Blogging for Choice
Today is the 34th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, a huge step forward in the quest for the right of women to be treated as fully functional human beings instead of merely uteruses with feet. It's a polarizing anniversary, to be sure. I don't think it's any secret to my readers which side I come down on (and if it does surprise you, I can only ask Where the hell have you been??)
The topic this year seems simple enough: Tell us, and your readers, why you're pro-choice. The thing is, when some people hear the words "Pro-choice", they immediately think it means "pro-abortion", and they react in horror. "HOW," they cry, "can you be pro-choice?! That's terrible! You're a mother! Don't you want your children?!"
I can only react in puzzlement. Of course I want them. They're here, are they not, in this age of (mostly) freely available contraceptive options? In this age of legal (for a little while longer yet) abortion? Unlike my mother, who did not have access to such options, I was not forced to bear my children. I consciously chose them, and I would again.
I was newly twenty-one, married for eight months and broke as hell and working hard when I caught pregnant in the autumn of 1991. We were struggling to get by and struggling with all the things newlyweds struggle with that first year - meddling families, getting used to living with someone else full time, feeling our way around building a life together, we two very different souls.
We didn't think too much about my fatigue in October of that year. I was putting in a ton of hours at work and keeping up on my volunteer work and generally just running about like mad. We didn't even think too much about my period being late - it often was, largely because of issues related to my RA, so it wasn't a big deal. At least, it wasn't until I started getting out of bed and immediately running to toss my cookies. That trip to the doctor changed my life, quite literally forever.
I was terrified.
Mark came home from work that night - I took the day off because I was too shocked and frightened to be of any use at work - and found me curled up on the couch with a cup of tea and what must have been a very puzzling expression on my face.
"Baby, are you OK? You didn't go in tonight?"
I didn't speak, I just handed him the test stick the doc sent home with me. Two pink lines.
"Oh. OH! Oh shit. Um. Wow. Shit."
He got a little dizzy and sort of melted to the floor. When he got his wits about him, he looked at me, still silently clutching my tea, and asked "What do you want to do?"
We stayed up all night talking. We were both scared half out of our minds. We were young and barely getting by ourselves. Were we even remotely capable of raising a child when we were still only barely adults ourselves? Abortion didn't seem like the right answer for us, though. I was already serving as a patient escort, and it broke my heart to feel the anxiety and grief pouring off some of the women I escorted. They were just as terrified as I was - terrified that they were doing the wrong thing, terrified that something would go wrong and they would die, terrified that friends or family would find out and shun them. Most of them emerged feeling a sense of relief...but the Christian girls (as I was back then) sobbed heartily and fearfully, positive that Jesus now thought ill of them.
My concern wasn't that I was worried about how Jesus would feel. I was much more worried that we'd bring a tiny little person into the world, then fuck it up with our inexperience and ineptitude.
But...I WANTED children. And I knew it was a young person's game. And I knew that with my illness, the longer I waited, the higher the risks were. Would I rather have a child young and be perpetually broke or would I rather run the risk of not ever being able to have a child of my own? Would I rather stress my new marriage with pregnancy and childbirth and parenting so early on, or would I rather stress it with the aftermath of an abortion or the frustration of fertility treatments or the massive invasion of privacy of adoption proceedings? Scylla and Charybdis were hanging out in my tiny little living room that night.
So I chose.
I think we can do this.
And so we have. It's been hard, but we've managed, and I don't think that we've done too badly.
The thing is...choice is more than choosing to have a baby or to abort it. There is so much more to it than that. Perhaps it would be more accurate to call myself "pro-rights".
I am pro-rights because I am a survivor of vicious abuse brought on in part by my own mother's resentment at her lack of rights. She did not have access to effective contraception. In 1970, abortions were illegal. She was raised in a "you poke it, you own it" culture, where women were property - first of their parents, then of who whoever fucked them. Her choices were "keep it or give it up", and her parents forbade her to give me up. (And damn them forevermore for that.) She had no rights, no choice, and not enough education to turn that lack of choice to her own advantage. As much as I hate her, I still feel sorry for her sometimes, too. She might have been a different person if her rights had been acknowledged and protected.
