I was raised Christian and heard how horrible a thing abortions were and how it wasn't the right thing.

The bulk of the opinion I'm going to share with you I wrote in response to someone on a friend's page who decided to try the "right vs. wrong" argument. This is a topic that has been weighing on my mind for awhile. The continued onslaught of attacks on women's reproductive health angers me, upsets me, and worries me, not just for myself, but also for my daughter. The current crop of so-called conservatives who have decided that women are too stupid to make their own choices about their reproductive health and that the government should have the right to tell them what to do with their uterus is beyond inane. I completely understand and believe in a person's right to not like abortion or to not like birth control; however, I expect that they use their dislike to make their own choices as opposed to trying to force their beliefs on every woman in the country. Even if you are ardently pro-life, I ask that you at least take the time to read what I am saying. If you wish to carry on a dialogue about the topic understand that I will entertain polite discourse, but will either meet rudeness with deletion or simply returning in kind.

I have, in the past, waffled on the abortion issue. I was raised Christian and heard how horrible a thing abortions were and how it wasn't the right thing. I came to the decision to be pro-life, not because I am "for abortions" but instead because I believe a woman should have the right to choose what happens to her body. Pregnancy takes over your body and can change everything from the texture of your hair to your shoe size. It changes your brain chemistry. It is not a walk in the park. It is nine months of your life and while that may seem like a short time, as someone who has experienced it, I can tell you that it can be the longest nine months of your life. Aborting a fetus when it is still a bundle of cells is not murdering a child. It is not ruining a future life. Demanding a woman to keep a pregnancy she doesn't want on the other hand, can ruin a life right -now-. Telling a woman who was raped that she has to carry that rapist's child inside her body for nine months is, to me, the epitome of cruelty. Some women can and do choose to do so; however, no woman should be forced to. If you've never been a victim of sexual abuse or rape it is hard to conceptualize. I have been pretty open about the fact that I have been a victim of both because I feel that silence does no favors. I was around 10 the first time it happened. I was around 14 the next time. I think about me at 14 and I can't begin to imagine how I would have handled it if I'd gotten pregnant. No girl should have someone tell her that it is "God's will" that she is pregnant, that it is a blessing in disguise, and that she should have to have the daily reminder of that violation with her until delivery.

I wrestled with the decision the day I found out I was pregnant. I was in a really bad relationship, I wasn't in the most awesome mental space at the time, and perhaps more tellingly was the detail that I didn't tell people for a long time - I said no. It was not something that he ever really listened to and he was good and pressing the issue and I caved quite frequently. However, that time, I said no and he didn't care because it was what he wanted. I was in a friend's dorm room in Savannah and it was the last time I let him get -that- close to me because I was already fed up with his bull shit. Ultimately, I realized that it was not a choice that I could make. I heard her heartbeat and even though I was scared to fucking death, I realized that I personally could not exercise that choice...but let me tell you, I was damned glad that I at least had the right to consider it. I also considered adoption at one point but I realized even then that as completely clueless as I was, the fetus that was growing inside me was a life line and perhaps more importantly a piece of my heart. But it was -my- choice because it is -my- body.

Telling a woman that she -has- to carry a fetus to term because she could "put it up for adoption" if she doesn't want it is, to me, one of the most disingenuous arguments that pro-lifers make. Have you recently looked at the statistics for adoption rates in this country? Have you looked at the number of children who live their entire childhoods in foster care? It is REALLY upsetting and disturbing to me. We all know people who are looking to adopt and heavens know that I completely and totally understand that and am glad of it; however, I don't think that the fact that there are people willing to adopt babies changes the fact that a woman should have the right to choose what happens to her own body. If she is able to carry a child to term and offer it for adoption that is fantastic but it should be her decision.

As I mentioned above, it was someone declaring that they feel it is a "right vs. wrong" issue as opposed to a "conservative vs. liberal" issue that had me start putting all of my thoughts into words in the first place. I am going to edit my original response some; however, assume that "you" is used in the general sense as opposed to the "you directly" sense; however, understand that I am leaving the "you" in tact in certain places because I am addressing people who believe that their beliefs should trump my rights.

