Jan
22
This is kind of a late entry for Blog For Choice 2010. I hope you’ll take a look at it anyway.
Today, January 22nd, is the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that made abortion legal in the US. every year, Blog for Choice has a different topic. This year’s topic is:
In honor of Dr. George Tiller, who often wore a button that simply read, “Trust Women,” this year’s Blog for Choice question is:
What does Trust Women mean to you?
Trust Women means just that. Women are the ones who carry a child for 9 months, more or less. Women normally bear the primary responsibility of caring for that child (or children) after they’re born. Women should be able to know whether or not they want children at all, how many they will have, and how far apart their children (if they want more than one) will be from each other. Sure, a partner can have input, and they really ought to have input. Especially if they’ll be helping to raise that child. But an individual woman knows what will be best for their particular circumstances. Trust women.
Trusting women also means that girls can handle having real, live sex education available; not just “real love waits”, but actual facts about how to prevent pregnancies and STDs. They can. My daughter will be able to handle it when it’s time for that level of information.
Trusting women also means that when people talk about choice, it doesn’t automatically mean abortion. It means that safe, legal abortion should be available as one choice among many. Women know what’s best for us. Let us decide. Instead of deciding for us by removing a choice from consideration; or pushing a single choice to the exclusion of any other.
Trusting women also, at least in my mind, has to do with assisted reproductive technologies (ART). It’s been my experience that the same people who want to make contraception and abortion illegal are just as happy to ban any sort of ART, including in vitro fertilization. There are a lot of things that I want to say about that, and would really love to say about that, but I’ll let that go for today. The decision about whether or not to pursue infertility treatments should be left up to women and their partners. If trusting women means not getting pregnant when one doesn’t want to have children, it should also mean getting pregnant when one wants to have children.
Trusting women means that no matter what the circumstances, women can, and should be able to, decide for themselves what to do next instead of having that choice made for them. Trust women.
In addition to being about women and abortion, Roe vs. Wade is about something I would have expected Republicans to fight for: The right to tell the government, “Thou shalt not legislate in affairs of my home and my body.”
I’m a huge advocate of small government. And Roe vs. Wade is, at its core, about that.
This. I’m as surprised as you; on the surface, the “teabaggers” are all about small government and no government interference in people’s lives. Unless, of course, the people we’re talking about are women of childbearing age. /bangs head against wall
Interesting perspective. This gives me a lot to think about, thanks.
(hugs) I’ll email you later, but I’m happy you commented. Thanks.