Blogging for Choice: A Day Late

I've always been better able to write when presented with a topic. As such, blog for choice day provided an excellent opportunity to get my new feminist blog up and running.

But I'm a procrastinator. So here goes, a day late, but better late than never, eh?

A little background: I'm white, middle class, with a bachelor's degree, so yeah, I write from a position of privilege, but I try to maintain awareness of said privilege.

With that in mind, I am pro-choice.

I am pro-choice because:

I recognize that reproductive choice means so much more than just the freedom to choose abortion. In it's purest form, reproductive choice is the freedom of women's bodies from state control: Freedom from forced pregnancy and forced sterilization, and everything in between.

I, like a couple of my favorite feminist bloggers believe that access to safe, legal abortion, is a moral good, just like access to life saving heart surgery. It places trust to manage reproductive capability in the hands of women, i.e. those who reproduce, which is where it should be.

Rape victims should not have to suffer to obtain medical care. Anti-choicers commonly claim to support exceptions to rape and incest in anti-abortion legislation. So, even with those exceptions, what do rape victims have to do to obtain abortion services? Do they have to go before a judge and relive the nightmare they've already experienced? Does their rape kit become evidence? Would judges be able to exercise "conscience clauses" similar to the ones exercised by physicians and pharmacists used to deny women contraception?

It is up to women and their doctors to decide which treatment or procedure is most appropriate on a case by case basis. The state has no business telling doctors they can't perform certain procedures when they are less invasive, and therefore, less risky than others.

When the rights of a fetus supersede the rights of a mother (in the biological sense), there are dangerous consequences.

When the rights of the state supersede the right of a mother (in a biological sense), there are dangerous consequences.

I don't want to be forced to conceive, forced to give birth, forced to undergo any medical or surgical procedures "for my own good" or for the good of my children.

I am pro-choice because my body is mine.