Here's the problem: a person's "right vs. wrong" belief shouldn't be able to dictate what I do or do not do with my uterus. I am so tired of the "abortions are all wrong" arguments that people like to make. There are plenty of reasons that abortion should remain legal. You say that conservative organizations don't kill unborn children. I say that conservative organizations don't do enough for children already alive. To me, people like you and those other conservative organizations would have a much more steady ground to stand on if they came up with an alternative to Planned Parenthood that did everything but provide abortions. Because the issue, to me, isn't that Planned Parenthood offers abortions - it's that PP does a lot of good for women with no insurance and low income in areas that have jack diddly squat to do with abortions. They don't profit from abortions. It's a non-profit organization. It is an organization that does a lot of good for women who need help with things like mammograms and birth control and pelvic exams who can't afford to go to a doctor. Do you know how much a standard pelvic costs these days? About $200 with exam costs and doctor's fees. I don't know about you, but I don't have a spare $200 lying around anywhere. I don't have the $100+ it costs me to go see a General Practitioner for being sick these days either.

Stop using abortion as an excuse to have an all out battle on women who need the services PP offers. Stop trying to inflict YOUR morals on other women. Just because you feel abortion is wrong doesn't mean you should have the right to dictate to someone else. A baby isn't a baby until it is born. Sorry. Biology and science win here. A baby isn't viable until well after 20 weeks and really, it's best that a delivery not happen until past the thirtieth week. Stop saying that a bundle of cells is a baby. It's not no matter how much you want it to be. Life does not start at the moment of conception; life starts at the moment that a live baby exits the birth canal because until that point, any number of things can happen. Miscarriages happen all the time, at multiple stages of pregnancy. Miscarriages in the early term of pregnancy are typically nature's way of fixing problems, but sometimes, they don't happen. Sometimes, medical intervention is necessary, not just to save the life of the mother, but to perhaps spare the mental health of the mother. These issues are not all life vs. death. Sometimes, people need to consider mental health and well being. The current climate has made doctors in some areas so afraid to perform even medically necessary abortions that women are forced to suffer until their body catches up to the fact that there is something horribly wrong. And since all of this hullabaloo about abortions and spending and what a woman should or should not have a right to do have come up, I've realized that those situations happen a lot more often than most people realize. I've read stories of women who have suffered through carrying a non-viable fetus for months until they either could safely be induced or until nature took care of things on its own that have made me sob in heartbreak. I've known women who have miscarried. My mother, my sister-in-law...I know how deep that heartbreak runs and I could not imagine being told that because of some ridiculous law (like no abortions past 20 weeks) a woman has to suffer until a spontaneous miscarriage happens. I just can't.

The real irony of this situation to me is this: the Komen Foundation's decision is actually going to make it MORE likely that abortions are funded, not less because now people are directly donating money to Planned Parenthood which opens up how they are allowed to disburse the funds. When the Komen foundation gives a grant to another non-profit for a specific thing (i.e. breast cancer screenings or low cost mammograms), the non-profit receiving the money has to use it by the terms specified. It's how things like that work. So even if they WANTED to, PP could not use Komen Foundation funds to fund abortions. It's the same with government funds. Government funded abortions have been illegal pretty much from the get-go. Any government money that was going to PP was NOT being used for abortions. I don't know if you know anything about dealing with or working with a non-profit, but the IRS is REAL keen on taking that status away from organizations if they don't follow the rules because sometimes a lot of money goes through a non-profit and the IRS would LOVE to tax it. (I volunteer with a recreational non-profit now and as President of my local chapter I have to make sure that certain reports are done in a timely fashion to facilitate maintaining our 501c3 status.) If there had TRULY been misappropriations of funds, I believe the IRS would have found it long before the current crop of Republicans decided to go to war on women's bodies.

You are entitled to your opinion and you are entitled to share that opinion. However, your rights should stop when they start encroaching on mine. I don't agree with you. My sense of morals says that if a woman is in a situation where she knows she cannot provide for a baby and she cannot handle it she should be able to safely abort the fetus if she needs to. My sense of morals says that a woman should not have to carry a baby that is essentially dead inside her until her body decides to abort on its own because people like you think all things in utero are sacred. (Yes, this happens. Yes, it is HORRIBLE.) My sense of morals says that a woman who is impregnated because some asshole couldn't keep his penis to himself should not be forced to carry that asshole's child around inside her for nine months if she does not want to. (Some women CAN and do carry the baby of their rapist to term but they should not be REQUIRED to do so.) My sense of morals says that if a person is going to be hell-bent on believing that things in the uterus are sacred then they should also believe that supporting welfare and food stamps and medicaid for low income families should be worth doing and important to society. After all, if you believe the fetus to be so bloody precious, then the life outside of the uterus should be even more so. My sense of morals says that I have no more right to tell another women what to do with her vagina or her uterus or her body than she does to me. I have not walked in her shoes; she has not walked in mine. My sense of morals also says that just as abortion is a personal issue, so to is birth control and the current crop of Republicans tells me that "no abortions" is not a far cry from "no birth control" and REALLY cutting off birth control to any woman and telling her that it's "God's will" that she gets pregnant so she should just figure out how to feed her family or keep her legs shut is just abhorrently wrong.

