I'm Glad It's Your Birthday

Today is the 35th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Therefore, here's a few things on the world wide web that have been written by extremely eloquent, interesting people about why that's a good thing, and what's at stake if the anti-choicers get their way.

• Jill at Feministe's ten ways to support reproductive justice.
• Jessica at Feministing on why she votes pro-choice (and from last year, why she trusts women).
  
• Bean at L, G & M on voting for reproductive justice.
• RH Reality Check has great comprehensive coverage.
• The National Partnership for Women & Families sums up some of the editorials printed today (including anti-choice stuff, such as the "moral deficit" caused by abortion access... arseholes).
  

NARAL asks you to blog for choice if you are pro-choice. As I am, here's why I'm pro-choice:

Women cannot be equal unless they have control over their fertility and the ability to deal with when whatever precautions they do (or don't take) go wrong. Economic development is key to greater autonomy and power and, hopefully, equality, and you can't be economically developed if you are having children with no choice over the number or timing of your children.

But, even more so, you have no right to force me to carry or not a child; it's my body, my integrity, and my choice. Yet choice is such a luxury for most people, let alone women alone, in the world; so many women have so little power over the course of their own lives that they do not have a number of options from which to make a choice. Hence abortion is not a luxury, and not something we take lightly, but something that is essential to our lives, but we need more: better contraception, better insurance, better healthcare, better education. Better everything.

Overturning Roe v. Wade won't do anything but put women's health in danger, bring more unwanted children into the world for poor women who can't afford the transport to and care in states where abortion is available.

But even if there were no divide between rich & poor, the privileged and the not so, it would still be my decision and my choice. No one has the right to make it for me; I don't force it upon you, so how dare you, Huckabee et al., force it on me? And that's my moral stance: religious men and women do not have the monopoly on morality; my morals dictate that I don't force people to do with their bodies what they do not wish. Abortion is just one part of it - but an essential one for bodily integrity; and, with it, soulful integrity and dictating the course of your life.

I wish I could vote in this election.