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11.2.2005
Alcohol is legal yet we have addicts that kill themselves and others in drunken stupors. Cigarettes are legal even though my grandmother has to take oxygen everyday and cannot walk 5 steps without needing to stop and catch her breath; even though each day is a day she wishes she could just not have woken up because there's so much pain.
These are drugs and they remain legal because of money and the outrage that would ensue were the rights to drink and smoke ripped away. But these people are destroying their lives. Destroying their bodies. And it's OK.
But some feel that it is not OK to have something smaller than a pea vaccuumed out of you. Because that something, given the time, could be a person. It doesn't matter that it doesn't have the ability to breathe or think or move or feel. It just matters that it can someday, given the chance. Well, okay, I understand why you want it to have the chance.
But it isn't your choice. It isn't your body. It isn't your life. If it is your body, you can choose to keep that pea and let it grow or not. Do what you want with yourself.
But do not make that decision for me. You have no right to tell me what I do or do not do with my body. Especially when you let millions of others destroy themselves with drugs -- legal drugs at that -- every day.
I do not want children. I will not have them. And I will not stop having sex just because I might get pregnant. That's the only guarantee you won't get pregnant: not having sex. Unless they let you tie your tubes because you aren't "too young to decide" or you had a hystorectomy for whatever reason. They won't let me. That's bad enough: being told I'm too young to decide whether I want children or not. I'm old enough to vote on major decisions; I'm old enough to drink; I'm old enough to smoke, to travel alone, to live alone. But I'm not old enough to decide whether or not I dislike kids enough to be sure that I'll never want them.
Abortion is my last resort. My safety net just two feet above the den of sharks. I'm on the pill. I'm more careful with taking that pill than anyone I have ever known. Planned Parenthood gave me a morning-after pill, just in case I screwed up. I haven't needed it yet. But the pill, and any birth control for that matter, is not a guarantee. Having sex with a man is a chance I take. It's a risk.
But since they won't let me take care of this risk on a premanent basis yet, my worries are eased by my right to have an abortion, should the need arise. Hopefully it never will, but like I said, having sex puts that chance out there. And I'm not going to stop having sex. I like it and that's that. Telling me I can be celibate and stop intimacy between myself and the person I love is not the answer. Especially since I refuse to look at it as an option.
Illegal abortions won't stop it. They won't stop anyone. They didn't in the past, anyway.
Making something more difficult has never stopped anyone from doing what's necessary for themselves. All you accomplish by taking away the right to choose is more pain, more death. Some girls will risk their lives before telling Mom and Dad they're pregnant; before going through an unwanted pregnancy. Coat hangers are a reality, even with abortions legal and clear. It will just become more prevalent. As will unfortunate trips down the stairs, "accidental" blows to the stomach, visits to sketchy "doctors" in sketchy neighborhoods.
You can't make a woman or a girl go through pregnancy if she doesn't want it. All you do is endanger her by taking her out of a safe, hospital setting with a trained professional. All you do is make it harder. It will still happen.
It will always happen. So why take away that right to do what you want to your body, the right to do what you want with your life? Why make it more difficult and painful than it already is?
Posted at 9:07:16 am by TheKaren
 | | | fetal feast
November 2, 2005 04:25 PM PST
It's not a pea, and it's not your body. It is a person. Everyone is free to do what they like, but there are consequences to every action. Why should you be free to end someone else's life just so that you can live yours the way you like without any consequence? While I agree with the legality of abortion on pratical, population control terms. I don't think there is a logical argument in the world that can be used to justify it ethically. | |
| | | DustInTheWind
November 2, 2005 04:42 PM PST
The really weird thing about this post is it hit home for me because of events that transpired just last nite. Kinda freaky really. | |
| | | Karen
November 3, 2005 07:41 AM PST
I didn't say it was a pea, I said it was the size of a pea. And it is my body. If I get pregnant with a fetus that could become a person (I do not look at the two as the same thing) it is my body that goes through the changes, my life that has to change, regardless of abortion or not.
I really, really don't ever want to be in the position where I need to go to a clinic and have an abortion. It's not something I think will just be an instant fix, all better.
But that is what I will do. Provided it's still legal. If it isn't, well. . .
I'm still not having a baby. | |
| | | Alyred
November 10, 2005 01:21 PM PST
And even if you subscribe to the whole belief that a woman makes her choice when she has sex, what about women who are raped? What about CHILDREN who are raped at 13, perhaps by their own fathers, who get pregnant?
Still think someone who is hardly more than a child herself should be forced to have a baby because there is no legal alternative? | |
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