If you don't believe in abortion, don't have one, but don't use your belief as a reason to stop ALL abortions. And please do not be so naive as to think that abortions will stop if people like you can manage to legislate them away: they won't. They'll just become much less safe and be more likely to kill the woman trying to have one. Your morals are not automatically the same as everyone else's. Sometimes you need to stop and realize that.

Thus ended the reply that I made to the person. I probably could have elaborated more but it was already quite long at that point. That said, while we're on the subject, let's talk about something else: how about we stop assuming that all women who have abortions are sluts, whores, etc.? How about we stop listening to main stream media outlets that tell us that women use abortion as a form of birth control and realize that the facts say other wise? While I imagine that there are women who do, in fact, use abortion as a form of birth control, I don't see the number as being as large as people try to make it out to be. How about instead of putting all of the responsibility for the number of abortions in this country on women, we take the time to realize that it does, in fact, take two people to create a pregnancy and realize that biologically, a man has the power to make a pregnancy every time he puts his penis inside a woman's vagina without some kind of protection? How about we finally come to the point as a society that we can say "He who wields his penis has a responsibility in this process, too"? Because I am sick and tired of slut-shaming. I am sick and tired of victim blaming. The common perception that men can have sex with whomever and whenever they want and that's "expected because boys will be boys" is utterly ridiculous. The fact that a person who is running for the fucking presidency is a known adulterer pisses me off more than I can begin to say particularly given that the man in question tries to dictate what a woman can or cannot do with her body and who can or cannot marry someone else in the name of "protecting the sanctity of marriage". Can we all just agree that his right to speak on THAT subject jumped the shark a long time ago? Please? No? *sighs* Anyway...slut shaming is wrong. Victim blaming is worse. To argue that a young girl obviously "did something" or "provoked" her rapist is so many kinds of wrong. How about we start saying "she was the victim and the man couldn't control his own penis and felt that he had power over her and he violated her"? Because that is what rape is about: power and control. (And yes, I'm aware that there are women who rape men; however, I find those women to be just as reprehensible as the men who do the same and the same could be said of them: they lacked the control to handle their own body. The reason I am focusing on the more common male rapes female example is because it is the one that is perpetuated in main stream media and society today. Society reveres football players who rape and assault women because they are "good players" and because they make a football team money. When these cases go to trial, all too often, it is the victim who is put on trial and not the rapist. So how about we as a society at least come to accept the fact that men are just as responsible for their sexuality as women are and that their actions also are part of the baby making process? Please?

If you've made it this far, I thank you. I know this is really long, but it is something I feel strongly about. I believe that women should have the right to choose what happens to their bodies and I believe that while a person is free to believe that abortions are "wrong" they shouldn't be allowed to dictate "right and wrong" for everyone. More importantly, I feel that the current attacks on women's reproductive rights is beyond the pale. There are so many other issues that our government should be focusing on and yet our elected politicians are, in my opinion, making a mockery of the system and liars out of themselves. (After all, I feel that anyone who argues for "small government" should REALLY not also be trying to legislate my uterus.) I believe that while it is perfectly within a person's rights to believe that birth control is not right for them that they shouldn't be able to say I can't have it. I would be utterly hosed without my IUD. My periods before I had it were almost intolerable BEFORE I came down with a chronic illness. Once I got sick, they got worse. As it stands, I still have to deal with the hell of the hormonal shifts at that point in my cycle but it's nowhere near as bad as it was before. Without my IUD, I'd probably be stuck in bed for the better part of a week once a month and really, I just don't need that. Birth control does a lot more than just prevent pregnancies or STIs. It can help regulate and balance hormones, it can help regulate horrible menstrual cycles, and a lot more besides. Trying to mandate an uber-conservative "no woman should have access to birth control" policy is just plain wrong (I'm looking at you Mr. Santorum).

Every woman should have the right to choose what happens to her body. To dictate otherwise makes us just as guilty as some of those other nations that some of these same conservatives claim to hate. (You know, the anti-Sharia law people who don't realize the irony of their sentiments.) Stop letting your personal values intrude on other women's rights. Please.

Brekke Ferguson February 3, 2012