When writing my little list of movies I’d like to see I forgot about an honest portrayal of accidental pregnancy.

White, middle class teenage girl probably is more likely to have an abortion than give the kid up for adoption.

White, middle class successful tv host is probably going to have an abortion and not a relationship with the pot head who knocked her up.

And poor pregnant waitresses never become millionaires.

I would like to see pregnant teen discovers she’s knocked up and then goes through a nightmarish process to come up with the money to pay for an abortion. And doesn’t regret it for a second. That’s way closer to reality.

Things I keep saying are being turned into articles by other people, could it be that I have hit on something here?

Granted, this is from a Libertarian magazine (in my heart I am a libertarian on social policy, marry who you want, control your own body be it through birth control, abortions or what current;y illegal drugs you wish to consume) and a socialist-capitalist hybrid on other stuff. But that’s beside the point.

So my little Mommy Fetish Essay that has pissed people off where I say women should stop telling people their children are their greatest accomplishment wasn’t wrong”

“Indeed, looking after the kids appears to be only slightly more pleasant than doing housework,” asserts Gilbert in his bestselling, Stumbling on Happiness (2006).

Of course, that’s not what most parents say when asked. For instance, in a 2007 Pew Research Center survey people insisted that their relationships with their little darlings are of the greatest importance to their personal happiness and fulfillment. However, the same survey also found “by a margin of nearly three-to-one, Americans say that the main purpose of marriage is the ‘mutual happiness and fulfillment’ of adults rather than the ‘bearing and raising of children.'”

Stop lying folks. Kids are hard work. If it is necessary that children are born and raised for the good of society, then we need to start demanding compensation beyond false claims of personal fulfillment.

Today is Blog For Choice Day and I’m going to get all brave and overshare about why access to abortion without limits is important.

I am probably one of those women that the forced pregnancy wingnuts think “uses abortion as birth control”. I’ve had 3 and I have one kid. If I hadn’t had those abortions, I’d have 4 kids. I can barely support one, four would probably kill me.

I first got pregnant at 16 after having sex with my long term high school boyfriend. You could just attribute it to youthful stupidity, but…

When I was 16 my mother went into a mental hospital and I went to live with foster parents. They might have been nice enough people, but they were only taking me in so that it would look good on their application to adopt. As a foster kid, I had Medicaid but I had no access to a doctor without my foster parents help. I also had no money of my own, not an allowance or even lunch money that I could hoard up to pay Planned Parenthood for a birth control prescription. I got pregnant about a month after living with them.

With the help of my awesome school counselor, my boyfriend, his mom and his ex-girlfriend (weird, I know but she drove me and held my hand) I got the money together and a ride to the only clinic in a hundred mile radius. I never thought twice about having an abortion. I knew that I was too young and that there was no way I could give a kid up for adoption.

My foster parents found out about the pregnancy and abortion afterwards. They’d been suspicious that I was pregnant to begin with, what with all the puking. When I came clean and told them I had an abortion, they were very quiet. The next day they packed all my belongings into garbage bags and took off for Disneyland. A family friend stepped in when my evil social worker tried to send me to a “group home” that had just been in the papers because several girls had been stabbed there. Very soon after I was in Florida with Wonder’s family. Thank god I didn’t live in a state with parental notification laws. My foster parents would have been the ones with authority to consent.

I don’t know if the foster parents kicked me out because a teenage girl was too much to handle, or if they had hoped that I would decide to give them a baby I didn’t want. But even having all my stuff loaded into trash bags and the threat of group home violence were not enough to make me change my mind about having an abortion. Actually, it reinforced it. If the foster parents were the kind to give up on a kid so easily, they certainly were not the kind of people I wanted anywhere near a child of mine.

