active citizens, ready access to contraception, safe communities for women and children, and a society in which choices -- real choices -- can be made w/ dignity and a look to the future. Let's take shame, ignorance, and duress out of the equation, what say.

And in our current climate of fundamentalist sex hysteria, I think it needs to be stated plainly that contraception is imperative not only because it prevents pregnancy but also because it acknowledges that people engage in non-procreative sex. This is a fact, it has always been a fact, and it will always be a fact. Sex: it's not just for making babies anymore! Sorry, fundies. 

As always, thanks to all the women (and allied men) who got us here. We'll never go back. I could send Marge Piercy love letters for the rest of my life for these words which should be written on the sky:

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

[My post from last year's Blog for Choice Day.]

[Pictured: Margaret Sanger, patron saint of contraception.]

Comments

[Sandra]

Wonderful post, I don't know how it could be better said. Thank you!

[trish]

Excellent post, I really enjoyed reading it.

[ae]

Thank you, Sandra and trish, for your kind words and for visiting. xo

[Rosie]

This was said most exquisitely. Thank you.

I think this may be my favorite post.

[Pavel Skreta]

"Sorry, fundies"? Seems more like it should be "Sorry, fundus." Although, being a man, one might naturally ask of me "What does a gyno?" er, I mean, "...guy know?" Anyway, thanks for one of the smartest blogs around. Shalom.

[David]

An idea just came to mind. Do not the Bible thumpers realize that the Earth's resources are being stressed for an ever growing population? Do they think their Christian soldiers won't need the same things the rest of us do? Maybe they'll turn us into Soylent Green!

[Pacian]

David, they believe that Jesus will sweep them up into the Rapture before it comes to that. And I wish I was joking.

And a typically compelling, passionate and eloquent piece, ae.

[dharma]

Lovely, just lovely. I did a very different post on the subject, sort of, in October. In high school I did a report on Margaret Sanger because I adored her message, her struggle.