Blog for Choice Day

I didn't end up going to the counter-protest that BACORR had organized Saturday against the anti-choicers (though I did find out that the anti-choicers group was organized by various Catholic groups--they ought to be spending their time and money saving Catholic churches in SF, if they really cared about their influence), because I was still feeling quite sick and tired.

I feel very guilty for not going.

That said, today is Blog for Choice day. Every once in a while, I run into somebody who knows my life history who is suprised I'm pro-choice. After all, my mother had me in the midst of not-great circumstances: My father wasn't going to stick around for various reasons, she was young, and she wasn't anywhere near financially stable. And yet, she decided to go ahead and have me. People have actually said to me that I should be thankful that abortion isn't as readily available as I think it ought to be, because I woulnd't be here if it were.

Which, of course, is bunk, and misses most of the point about being pro-choice. Part of the reason we often say 'pro-choice' is, of course, political framing. But part of the reason is because the choice part is fundamental to the ideas behind safe, accessible, legal abortion. This is important to remember regarding women having the choice to have abortions, but it's equally important regarding women having the choice to decide to not have an abortion--and here I mean that any sort of foced pregnancy or forced abortion goes against the notions of lots of pro-choice people.

I'm pro-choice in part because I think that being anti-choice is both anti-child and anti-woman, to put it sloganistically. I'm also pro-choice because I think that, while men have lots of rights regarding children, the decision whether or not a pregnancy is carried to term isn't one of them. I'm also pro-choice because it's the most practical way to be--like the abstinence-only educators out there, ignoring the fact that women will need to terminate pregnancies whether or not it is legal is a fact that needs to be taken into account when thinking about abortion.

There are lots of other reasons, but those are some. What are yours?