I am pro-rights because I am a survivor of rape. In the aftermath of my rape, I was able to find help to heal my wounded soul. I had options, places to go, people to talk to. I had a choice to go it alone or try to find solace in the company of people who understood what I was going through. Later, I had the choice to repay the debt I owed those women, and served as a rape crisis counselor.
I have served as both a sex ed. counselor at Planned Parenthood and a patient escort at the Center for Choice. I have spent time explaining sex and contraception to young women and young men. I have spent time walking frightened women through the picketers into the clinic, holding their hands, holding them while they cry because they're being called "baby-killer" by people who think they just woke up on the morning of their procedure and pranced out the door without a care in the world. I have rights and choices and I had the right to choose to help other people exercise their rights.
I am pro-rights because I believe in thorough, unvarnished sex education. I believe in telling kids the truth about sexuality, about its fluidity, about healthy sex, about all of their contraceptive options. I don't believe in the fairy-tale of abstinence education - teenagers fuck, and to try to pretend that they don't is shortsighted and dangerous. I believe treating sex as a taboo is morally reprehensible and responsible for the fucked up culture we suffer through today, the culture in which rape victims "were asking for it" and women who enjoy their sexuality are labeled as sluts.
I am an educated woman. I believe that women are fully-formed, functioning, thinking human beings entitled to the same rights as men. I believe women are capable of making their own health decisions, their own parenting decisions, their own career decisions, without the permission or even the input of any man. If you want a pet that will blindly obey, buy a dog.
I whole-heartedly oppose the idea that women are owned by whoever fucks them. I do not believe that fucking a woman grants you exclusive access in perpetuity, or even any access at all in the future. Sorry, fellas, but cocks don't impress me much. Sure, they're great fun to play with - I've stroked them, fucked them and sucked them, and have had myself a right grand time of it. Some are even really nice to look at and I've admired them right out loud. But at the end of the day, The Almighty Cock is not the Wand of Power that will turn off my sense of independence and self-determination and make me your property, subject to your will, my own needs and desires be damned. Ain't none of y'all been THAT good in bed.
I believe in bodily integrity, in a person's right to say NO. To ANYONE. Calling yourself my boyfriend does not entitle you to free use of my body whenever you want it. Giving me a wedding ring does not mean that you get sex whenever and wherever you want it, simply by virtue of us sharing a life and a home and a bed and it sure as hell doesn't grant you dominion over any other part of my life, either. NO means NO, even in a long term relationship.
I am pro-rights for me, for you, for everyone. I believe you have the right to conduct your life as you see fit - so long as you understand that your right to swing your fist ends about an inch in front of my nose. I believe we all have the right to choose to be religious or not, to be parents or not, to give birth or adopt or abort, to choose the form of contraception that suits us or choose to go without so we can bring children in to our lives. I believe women have the right to educate themselves, regardless of what any man or religion or "society" would say to that. I believe that every consenting adult has the right to say yes or no to sex, as they please, that everyone has the right to love who they will, that sex is not dirty, that the gender of the person you love shouldn't matter to anyone but you, that the number of people you invite into your bed is your own damned business and that religion and government have no business in the bedrooms of consenting adults.
I am pro-choice BECAUSE I am a mother, not in spite of it. I KNOW what a hardship it can be, I KNOW that it can be maddening and sanity fraying. I KNOW how badly you can damage your own health by carrying a pregnancy to term. I am pro-choice because I believe that EVERY child should be wanted and passionately loved, not dumped into foster care because a woman was forced to bear a child she did not want and was ill equipped to care for in any case. I am pro-choice because I DO NOT believe that "someone will adopt it" is sufficient reason to push a woman into endangering her health and well-being by carrying a child she does not want. What about the children already here, wasting away while they wait for someone to adopt them?
I am pro-choice. I am pro-rights. And I long for the day when events like Blog for Choice Day are no longer necessary because it will be just plain old common sense that women are real humans and thinking citizens and possessed of the same rights as everyone else.