A Room With A View

This is going to be hard. According to the web page linked in the sidebar, "This year's topic is a 'simple' one: tell us, and your readers, why you're pro-choice." The only simple part is that I know that I have always been pro-choice, and I always will be. Yes, I know all the logical reasons that this is an inalienable right, the Bumper Sticker Reasons, please feel free to check out my favorites. But it doesn't seem like this answers the question of why I am pro-choice.

I have been very lucky in my life. I have never been poor, unloved, or uneducated. I have been able to choose my partners, rather than having anything forced on me. I have a supportive family with whom I can discuss anything, even life's worst questions. (And I do think of an unplanned pregnancy as the worst kind of question.) Yet when I, with my blessed existence, became pregnant at the age of 25, all I knew is that I was alone in making a decision on how to proceed. And that is as it should be.

Yes, anyone in any tough situation can, and should, talk to as many people as possible. Get to know all the options and their pros and cons. But in the end, no one knows what the world looks like from your eyes. And very few get to ask you to justify that view.

So in my situation, I tried to do just that. I talked to the father, my family, and also tried to talk to the professionals. I tried to talk with someone from Planned Parenthood. Unfortunately due to budget cuts and overwork, I didn't get the best reception. Frankly I got yelled at on the phone. The horrifying phrase was "Do you want the abortion or not?!" Which I simply could not answer. I was shocked, and sweaty and frightened. I hung up. It shouldn't be like this. It shouldn't be shameful, or frightening or clandestine. We are all humans. Those who are not can cast the first stone.

Fortunately for me, I lived in a very liberal state, and I got in touch with an amazing open-adoption agency. They advocated for nothing save education for women about all of the options. A woman from the agency drove two hours from her home to meet with me, and talked with me for three additional hours about all of the options. She had once had an abortion, had once given a baby up for adoption, and had then later adopted a child. She regretted none of her decisions.

So that's it. It is one of the worst decisions a person can have to make. Do we really need to make it harder by making it illegal, shameful or life threatening? It will always be one woman and one choice made from the view from her life. Until you have looked out her window for as long as she has, you have no right to make up her mind for her.

Thanks for listening, good night, and practice safe sex!