Why I Am Pro-Choice

Hello everyone.

Today I'm going to talk about something that I don't normally like to talk about. Abortion. Why I don't normally talk about my stance on abortion is because I don't want to start drama with my family - whom are almost all SUPER religious and conservative - and because I don't want to start drama in general. Also, I don't like arguing something like this unless I have the proper way and space/time to logically debate this topic in an EDUCATED way. It's hard to do that on places like Facebook and it's hard to do that in person when you get flustered when people are yelling in your face and talking over you and INSULTING you. However, this is MY blog and I can talk about what I want here. 

First off, I want to say that if you comment down below towards me, or towards someone else that you disagree with, do so in an EDUCATED and civilized manner. If you cannot do so, then I will be removing your comments because I will not entertain those who want to use fear mongering to support their point. Ok? Everyone ready? Lets get to it. 

Why I personally believe that abortion is a woman's choice comes down to a lot of different points that I'm going to be talking about in this post. However, I'm going to talk about the most common reason people disagree with abortion first. Religion. A lot of the people that use the reason that they believe that it's wrong is because God said so in the bible. I've also heard almost everyone who's used this reason say also that the US needs to be run by the bible's standards and say that they're being persecuted because they don't have the "religious freedom" to mandate everyone else's religious freedoms. These people also say that there needs to be a separation of church and state without knowing what that really means. It doesn't just mean the government can't tell you what to do with your religious freedoms. It also means that YOU can't use the government to tell everyone else what to do with their religious freedoms if they don't agree with you. If you believe that God doesn't want you to get an abortion, don't get one. That simple.

I believe that everyone has the right to make their own decisions regarding their own health. After all, we only get one life and nobody wants to be told how to live it, so why should anybody have the right to tell someone else how to live theirs? There's always going to be the argument that a fetus is a person or the fetus isn't a person. The truth of the matter is, a fetus is not technically alive until the brain and heart develop and start functioning. If that's not true, if the fetus is "alive" when it's first formed and without those organs, then why is a born person/child/adult who's considered brain dead not considered alive? It's the same thing. There's not a being that can be alive without a brain. Fetus or otherwise. 

I really hate the argument: "If you don't want a baby, then keep your legs closed! Don't have sex if you're not ready to have a baby!" Not all married people are ready for kids, but they're consenting adults and sex is a very healthy and important part of marriage.Marriage is the dedication to your partner for the remainder of your life. It's not the dedication of "I am going to reproduce with you". There are some people that get married that don't ever want kids for various reason. Reasons such as, mental illness, physical illness, inability/lack of desire to nurture etc. Should people with mental illnesses, that they don't want to spread, never get married? Or should they get married and never have sex, which will most likely lead to divorce? As long as the sex is adults consenting between the people involved, it's not anybody else's business. 

Another point that I can make about the religious pro-life advocates, is that if you truly believe that a fetus is a life at conception then why aren't you willing to adopt that child when they're given up or taken and put into the system? If a woman says she can't take care of a child and you force her to carry to term, then you blame her for having a child she can't take care of, you're the problem. The truth of the matter is, people are going to have sex if they want sex. If you don't want people to get pregnant and have abortions, then protection and contraceptives need to be available to all people no matter what. If you don't believe in providing protection etc, then you have no weight when it comes to determining what happens to the result of that. You can't say that a woman has to carry the baby to term and have her put the kid in the foster care system because the baby deserves a chance at life and not adopt. There are SO MANY unloved and unwanted children in the foster care system that nobody is adopting. If every pro-life advocate adopted a child, those numbers would drop by a large number. But here's the thing: they're more concerned about a child being born than they are about the actual child's life. I can say all this especially because I am one of 8 children born to the same woman. 7 of us lived, and 6 of us ended up in the foster care system. 1 of which is wheelchair bound with cerebral palsy. Almost all spent pretty much their whole lives in the system. Only 1 of the 6 of us got adopted. Where were the pro-life advocates then? Why didn't they adopt all of us? Because most pro-lifers are pro-birth. Not pro-life. I have to say, however, I am the only one who got adopted and yes, they are pro-life. Why I don't shit all over them when they say they're pro-life, is because they actually did something about it. They didn't just sit there and say that my birth mother had to give birth and I was on my own after that. They actually did something in accordance to the pro-life stance. 

Why I'm even writing about this in the first place is because last night the third presidential debate took place and Trump said some very uneducated fear-mongering things about late-term abortions. He took Clinton's words and he made things up and then twisted all of the words together. First of all, there's no procedure called a "partial birth". There's something called a Dilation and Extraction where the fetus is NOT in fact "torn from the mother's womb", but rather humanely removed, in tact, from the womb - usually in form of c-section. This procedure only ever happens if the life of the mother is in danger or if the fetus isn't going to survive outside the womb or is already dead. The law prohibits abortion past 24 weeks because before then a baby cannot survive outside the womb, and after 24 weeks, there's a slight chance, but it's still possible. So, if a woman wants to have an abortion days before her due date like Trump keeps saying they can, she simply can't. You'll never find a doctor who will abort a healthy fetus from a healthy mother once the baby is able to live outside of the womb. Not even Planned Parenthood will do that. I also need to mention that Clinton said she supports a woman's choice in her own healthcare. She never said that she supports aborting on a whim. She said she supports Roe v. Wade because it's says that there are to be regulations on abortions as long as the health and safety of the mother are taken into account. For those who don't understand what that means, it means that yes, there should be regulations on abortion - ie abortion shouldn't be legal past a certain point, 24 weeks - but the health and safety of the mother should be considered and made exceptions for as well - ie if she's going to die if she takes the fetus to term or if she was raped etc. She didn't say that abortion should be legal no matter what, when and why. She said it should be regulated as long as it doesn't compromise the health of the mother. Mr. Trump: Clinton did not say that it's okay to terminate the life of a healthy baby. It's not murdering the baby if the baby is already dead or won't survive outside the womb without extreme pain for longer than a few seconds, minutes or even an hour. And lastly, she said that basically it's up to the woman to decide in accordance with her family and her FAITH and medical advice if she should have a late term abortion or not. And no, Mr. Trump. Nobody has the right to take apart a healthy, viable, living fetus from a healthy mother ever. But that's not what that law is about, now is it? Please educate yourself on abortion like you were educated in 1999 when you said that you hated abortion, but you thought that it was the woman's choice. You seemed like an alright guy back then.

Lastly, the argument that abortion should only be reserved for rape and incest, I think, is a bit of a cop out. Most people who say that do because that's when they'd say that it's their choice because of what happened to their body. These people seem to ignore the fact that they think the fetus is viable at the moment of fertilization in these cases. If that really is a living baby that should have a choice in any other situation, then why isn't it living and why doesn't it have a choice now? Yes, abortion should be allowed for cases of rape and incest, but up until 12 weeks, it should be allowed anyways for whatever the woman's reason. It's her business.

I am not sure if I have touched on every topic regarding abortion, but these are the main points I wanted to make as to why I am pro-choice. Feel free to let me know what you think below, but remember: keep it civil, keep it educated, and keep it on point. I don't care what your political stance is when it comes to other topics. I only want to hear about this one. Otherwise, I will be deleting your comments and all comments responding to yours. 

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Sarah