Why I Am Pro-Choice

I have written about this topic at least twice before, first in 2005 and then on the day commemorating Roe in 2007.

As you can see from those posts, my stance is based on gender equity and fairness.  If women are largely treated as inanimate (i.e. powerless)  potential or actual containers of the more valuable fertilized eggs, women and men can never be socially or economically equal in the extreme forced-birth world.  Never.

If women are not allowed to be in control of their own fertility, other people will have that control.  And a person without the ability to decide on when she becomes pregnant will not have the same economic and social opportunities as someone who does have that control.   All written history shows us that very thing.

Which sex is it today which is urged to think of itself as living in the state of perpetual  pre-pregnancy when fertile and not actually pregnant, keeping the egg-aquarium clean and sparkly?   Which sex is it today whose contraceptive tools (the pill, the coil)  are blamed of causing abortions by the pro-life constituency?  Which sex is it which is sometimes denied access to contraception by pharmacists with consciences?   And which sex is it today which many employers suspect of just leaving when getting pregnant and therefore not worth hiring or promoting on the job?

All these minor aspects of modern American life would be thousandfold stronger in the world the pro-lifers desire.  Indeed, women's bodies would have to be guarded, miscarriages would have to be investigated as potential murders and going out at night might expose a woman not just to the same dangers a man might face but also a forced pregnancy and birth.

There is no way such a world could offer women equal social and economic opportunities.