Jan 222007
There are a lot of reasons why I’m pro-choice:
- As a woman, I believe every other woman has an inalienable right to do what she can to control her reproductive destiny;
- As a mother, I feel strongly that only a woman knows herself well enough to know whether or not she’s prepared for and welcoming to motherhood;
- As a daughter, I am proud of my mother’s decision to exercise her right to make decisions about her own body and her own life and want every mother to have access to make the same choices.
- As a former infertile, I know how difficult it is to have no control over my family building plans and want other women to retain some measure of control whenever possible;
- As an adoptive mother, I know that adoption isn’t always the best choice for a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy and know that my daughter’s first mother’s choice is more valid because it wasn’t her only alternative to parenting;
- As a feminist, I am proud to be strongly, unequivocally pro-woman and pro-child and pro-choice.
Thanks to Evil Mommy for the heads up!
No related posts.
Ah-ha! I didn’t even know there was a blog for choice day today and I was all controversial on the birthparent blog.
Pro-choice as well. You can read about it over there.
http://birthparents.adoptionblogs.com/weblogs/marching-for-life-but-not-doing-anything
(I’m waiting for either lots of agreement or the insults to start flying. I can never tell.)
Well said, Dawn! And thanks for the link.
It’s a pretty crap choice though. Kill your child. It’s a horrible choice to have to make.
I’d rather have us work towards making it easier to be a mother, get childcare in schools and in the workplace, have a better welfare system that takes care of mother/struggling parents.
I don’t support anything that is basically separting mothers from their children.
I don’t see it as a feminist thing, I see it as another form of abuse towards women.
I don’t support not having abortion either but it’s just another way of keeping women oppressed. Why is it that we have to kill or give our children away and why is this still seen as a viable option?
When are we going to stand by our sisters and help each other as mothers?
It’s a crap choice, it’s a total contradiction.
So I am not proudly pro-choice. I am pro welfare, pro child care, pro mother, pro family preservation, pro teenage mother.
I also really hate it when adoption and abortion get lumped into the same category. Yuk.
That’s another reason I’m pro-CHOICE — not every woman believes that an embryo is a child (I don’t — I don’t feel that my miscarriages were each lost children — I feel they were the lost POSSIBILITY of a child).
I agree that it’s a crap choice if a woman WANTS to parent a child and doesn’t have the resources or support to allow her to do that and is then forced to consider adoption or abortion — that’s a definite failure of our society to support true choice. But there are many women who do NOT want to parent and then I think it’s vital those women also have access to abortion.
In other words, it’s a fallacy to believe that every woman who has an abortion wouldn’t have one if she had access to better material and emotional support — some women simply don’t want to bring a baby into the world at that time. Married women in good marriages have abortions. Single women with ample resources to parent have abortions. Moms who love being moms have abortions. I support all of them.
Tell that to a woman who is grieving after she had an abortion. Of course it’s a child.
Not everyone believes adoptive families are real families either. (of course you are a family)
Mothers who love being mothers have abortions? err, not quite following the logic with that one.
I don’t not support women having abortions and I don’t not support it being a choice.
I just think it’s a terrible thing to have to do and I see it as a form of oppression and abuse of women. It’s so easy for a man to cop out and pay for an abortion.
Sometimes early on in a pregnancy you feel freaked out but at the end you adore your baby. You know that’s how it felt for me.
And society doesn’t make it easy for women to be mothers. Those options don’t exist so you can’t really say that women still choose abortion anyway. Do we have free childcare in every work place, do schools really cater for teenage mother, how about college? Look at the welfare system?
If those things were there wouldn’t that be nice?
We do as a society need to able to provide abortions for women but it’s not something to be proud of and it’s not something I celebrate.
I think abortion is horrible.
Kim. Kim. — and having laws passed by men that dictate what a woman can or cannot do regarding her body isn’t also a form of oppression?
