Too Many Politicians Making Decisions for Millions of Women

I do not advocate the practice of terminating a pregnancy by means of abortion. A fetus is not a lump of cells waiting to turn into a human being. A fetus is a human being from the point of conception. Life is life, and that is that.I have never been in the situation to have to think about terminating a pregnancy. I chose life three times. Never once did the thought of ending their lives before they even got a chance to have one ever cross my mind.

However ,there are women in this country who have no problem and have had no problem making this decision. The decision was theirs to make rightly and freely under Roe vs. Wade. Because of R v.W, women have the ultimate and hard-fought-for right to end a pregnancy as long as it is before a certain amount of time has passed.

Roe vs. Wade is not even the thing which is truly at risk. The thing which is truly at risk is the right to choose. There is no man big enough to tell me what I can and cannot do with my body. Period. It will be a long, cold day in hell before that happens.

Politicians, so it seems, tend to make decisions based on their own personal feelings, and from what I see on the news and read in the papers, these are guys who have no real feeling about anything unless it somehow benefits them. How it benefits them to take away a woman's right to make choices that are nobody's business but her own, I don't know. It isn't going to do them any good when it comes time to vote. Sometimes I think they forget that we are allowed to vote.

At issue right now is a teenager's right to her choices. Teens will make bad choices. It's kind of their job. I know. I raised one and am raising another. It was hard for me when the older of the two, the girl, came and asked me about birth control pills. All at once the image of my then 17-year old sister went from this cute little teeny bopper to (yikes) a young woman who had chosen to take responsibility for her reproductive abilities and actions. She knows how hard it is to take care of kids because she has to take care of my three. Was I shocked that she would ask? Yeah, but I really don't think any parent is ready for their kid to come to them and ask if it is okay that they get on any kind of birth control. I was relieved that everything I ever told her about the birds and the bees and the value of common sense mixed with good information had sunken in. She listened. Not every teenaged girl is this fortunate. I don't crumble at the thought of telling my kids the truth. Sometimes it hurts them, but it is for their own good. They make good decisions if they are well informed. I did not tell my sister that she was going to go to hell, and I did not allow my judgement of the entire situation be the thing that guided me. She listened, and then when she asked me, I listened to her. I did not hear about how much she loved her boyfriend or that he wanted to have sex and that she didn't want to make him responsible for something they both had done. This was her decision. And it was a damned good adult decision to make.

If more parents, particularly mothers, would inform their daughters about the realities and especially the responsibilities of sex there would be less reason for early termination of unwanted pregnancy. Too many parents are too busy ensuring that their kids are afraid of sex instead of informing them of the realities and the responsibilities which come with it. They're in denial because they see this child in front of them and they don't want to see them grow up. It might even be a little bit selfish on the parents' part. Let's face it- it's a drag getting old, but it happens and we can do nothing to prevent it other than fool Mother Nature by employing the services of a good plastic surgeon. Your mentality is still there, and there still are all those things about your kids that you wished you never knew. I was not glad to hear about my sister and her great big decision, but I was very, very relieved. It is now two years, almost three years later, and there are still no unwanted pregnancies, she has not turned into a sex-crazed fiend, and her boyfriend still loves her, even now.

As it stands, it is getting increasingly more difficult for women of any age to obtain prescribed birth control as there are more and more pharmacists taking a personal stand against birth control period. Personal feelings have no place in one's professional life, especially if people are in the position to give a woman the chance to have a life through means of prescribed anti-pregnancy drugs. Rather than outlawing legal abortions, perhaps the states leaders could get together and start a program where the most at-risk young women could be in the delivery room when a woman goes into labor, goes through the pain and the anxiety of the entire process of bringing a child into the world. It was enough to make my kid sister come right out and ask me if I would sign for her to get a prescription. It worked for her, and her friends, and it would probably work for many, many more young women in this country.

Do I condone irresponsible behavior amoung adults who should know better? Of course not. But irresponsible behavior extends further than only women who don't do the adult thing and take action against an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy. Women pay a high price for their foolish choices, but the fact remains that the choices they make are theirs alone to make and not that of a politician whose personal and religious beliefs are the things guiding their decisions. Teens and young adult women need to be able to have choices that do not include having no access to birth control options. We want so badly as a nation to keep our young people pure and chaste that we are failing to teach them to be responsible with their actions. Abortion is the end result of inappropriate and irresponsible actions.When it comes to this particular issue, and if a woman should become pregnant due to rape or incest, the person who violated her has more rights than she does. To limit a woman's right to choose is as irresponsible as having unprotected sex.

So is taking away the right for a woman to have easy access to do what she wants with her reproductive organs. Yes, even if it means she ends a life before it starts.

When you vote this November, remember that there is a woman in your life whose occupation, right to vote, right to walk with her head held high and her right to be heard is as important for that same woman to have a choice to live in her own skin without worrying that some faceless politician with power and a pen will decide for her what she can and cannot do with her body.