Why I vote pro-choice
This snuck up on me a little bit...I wanted to have something totally prepared. But, alas...I don't. So, here we go, off the cuff...
The topic that was suggested is "Why I Vote Pro-Choice".
I don't think that I could ever support or vote for a candidate that was not pro-choice. I could not vote for a candidate that did not trust the judgement of a woman to make her own life choices.
I have read a bit about various Republican presidential candidate's views on Roe v. Wade and making abortion illegal. Huckabee, when asked about criminalizing abortion, reportedly said this:
"I think if a doctor knowingly took the life of an unborn child for money, and that's why he was doing it, yeah, I think you would, you would find some way to sanction that doctor. I don't know that you'd put him in prison, but there's something to me untoward about a person who has committed himself to healing people and to making people alive who would take money to take an innocent life and to make that life dead."
And then, followed it up with:
"I think you don't punish the woman, first of all, because it's not about ... I consider her a victim, not a criminal."
And why is the woman a victim? Because she can't possibly understand the choice she was making? Because women aren't responsible for their own circumstances in life? How can you criminalize the one performing the act but not the one who requests it?
I vote pro-choice because I believe, at my very core, that what happens with a woman's body is no one's business but her own.
I vote pro-choice because I believe women can, should, and do make choices about their lives, without having "daddy" (in the form of doctors, parents, politicians, anti-choicers, religous folks) telling her what to do.
I vote pro-choice because I have never had to worry about what would happen if I were to get pregnant, and I didn't want the child. Because I grew up having a choice.
I vote pro-choice because I want every other woman to have that same choice. To have sovereignty over their bodies. To be able to create the lives for themselves that they choose.
I vote pro-choice because I trust women.