Today’s chance for all of us to post on this topic isn’t about being proud that abortion should be a choice. It’s about the reality that every woman should have a choice, whatever that choice needs to be for her.
It’s women who are passing these laws too. It’s not a man woman thing.
In fact it’s us women who are here arguing about it.
I am not disagreeing I am saying that there isn’t really a choice. When we make the world more mother friendly then there would be a real choice. I covered that in my last comment.
I can’t help the way I see it, I’m not saying this to annoy people. Society doesn’t respect mothers, we make it hard for women to be mothers, not easy. We punish single mothers, we steal children from poor mothers, we expect women to kill their unborn rather than make changes so that being a mother isn’t a huge handicap.
The other thing is that abortion can damage your womb. It might be your last pregnancy.
It isn’t just a woman’s body either, it’s her child’s body. It’s her status as a mother.
I have seen too many women grieve and suffer because of abortions.
Sadly it has to be a choice but it’s still a form of oppression. Denying that choice is also oppression.
Anyway I have to do my yoga now.
I’d love to stay and argue with the world but it’s not going to make my shoulders relax nor my legs more stretchy.
We will just have to respect each other’s view points.
I’m with Kim.Kim. I’m hard pressed to see how it’s a better option than allowing someone else to raise the child. I suppose that’s where we differ – I believe it is a human person from the beginning. I have a very close friend that has grieved her abortion for many years. It is not a better choice, at all.
But I still love ya!
Melissa
i have to admit i was reluctant to respond cause i felt i would be a minority of one. i am not as assured at going against the grain as the two other posters who share my opinion.
i also dont support abortion, except if the mothers life is in danger.
(no, not even in instances of rape. i dont feel the child created is any less of a child in that case.)
i realize what a tough issue abortion is.
a womans right to do with her body what she wants verses the life of the body inside her. however, i feel the life inside trumps all.
thank you dawn, for initiating and allowing this discussion on your blog.
I think I qualify as a mother who loves mothering having an abortion.
Perhaps those who disagree with abortion should expand their framework a bit: have you never heard of circumstances outside the purely “oops” pregnancy?
Thanks for the post, Dawn.
To me this very good-hearted attempt at respectful differing of opinions in this space is one of the strongest arguments for legal abortion on demand and for free birth control and most importantly for better sex education in our schools.
I hope for a time when woman and men have the educational and financial resources to prevent pregnancy or to conceive when they want.
My wish is that the legal and political wrangling would end so that each woman can decide on her own ethical, moral, and spiritual terms what the best decision is for herself should she face an unplanned pregnancy. And I want women to be able to make their own decisions without being either physically or psychologically assaulted for chosing abortion, I wish for all women to be economically and culturally supported if she choses to parent, and to have the non-coercive space to truly decide if she wants to make an adoption, as well as a parenting, plan if she does not feel abortion is for her but she also does not want to raise a child.
Thank you Dawn for your powerful words and for reminding me of my heartfelt belief in the importance of reproductive freedoms for all women.
I want to respectfully disagree with some of the comments, I never linked adoption with abortion and never will.
I don’t think adoption is the alternative to abortion. I must respectfully take distance from those viewpoints.
My point was and is that we are not taking the steps to make the world a more child and mother friendly place. How is taking a woman’s child away from her giving her a better alternative?
Ladies, when are we going to support each other as sisters?
KimKim, my mother would be APPALLED (and annoyed) that you are trying to put your opinions on her experience. Mother-friendly wouldn’t have done a darn thing for her — she didn’t want to have another child, period. She knew exactly what she was doing, she has never regretted her decision and I’m exceedingly proud of her for being a strong, smart, self-directed woman who didn’t allow birth control failure get in the way of her plans as a woman and as a mother.
This is why it’s about CHOICE. I support pro-life women (versus anti-choice women) who use their belief system to work for better opportunities and options so that fewer women feel they must have an abortion but there are many other reasons women have abortions. (In short — mother-friendly policies would cut back the need for abortions but it wouldn’t eliminate that need.)
