Blog For Choice Day, belated.

[fickle]

Apparently the 22nd of January was Blog For Choice Day and I missed it. Much ♥ to harmonybunny114 for informing me of it.

Of course, pretty much anyone who reads this journal already knows that I'm very definitely pro-choice. I believe that what a woman does with her body is her own business, and that nobody else, not the government or her husband, should be able to make that decision for her.

Of course, what most of you probably don't know is that I used to be anti-choice as a kid. I thought of myself as one of those babies that could have been killed, and I read Tom Clancy. I liked Tom Clancy, he of Red October fame.

Why is Tom Clancy relevant to a discussion on choice?

There's one book he read, I can't even remember the title any longer, but it was about Jack Ryan, a Marine-CIA hero, being elected the President and how he was going to overthrow Roe vs. Wade. I remember very clearly reading the discussion he had with his wife, knowing that Jack was the hero of the book and that I was expected to sympathize with him, and thinking to myself, "Wait. That's wrong."

His wife was a doctor, but she agreed anyway. That only set off more of my "That's wrong." sensors.

The more of Clancy's books I read, the more I found myself disagreeing with the way he used his books to push his political views, but the key realization I had was that first one, where I couldn't believe that his supposed hero would take away the right of women to choose.

I can't pinpoint when exactly in my teenage years I changed from empathizing with the babies to empathizing with the women. I just know that Tom Clancy, ironically enough, is the one who made me realize that my views on abortion had switched from pro-life to pro-choice.

Edit: Best list of reasons to be pro-choice ever.

Comments

[fickle-goddess.livejournal.com]

I think the fact that I'm not religious probably contributes to the fact that I tend not to think of it so much as killing someone when an abortion is carried out since to me, it's really just a bunch of cells that have divided several times. Kinda like a cancer, I suppose, though that's an icky comparison to think about.

And having a kid that's going to be unwanted, unloved and blamed for ruining the mother's or father's life is just not a good idea in the least. I know the standard counter-argument to that is "Well, they could just give it up for adoption!" but honestly, sometimes just the process of being pregnant is damaging enough to a woman.

Especially in Asian families or families with a strong sense of traditional values if we're talking about pregnant, unmarried teenagers. It's really hard to properly express exactly how crushing familial pressure can be to someone that hasn't grown up in that sort of an environment.

Though really, I don't think it has to be a pregnant-unwed-teen scenario to justify the right to have an abortion. A family with a teen already in college where the mother and father are just too old to raise another kid and can't financially support it anyway? I'd say that the mother has every right to not want to have the child, especially if there's an increased risk of the baby having Down's syndrome or something like that.

It's part of why I am so strongly in favor of teaching sex ed in school -- I'd rather that nobody was in a position to have to make such choices, but if they have to, I want them to have the choice open to them.