Blog for Choice Day
The prompt this year is a pretty simple one: Why are you pro-choice?
See, this should be simple, right? This is one of those things that should just flow from my fingers. I mean, I'm pro-choice. I've been pro-choice since I knew what abortion was (a pretty young age - the only abortion provider in Kalispell had his office next door to my mom's work and the protesters were visible from my grade school).
But my idea of what being pro-choice is has changed in the last 20-odd years, as well. I've known that women needed access to abortion, to birth control pills, to all of these things that have been legal for my entire lifetime. But there were things I didn't know, things I didn't realize needed fighting for.
We need to have safe, legal, and accessible access to reproductive health in a pro-choice world. This means that our birth control pills need to be affordable, that we should not be denied Plan B by any holier-than-thou pharmacist, that these medications should be TESTED for their side effects on women, and that there should be abortion providers in EVERY COUNTY IN THE UNITED STATES.
There's not. They're not affordable for many, the services are concentrated in urban areas on each coast throughout major metro areas in the middle, providers aren't always reliable, things aren't always safe.
We need to respect and support the reproductive decisions of others in a pro-choice world, not because it's "the right thing to do" but because it's the ONLY thing to do. This means that we need to make sure that parents are provided with resources to raise their children, that women should be free of guilt or shame that is forced upon them from the outside world because of abortion, that teen mamas are welcomed with open arms and not shoved away with glares, that poor women and women of color are not forced into abortions they do not want. This means that we have to change the ways we think about reproductive freedoms, that we stop handing every single woman in the world a double-edged sword of reproduction and them blame her for making a choice.
And god knows we don't do that.
We need to ensure and prioritize the reproductive health of all people. This means that we have to support grassroots efforts to encourage health, this means that we need to ask questions about HIV/AIDS funding before we set requirements for international health grants, this means that we have to listen to people in their communities about what they need. This means we have to repeal the fucking Global Gag Rule.
I'm not just talking about legal abortion when I talk about being pro-choice anymore. In the last twenty years, being pro-choice has meant that I've had to open my ears, my heart, and my head and really consider how far this pro-choice demand stretches. I have to question my own racist, classist, albe-ist, and imperialist assumptions. I have to step up my radicalism and put my money, my time, and my resources where my damn mouth is.
This is why I'm pro-choice. This is where I'll always be. But, if I'm lucky, this identity will keep opening my eyes, keep challenging me, keep me going.
It's easy to get complacent in a country where abortion has been legal for my entire lifetime. It's hard as hell to STAY complacent when I see how much more there is to fight for.