There are a few things I should say about myself before I explain why I am pro-choice.
I’m Southerner, as in, the higher the hair the closer to God, Southerner. I was born and raised in Georgia before attending college in Alabama. I’m proud of my Southern heritage. I’m a god-fearin’, hair teasin’, SEC football lovin’, Southerner. I don’t subscribe to some of the more usual stereotypes above-the-Mason-Dixon-liners believe: my cousin is a wonderful person, he is not, however, my boyfriend. I didn’t live on a farm as a child. We didn’t have a black housekeeper I called Miz Keeshia that raised me. I have all of my teeth (and so does every member of my family.)
I do, however, come home when Momma calls, feel better when wearing a dress and heels, and know how to make biscuits from scratch that will knock your boyfriend’s socks off. I attended Catholic school my whole life. I am teaching first grade Sunday school. But I am pro-choice. That in turn makes me a liberal Democrat. I wish politics today didn’t make social issues the cause behind my choosing a side, but they do and I have.
I do believe in the death penalty. I want fair taxation for the upper middle class. Heck, I want fair taxation for every tax bracket. I want the troops to come home. Most importantly, I want to be able to make decisions regarding my body without worrying about legal consequences. I voted for President Barack Obama. Twice. I believe in the woman’s right to choose. It’s a choice I pray I never have to make, but I want it to be MY choice. Not anyone else’s choice made for me. And above all else not because a group, comprised of mainly males, eradicated my right to make the choice.
Being pro-choice does not make me pro-abortion.
Being pro-choice means I fight for the right for women to make their own decisions regarding their own bodies. I think many of y’all out there are pro-choice and just don’t know it because you “really don’t care.” By “really not caring” you don’t have an opinion, which in my book, is fine. Laissez-faire: that’s all I want the government to do. Let us decide for ourselves what we are going to do with our bodies. If you don’t really care one way or another then you should be pro-choice because, like I said, pro-choice is not necessarily pro-abortion. It’s not caring about what private citizens do to themselves. It’s the government “really not caring” about our medical decisions.
According to Planned Parenthood, one in three women in the United States will have an abortion before they are in their mid-forties. One in three in the whole country, not just one area or one socio-economic group, one in three. That is downright amazing.
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Look at your own life. Do the math. The way I figure it my circle of best friends includes five ladies, so at least one has had an abortion, and we are nowhere near our mid-forties.
Think about it ladies, do you want to take away a right that thousands of women have fought so hard to gain? Do you want to take away a right that literally millions of Americans have exercised in the last few decades? No? Me either, which is why I am pro-choice.
When I first began thinking about how I would personally stand on this issue a lot of factors came into play. The Catholic Church was a huge one for me. And I realized I, personally, do not believe that an abortion would be the path I want for myself. But I don’t want a man telling me I can’t. I don’t want a man telling my best friend, or heck any one of y’all, you can’t. It’s simply about protecting the right to choose. Not supporting one choice over another, but supporting the actual act of choosing. 99% of reproductive age women, that is y’all, use, or have used some sort of birth control, according to the Guttmacher Institute. 99%!
According to some of the more extreme conservatives out there, any form of birth control is no-go, and anti-choice legislation could take it away. For me that is just not the government’s, made up of almost 80% males, business. Yes, according to the Congressional Research Service, less than 20% of Congress is female. Females are fighting hard to get equal pretty much everything. Taking away our right to choose puts everything women like Hilary Rodham Clinton have fought so hard for back three steps.
During the summer an article ran in Her Campus’s Her Story section featuring a girl who had an abortion in college. I urge everyone to read the piece. Abortion isn’t meant to be some Kevorkian-esque adventure. It’s a medical procedure performed by a licensed medical professional. Read her journey and try to understand what it would have been like for her had she not been able to choose.
I bet she’s a lot like each of us, and if you saw her on the street you’d say she was “normal.” Which is exactly my point. Having an abortion should not be any different, in terms of the government’s eyes, than having an appendectomy. I believe that the US government should let everyone make personal decisions, and not force a decision upon them.
As Vice President Joe Biden, a practicing Catholic man, said during a recent debate, “I accept my church’s position on abortion in my personal life. But I refused to force it on others.”
To which every fiber of my Southern, yet liberal soul says, “amen.” It’s as simple as that.