If I were to get pregnant today, I would be getting an abortion tomorrow. Zero question.
And it’s not because I can’t afford it, or because it would cause health problems, or any other “reasonable” reasons that get listed when people try justifying abortion in debates. It would simply be because I do not want to be pregnant.
In discussions about abortion rights, it feels like even on the pro-choice side, the arguments are often based on coming up with justifiable reasons for why women should be allowed to get abortions. Things like “What if they were raped? What if they would have to drop out of college to raise the baby?” are brought up in a way that makes it seem like those reasons are what makes abortion right.
And while those things are valid reasons, I’m tired of feeling like it has to be justified at all.
The way I see it, being pregnant – and having kids in general – should be an opt-in situation, rather than an opt-out.
With the current norms, having kids is what is expected of you. When someone decides not to, everyone asks why not? But having kids is a huge commitment that entirely reshapes a person’s life, not to mention how your parenting defines the life of another person.
According to a 2016 study published in the American Journal of Public Health showed that carrying unwanted pregnancies to term was strongly correlated with worsened mental health.
Having kids just because there’s no good reason not to is a flawed system that, in my opinion, sets both you and your child up to struggle in the future. And imagine the alternative to this norm: consider the idea that every child that is born is raised by parents that really, truly want to be parents.
Doesn’t that seem like a better system?
Of course, this isn’t always the case, and I would never tell someone to get an abortion unless it was what they wanted. Pro-choice isn’t just a pretty saying; I really do believe in the right to choose. It just seems like the world is dead set against women being able to make that choice for themselves.
With the most recent Supreme Court Justice, Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the court, reproductive rights are in a hazardous spot. Roe v. Wade, which reinforces the right to privacy and established the right to abortion, could potentially be overruled by the court.
For instance, abortion clinics are not as easily accessible as they need to be. According to NARAL Virginia, 93% of VA counties have no abortion clinics, and “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” outweigh real clinics by a ratio of 5 to 1.
Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) are fake clinics that pose as abortion clinics, only to intimidate and frighten women out of getting abortions. A woman goes to the clinic looking to get help with an unwanted pregnancy and instead is shamed out of it.
Even if Joe Biden, the new President-elect, makes Roe the “law of the land” as he said he would do as a platform of his presidential campaign, a litany of other issues stand in the way of reproductive freedom.
The fight for abortion rights is still ongoing, and women still need to fight tooth and nail for their ability to get abortions.
This is a fight that will not be over until every woman (or anybody else with a uterus) is able to get an abortion without having to fight for it at all.