Monday, January 21, 2013

Blog for Choice Day 2013

NARAL has asked that I share a personal story for Blog for Choice Day this year.   I've never had an abortion.   But here is my personal story.  

I've always been Pro-choice. It never occurred to me to be any other way.  I wasn't raised by liberal, Pro-choice, feminists who marched, protested and campaigned for reproductive freedom.  I was raised by Republicans.  I was raised by Catholics.  I was raised by a mother who took her friends (in college, before Roe) to Mexico or to shady practitioners for abortions.  A woman who told me about the bleeding, the infections, the fear, that she and her friends went through before Roe.  I was raised by a grandmother who, although her church said it was a sin, knew what having child after child did to a woman's health and believed that contraceptives and abortions were a private matter between a woman and her doctor.

They never proselytized. They never ranted.  They just told me what happened when women didn't have a choice.  I still went to mass with them, I still went to catechism, I heard the church's side of the issue.  I read.  I watched the news.  It didn't change my mind.  No one should be able to force me to give birth.  My body.  My choice.

In nursing school,  I started working at a clinic.  I saw women harassed. I saw women afraid.  I saw the security system at the clinic.  I became afraid.  Then I got mad.  Then I got active.  I had taken the job because I was a poor student and I wanted to earn money while learning more about women's health.  But the fear that the clients, the employees and I felt ignited me.  Abortion was a legal, medical procedure.  I didn't want to back to the days my mother and grandmother had told me about.

So I vote.  I write letters.  I tweet.  I post on Facebook.  I escort at my local clinic with my awesome, Pro-choice husband. I march on my state capitol.  I phone bank.  I raise and donate money.  I adorn my car with bumper stickers.  I do whatever I can, whenever I can, however much I can to fight for reproductive freedom.  


I'm getting pretty old, reproductively speaking, and it is unlikely that I will ever find myself pregnant, let alone in need of a termination.  So now I fight on for the younger generations. There are more restrictions on abortion now than there was when I was in my teens and 20's.  I hope to see those restrictions lifted. I want abortion to be safe, low cost and widely available.  I hope to see contraceptives given to all who want them at little or no cost.  I hope to see medically correct, sexual education taught to teens in schools.  I hope that every child is a wanted child.  

4 comments:

  1. girlfriend, I bet you could have gone on and on!!! You were on a roll!!!
    Thank you for blogging! I long for the days that my daughter won't have to worry about reproductive choices if and when she needs them.
    Thank you!!

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  2. Wonderful post! I'm past my fertility peak but still comparatively fertile, and if I have a daughter, I hope she doesn't live in a world with these restrictions on choice. It's so jarring to read a book or watch a movie from the Seventies or Eighties where abortion is discussed or handled like no big deal, no picketing lines to get through, no finding a ride 8 hours away. I'm so glad I got such good sex ed in upper elementary school (early Nineties), instead of this "abstinence only" nonsense, pictures of advanced STDs, and outright lies about abortion.

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  3. This is a great post and represents a lot of women in their 20's, 30's, 40's and beyond. For any woman and for the men who love and care about us, Roe vs. Wade should always remain an important issue to speak out on an uphold. Thanks for doing your part and keeping women's voices engaged on this subject. http://venusblogs.com/a-celebration-of-choice/

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  4. Excellent story. Thank you for sharing this with us.

    The Wisconsin Gazette recently wrote an article about our personal experiences with abortions.

    here is a link to that article: http://www.wisconsingazette.com/wisconsin-gaze/abortion-the-untold-stories.html

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