Blog for Choice 2008

I vote pro-choice.
I refuse to vote for someone who does not support choice.
Why? Why is this one issue so important to me?

It is because I firmly believe that if women do not have the right to control what happens in our own bodies, then none of the other rights we have really matter.

Women deserve to have a full range of reproductive choices, whether they choose to have no children, one, two, or ten.

Women deserve to not have our medical issues – medical issues that do not physically affect men – made into political footballs.
Contraception should be a health issue, not a moral issue.
Contraception should not be a political football.
Emergency contraception (Plan B) should not be a political football.
Women’s rights to control what happens in their bodies should not be a political football. Comprehensive sex education should not be a political football.

Pregnancy and motherhood have only strengthened my commitment to choice. I have a beautiful, wonderful daughter who is the joy of my life, of my husband’s life. I know that part of this is because we were able to choose to have her at a time when our lives were in good shape to have a child. We were able to decide to postpone having another child until again, our lives were in good shape.

My daughter, likewise, has strengthened my commitment to choice. I want her to have the same choices, the same options, that I was able to have, and I will not allow those who would dismantle a woman’s right to abortion if needed, would dismantle a woman’s right to birth control, would dismantle a woman’s right to make choices that have immense effects on her life.

For me, being pro-choice encompasses both sides of choice – the choice to have children, as well as the choice not to. The choice to space one’s children, or to delay children until one is established in life, or to never have children, for whatever reason she decides.

We need to trust women to make the choices that are right for them.

Of course, in order to be able to make good choices, women need to have information about what their choices are. We need to start by supporting comprehensive, fact-based sex education in all schools. Abstinence-only sex ed is doing our young people a great disservice. They need the truth, they need facts – they don’t need scare tactics. I have no objection to abstinence being taught as a part of comprehensive sex ed, because it is effective, and it does have good points. But it should not be the end-all be-all of sex ed.

After we make sure women have the information, we need to work to ensure access. Planned Parenthood provides a needed service, providing women’s health services – exams, contraception, providing information – often to women who don’t have a better option. I was one of those women as a teenager, and the only reason I’m not still one of those women is because I joined the Army, and Uncle Sam buys my contraception. Planned Parenthood is not the only provider, but it is the best known.

Pharmacists who feel it’s against their morals to fill prescriptions for birth control or emergency contraception – they need to find another job.

This is the 35th anniversary of Roe. Women do have a choice, but we must continue to defend our right to choice against those who would chip away at it, or remove it completely.

There is a growing part of the pro-life movement that is not so much pro-life as it is pro-punishing women for enjoying sex. If you are truly pro-life, then wouldn’t you support things that made abortion less necessary? If you are truly pro-life, then wouldn’t you support universal health care for children, universal prenatal care for mothers? I know there are people like this who are part of the movement, and I hope that your voices grow louder.

Women deserve to have a choice.

DV