When I was 21 and the Kid was almost 2, I left his dad. His dad had gone from a hapless pot smoker to a crazy, possessive meth fiend who stalked me for months. I was still breastfeeding the kid and I hadn’t had a period in forever. I was very far along when I figured out I was pregnant. Almost too far along for an abortion (and perhaps I was too far along but the doctor was kind). I had been stalked, attacked, harassed and threatened for months. I had a protection order (civil) and a no contact order (criminal) against his dad. I could not see myself with one more tie to the guy and I had nearly died having the kid to begin with. If I did die, or even just became incapacitated having another child, I knew he would be all over my kid(s) and tormenting them in place of me. So I had a late term abortion at 24 weeks. I borrowed a shitload of money ($2400 if I recall correctly) that I worked off cleaning houses. I didn’t have childcare for my then 2 year old, so he went to clinic with me and a girl who I had just met at a domestic violence group counseling session. The clinic was in the city (I was in the suburbs) and without a driver there was no way I could have gotten there. A cab would have cost me 50 bucks easy. But I was lucky. There was a 15 year old girl there with both her parents who had driven 4 hours from another state. Thank god she had understanding parents. I don’t know if my 15 year old self could have made such arrangements.

The last one is the one that I beat myself up for, cause damn it, by now I should know better. Just to shorthand it- sex without condom, emergency contraception taken too late, found out about his wife and child when I told him I was pregnant. But I am here, in a wonderfully liberal city in a blue state. Medicaid covered the abortion . Actually, as soon as I became pregnant I became eligible for Medicaid and was covered within a few days of the positive test. I took a cab with a friend to the clinic which was only 2 miles from my house. I was well taken care of for little more than the cost of a cab ride.

So access to abortion AND birth control is obviously a big deal for me. I have exactly the number of children that I want. When people complain about the kind of women who use abortion as birth control, they mean people like me. For those of you who read this blog regularly, you know how hard I struggle with just one child who was very much wanted. Think about that next time the idea of abortion squicks you out. It is easy for us to be okay with abortion once, or if the mother has a significant sob story about her health or the health of the baby. But most abortions happen to women like me. All we have for justification is that it would ruin our lives and lives of our children. I think that is enough.

I don’t regret my choices, though they haven’t been easy. There were complications during the last abortion that made the whole thing a bit of a medical nightmare. But not enough for me to regret my choice. The second abortion was late enough to make me squeamish, but the result of having another child could have made me dead and my children abuse victims. The first one I sometimes forget that I had at all. 16 was exactly half a lifetime ago for me. I have many more years of fertility left, though I think that my 35th birthday present to myself is going to be a tubal ligation. In the mean time, I hope that anyone else who needs an abortion is as lucky as I have been in being able to get one. And I WILL NOT VOTE for anyone who who even hints at making abortions more difficult to get. I’ve been lucky so far, I think everyone who needs that kind of luck should be able to get it.

Update 8/18/09: If you are here from a certain forced pregnancy site link, then I suggest you read this. Then please crawl back in your slimey hate hole and try to keep feeling superior while knowing you could have helped a real, living child and instead choose hate and viciousness.

It’s not YOUR abortion.

Sure, guys can feel bad about abortion. But in the end, they are not the ones faced with the physical responsibility of choosing between pregnancy or abortion. They also don’t have to face nausea, vomiting, weight gain, back aches, pre-eclampsia, diabetes, infection, insomnia, death, etc.

Of course, the prevailing attitude of these men is “I never really thought about it for the woman,”.

Of course after reading these guys’ interviews I have no doubt to why some woman would not want to be tied to these guys for life through a baby. I’m pretty sure the women think they dodged the world’s crappiest bullet.

There are these phrases I keep thinking about, things that should mean what they are but end up being ways of silencing people by narrowing the frame of an argument.

Everybody knows that……

We can all agree that……

It’s just common sense that……

One of my favorite political thinkers was Antonio Gramsci who came up with the theory of cultural hegemony. A shorthand explanation for it is that what is considered “common sense” is actually only common sense to the oppressing class but those ideas spread to everyone and serve to keep the oppressed quiet- you wouldn’t want to look like some fool with no common sense by questioning something that is so well known. