It’s my plan here to share three stories about abortion in the hope that it will help someone to understand that as uncomfortable as we are with the idea of terminating a pregnancy, terminating a woman’s right to choose is worse.
My first memories come from my tween years. I remember listening to my parents discuss “D&Cs” and “the tissue board” in the hushed tones parents use when they don’t want their children to listen. But I am a middle child, hence born listening. And I am the daughter of a physician and thus learned about “dilation and curettage” and that “tissue boards” have an interest in reviewing why D&Cs were done.
I suspect now that they were discussing the illegal but hospital mediated abortions of their friends. White, privileged, physicians’ wives before “the pill” were not subject to back-alley abortions, nor will they be in the future. Still, my white, privileged mother marched with signs in favor of legalizing abortion in Illinois. The freedom to choose was very Republican in those days. She applauded Jane. www.vanityfair.com/...
Later, after year of listening to Rush Limbaugh and Fox news, she was horrified that people were “using abortion for birth control.” And my LDS brother echoed this horror. So I looked into it. Actually, almost half of women seeking abortion do so because their primary birth control failed, and another large chunk became pregnant while not using long term effective birth control because they believed they could not become pregnant – past menopause, believed themselves infertile, not in a relationship, etc. To me, finding yourself with an unwanted pregnancy and having an abortion is different than “using abortion for birth control.”
So I am horrified as the forced birth crowd, who have convinced themselves that hormonal birth control- (i.e. effective birth control) is equivalent to abortion, takes legislative control in the United States, and the Supreme Court takes the stance that women have no right to control their own reproductive lives.
An abortion denied leads to more poverty, more depression, adverse health outcomes, children in foster “care”, and other horrors Republicans do not see as their problem to solve,
Please consider carefully and vote for freedom.
