National Blog for Choice Day

Today, the 34th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, is National Blog for Choice Day. So my assignment is to tell my readers why I am pro-choice. I think it is (on the surface at least) very simple: Women should have control over their own bodies. No one, especially not men and laws made primarily by men, should be able to dictate that a woman bear a child against her will. And that is what those who oppose abortion would have women do.

Beyond that, the issue of abortion is far more nuanced and complicated than most of the arguments against it (and some for it) are willing to recognize. I've never had to seriously consider abortion as an option, but I can imagine the circumstances in which I might have done so. I don't know if I could have an abortion--I'm not sure that any of us who have not been in that situation really can know. I'm uneasy with the idea that abortion might be used as an "easy" form of birth control, but honestly I've NEVER met anyone who thought about it that way. It's far too invasive a procedure for women to think of it so lightly.

The fact remains, though, that there are real and serious reasons--personal, psychological, financial, and/or medical reasons--why abortion might be the best choice for a woman. And in such situations she should not have to justify her choice to the courts or even to her doctor. Nor should we condemn those who have made such a choice

Twenty years ago when I was an undergrad I took a class in biomedical ethics. We went through all the philosophical arguments about personhood and potential personhood and rights of the mother versus rights of the fetus, and I wrote a decent essay about it all. In retrospect it all seems sort of cold--logical but cold. These issues are fraught with emotion, tangled up in the web of lives that are inevitably messy. If we really treasure life, if we really value children, wouldn't it be better to devote our time, our energy and our money to making the world a place where contraception and reproductive education were readily available, where women's bodies and women themselves were valued and respected so that they would not be objectified, abused, or subjugated , where resources were distributed in such a way that mothers knew that they would be able to adequately care for their children no matter what?