So I'm pro-death?

It is always funny to me that the anti-choice side is more often called pro-life rather than anti-choice. Oh yeah, since I'm pro-choice, I must be advocating for as much death as possible.

How did a fetus that is far from being a complete, independent human being get more status than the woman who already has a life to live? Not to mention that she has to put her body at risk to have the baby? And the fact that most pro-lifers are men? Oh that's right, they don't actually have to go through the process of pregnancy and giving birth.

Furthermore, have we gone completely BONKERS and forgotten a key component of our governmental structure that our forefathers enacted? Gee, I don't know, *separation* of church and state??? Though I might disagree, I can see how folks can see a moral and religious issue with abortion. But just become something is against the law does not mean it is not moral (e.g. drug use). If a woman finds herself with an unintended pregnancy, it is more appropriate for her to seek guidance from religious leaders, family, friends, etc. The LAW should not be telling her what she can or cannot do with her own body. But oh, that's right, we don't encourage open talk about sex and expressing sexuality, nor comprehensive sex education. If a teenage girl finds herself pregnant, she might feel too ashamed to go to anyone in her life. But the pro-lifers think she SHOULD have to resort to a coat hanger or back-alley abortion.

The facts:
-Pregnancy significantly increases your risk for death.
-There can be life-changing conditions to be dealt with after childbirth, such as gestational diabetes becoming full-fledged diabetes.
-Abortions intended to end pregnancy happen in the first trimester, when the pregnancy is most at risk anyway. A lot can happen in the body at that time that could lead to a miscarriage. That's why it's advised that a woman not tell too many people she's pregnant until after the first trimester.
-A condom can break, birth control is not always fool-proof, and rape and incest do happen. Further, birth control pills come with risk and can cause other problems that last for years after stopping use.
-Many girls and women resort to using coat hangers to end pregnancies because of the stigma of being pregnant outside of wedlock, or not having the means to raise a child, or not having the health care needed for a healthy pregnancy (in which case adoption is not even an option). Think this still doesn't happen? Think again..through my clinical work I've heard a handful of such incidences related to clients or someone they knew. So pro-lifers are pro-life how exactly?

If we care so much about saving lives, that to me implies we care about quality, healthy lives:
-Then breast implants and most plastic surgeries should be made illegal. (But wait, no, women gotta have big boobs and be barefoot and pregnant.)
-18 year-olds (kids, basically) should not be sent off to risk their lives for a war that was never clearly justified.
-And oh, men should not be allowed to masturbate, cuz by doing so they are killing half of a life, or those precious sperm God created to make babies. But wait, that's right, men are by nature animalistic and sexual. They HAVE to masturbate every day.

Valenti cites in The Purity Myth (and I might not get this completely correct as the draft I had written was accidentally deleted and I already returned the book to the library) that one woman was charged with murder for refusing a c-section that resulted in one of her twins being still-born. Um, hello! Stillborns can happen even when the doctors think vaginal childbirth is safe. She also cites another woman almost being prosecuted for not reporting her miscarriage in-time. (um, okay.??) And these incidences happened in this decade. Yes, efforts to take away women's control over their own bodies has occurred in many ways. It needs to be up to the woman (and those in her life with whom she CHOOSES to consult) to decide when to have a child and how to go about it. It is her body being put at risk-isn't it her decision on when and how to give birth and whether or not to go through major surgery?

Legislation needs to be based on facts and how it impacts those already living. But unfortunately, people still think that their own religious ideology (or desire to keep women in their place) needs to drive legislation. Abortion should be against the law because someone else thinks that by getting one the woman is killing a soul? Um, don't think so. I just see it as another form of birth control.

Think of how many women's lives would be saved if we just advocated for open communication about sex, comprehensive sex education, and open access to birth control and safe abortions. Yet pro-lifers not only want to make abortion illegal, they want abstinence only programs; that is like pretending that the desire to have sex does not exist. They are shooting themselves in the foot. If they cannot see that, that leaves another explanation: they want women's autonomy to be taken away such that they can only resort to serving men.

It's interesting to me that as a society we have become so self-involved with our busy lives that we don't have time to take the initiative to reach out. Yet we don't hesitate in being judgmental about things that don't impact us, like what others do with their bodies. Much like the saying "Against gay marriage? Then don't have one", I believe "Against abortion? Then don't have one!"