Women have abortions for their health, for their sanity, for the future of their other children, because they feel unready to parent or unready to parent again, because they feel they are too young, because they feel they are too old, because they have other plans, because it is a CHOICE.
To me, supporting each other as sisters includes supporting every woman’s choice to do what she wants with her body and her reproductive future.
I know that this is a great divide for some of my readers and I appreciate that and respect your feelings but I also need those readers to appreciate and respect MY feelings around this. I am vehemently, unequivocally pro-choice.
I am pro choice too but it’s still a terrible choice. And abortions do make some women infertile.
I don’t really care if I would annoy your mother over this, I’m sure she would see the whole person and not just one viewpoint and would like me all the same.
One of the reasons I like you is that you have your own opinions Dawn, it makes me trust you more than people who just sway with whatever is going at the time.
If I have to choose sides on this I was always on your side. I just don’t think it’s something I really want to support in general.
It’s not a good choice to be given, and it’s not a real choice because the choice of parenting isn’t really supported. When the option of parenting is properly and soundly supported then I will stop saying abortion is oppressive.
And I just want to add that adoption is not really about a woman not wanting to parent, it’s about a woman not having the true resources to parent, it irks me when people want to assume that adopted children aren’t wanted.
I’m glad my mother doesn’t believe in abortion because she always told me that if she did, I wouldn’t be here. Now wouldn’t that be a crying shame!!
Dear Dawn,
Thank you for participating in Blog for Choice day. While this is a difficult issue, it is at the core of all womens issues.
A womans fertility effects every aspect of her life: education, carreer, marriage, family, emotional health, physical health and spiritual health.
Because this is an undeniable fact, society must work to empower women with the nessessary resources to control their lives through access to healthcare, prevention, education and whatever else is nessessary to ensure women are fully emancipated citizens.
The danger of the anti choice movement lies in their desire to criminalize women for their fertility.
No woman is “Pro-Abortion.” Women who fight for Choice are women who fight for the right to make their own decissions about medical care, without intervention from the government.
If abortion were illegal, every woman who has a miscarriage would be suspected of a crime.
Could you imagine what it would be like to suffer a miscarriage, only to have “The Men in Black” appear at your door to interogate you, force you to undergo medical exams and take you to court?
That image scares me to death, and it is happening in Mexico right now.
Then of course, their are cases like this:
I am the face of late term abortion
Kim.Kim.
I stumbled upon this website looking for POSITIVE thoughts and stories on adoption for a program that I’m developing to teach adolescents about adoption. I am teaching teenagers (and younger) that adoption IS a positive and beautiful choice.
When I read some of your posts, I was speechless, and not in a good way! Why is it everyone else’s responsibility and burden to help and single teen parent? Why should the workplace pay for that person’s irresponsibility? Why should the government have to? When did we become such a lazy society? When did it all of the sudden become ok to depend on everyone else, and not ourselves? Welfare, my dear, has turned us into lazy, good for nothing couch potatoes, wanting handouts…..not wait…..EXPECTING handouts!You used the word EASY several times…..life’s not supposed to be EASY!
As for your other comments on adoption, the children are not being ripped out of the hands of their mothers! I lovingly placed my son into the hands of his loving new mother! And we have been happly ever after! Those cases that you are speaking of are not adoption, they are child protctive services entering the home and taking an abused child out of a bad home.
I am a child of divorce. And I was taken, as you called it, from my mother. My father gained custody of my brother and I. And thank god he did! I love my mother very much, but there is now way she could have raised me the way my father did! So, it is not ALWAYS the best option for a child to be with his mother/birthmother.
As to your question is taking a child away from its mother the best alternative for her? Why aren’t we asking the question-what is the best alternative FOR THE CHILD!!!!! Sorry, but when you become pregnant, you should be thinking what’s best for my child, not me! Kinda selfish, don’t you think?
Had a few misspelled words and errors, sorry.