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rachel at phoenixfeather.net
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March 25, 2004
A Woman's Right
Health , Life , Politics , Water

This seems to be the topic of day in blogs I read. And its important so I feel the need to comment.

I am Pro-Choice because no one should be able to tell me what I can and can't do with my body. But besides that different situations call for different actions.

For example my friend DM recently made a post in her live journal about 3 women she knows (I know two of them); this is the short version of her post, but her long version is so so worth reading.

Woman 1: Recently had a baby at age 20. Is a very strict believer of all catholic practices and so never gave a thought to abortion. She dropped out of college, her parents took out a second mortgage. Her husband to be owns his own mortgage company and barely makes any money, so she and the baby are on welfare. She had planned to go back to school in a year, but it doesn’t' look like it will be possible till the baby is in school, if then. They are planning to be married in May, but he makes excuses to say at work and she plays the house wife but sneaks in a drink here and there. And this poor baby though she has parents who love her also has parents who resent the life they are now forced to live.

Woman 2: Had a child who is the joy of her life. Her second child is being induced tomorrow and everyone is excited and happy. Her first child is healthy and happy. They may not be a perfect family, but it’s a good life.

Woman 3: Recently had an abortion. It was a hard decision and against her catholic upbringing; however she and her boyfriend discussed it rationally and decided it was the best thing. They didn’t believe it was something they were mentally or emotionally prepared to deal with. However she can never tell her mother because she would never have approved. She knows it was the right decision for her to make, but it was a very very hard one. She went through the procedure quite well and is going to be quite healthy.

Three women, three circumstances. Whether they made the right decisions can't really be judged. I don't think woman 1 did, but that is my point of view and may not be right. The point is that these three women are examples of the right to choose that they have as US citizens.

Blacksheep also posted today about abortion; this time about laws. The senate has now ruled to recognize "a fetus as a separate victim in cases involving pregnant women". This may not be a ruling to outlaw abortion but this will be used in cases to support the outlawing of abortion.

Abortion isn't right for everyone, but we live in a country that was created so its people could choose what they want to believe and practice. This should count for our bodies as well as our minds.

Comments

This is something many find hard to draw the line on in this culture because of a difficulty of knowing selflessness. There is an essentially conjoined 'being' in pregnancy.... Neither is an individual. It is a unique status this culture finds impossible to imagine, somehow.

A woman who is pregnant is unavoidably, and really beautifully, selfless.... pregnancy calls this forth, just by what it is. That being said, this extraordinary and rationally impossible-to-grasp miracle of what mothers do should not be contorted and made to fit into models of 'individual rights'.... if both beings are essentially one for awhile; by circumstance selfless because they depend utterly on the other's wellbeing, this should not be abused by intrusions of rational, forced interruptions of this.
The extraordinary balance of one person's wellbeing and the other's should, in fact, not be pitted against the other... It is a false division...neither has an ego, and this is a blessing, during pregnancy.... My experience and sense is that no matter what occurs, women are selfless during this time in ways impossible to quantify, control, or interfere with. ... and if a baby's health threatens a mother's during her pregnancy, again, there can only be a selfless consideration of what should happen-- because the selflessness comes a priori with pregnancy, and there is no 'wrong' decision a mother can make. This is an issue of extreme subtlety and overwhelming mystery... my sense of the above has allways made me doubt that laws, and regulations, really can be created around this without backing away from what 'individuality' and 'individual rights' are, and realizing that they are in a sense illusory...
our beholdenness and connection to each other seems to me the basic and inevitable blessing of being human.

Posted by: Smitta at March 26, 2004 07:22 PM
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