Right to Choose

It's so hard not to talk about this issue civilly, but one thing that I am passionate about is women's reproductive rights and the right to choose. The passing of Roe v. Wade was a milestone for women's reproductive freedoms and rights to privacy, as well as making Plan B available over-the-counter, but now the government is doing everything in its power to take away what women have worked so hard to achieve.

I am pro-choice. I am NOT pro-abortion. There is no comparison, and they are NOT the same thing. Pro-abortion implies that you believe that all pregnancies should be terminated. Pro-choice means that I want to be able to choose what I want to do with my body. I myself would probably never choose to have an abortion, but that doesn't mean someone that I know won't. If I ever have a daughter, I want her to be able to have the freedom to choose what she wants to do with her body and to have the privacy in making her decisions.

People tend to believe that making abortion illegal will just make the problem go away. That is never going to be the solution. Women will resort to going to back-alley abortion doctors or giving themselves abortions, just as it was in the years before Roe v. Wade. Some would believe that if a woman chose to have sex and got pregnant that she should live with the consequences of her actions. How about having her choose what she wants to do? There are always repercussions with every decision anyone makes, "good" or "bad," and the outcomes are the only things anyone should have to deal with. What about rape victims who had no say in what happened to them? Shouldn't they still get some choice in what happens to them after? Abortion is never going to just "go away." It's going to go on, even if Roe v. Wade is overturned.