What does choice mean to me.
First off - let me say this is not about being for or against abortion. It is about being able to make my own choices that affect my body, my own reproduction and my family. It means NOT having someone else's beliefs imposed on me and keeping the government out of all of it.
I keep trying to come up with some comparison for the men. Would it be like telling men they can't get vasectomies? They have to get circumcised? But there just isn't any comparison. There is nothing like getting pregnant or being pregnant that men experience. There is nothing comparable for men that equates to having to decide to end a pregnancy or not. But it should be me and my family's decision - no one else's. I think this is, fundamentally why, I have such a hard time when it is primarily men who get all riled up and against choice. They have no idea what this is like, what the decision may or may not be like and what the experience and emotions attached are.
We need to get away from this being about pro or anti abortion. No woman is really for abortion. We are for it being safe when and if we need it. But mostly, we just want it to be our choice - not to be legislated, not be religified and not for men who have no idea what this decision means to make.
I also so tired of this being politicized - on both sides of the aisle. I am tired of the right throwing out abortion and late-term as red meat to get their extreme right-wing, conservative, religious base out to vote and I am tired of the left throwing women and choice under the bus in order to win conservative/moderate districts.
These days I am particularly worked up about as we debate abortion funding on a federal level. Should we allow federal monies to be used for a legal medical procedure that is performed on less than .004% of the population. That the conservative right-wing ties all health-care funding to women's clinics that provide vital, healthcare services to young women and poor women because some of the funding might be used for a legal, medical procedure that they don't like. Well, you know what, I don't like federal monies being used for penal implants and viagra. Can we cut off funding to medical facilities that provide these services?
I am also riled up about this because its not just conservative, right-wing republicans trying to cut off funding for women - its also Democrats. I am so tired of the party that purports to support women, just giving us lip service. They ask us for our money and during elections, play the choice card - but when it comes time to stand up for us - they don't. I have even come to discover that they have softened the choice language in the Democratic Party platform. Go read it and tell me what you think? I know I was a little disappointed.
At the end of the day, lets take politics out of it, lets take religion out of it, and lets take government out of it. This is an individual, private decision that is hard and heartbreaking and should be left to the woman and family who has to make it - but, for god's sake, let it be their choice.