As I sit here on Turkey day, I think about the things that I'm thankful for. And as an advocate for reproductive rights, and a supporter of women, one of the many things that I am thankful for is that the right to choose is still available in the United States... For the time being. I hope that I can continue to be thankful for the right to choose being available for the rest of my life.
I'm thankful for the women that fought against the patriarchy. I'm thankful for the people (women and men) that fought and are still fighting to bring pregnancy and childbirth back to whom it belongs: the woman that it affects most.
Pregnancy is not all happiness and sunshine and rainbow-shitting unicorns like the forced birthers would want you to believe. In fact, around 1,000 women die every day as a result of pregnancy and childbirth.In the course of a year, that would mean that around 365,000 women die as a result of the happy sunshine rainbow-shitting unicorn condition known as pregnancy. The leading cause of maternal death is hemorrhaging, and one in ten of the women dying as a result of pregnancy will die as a result of an unsafe abortion.
Let's take a look at Mozambique for a moment. Currently, Mozambique has one of the highest maternal mortality rate in the world. they want to use misprostol to prevent hemorrhaging:
Technically, abortion is still illegal in Mozambique. That's on the books. But in practice, it's extremely common, with abortions performed all the time at government-run hospitals.
Misprostol is readily available over the counter at drugstores.
"It's not prescribed.," says Aida Libombo, an adviser to Mozambique's minister of health and an OB-GYN. "Anyone can go to the pharmacy to buy it."
In her view, misoprostol has made abortions much safer. She remembers the horrific botched abortions she dealt with as a young doctor in the 1980s, when unsafe abortion was one of the leading causes of maternal death.
But forced birthers don't care. They'd rather force these women to die for the fetuses. I don't see any of them flying to Mozambique and donating all of their money to help these poor women out.
Which is why I'm thankful that (for now) forced birthers haven't won here. If they do, they will gladly condemn hundreds of women to death; gladly sentence them to a lifetime of disability; gladly force women to suffer for beng born with a uterus.
I am thankful today. I am thankful for choice. As I said before, I hope that I can say this for the rest of my life.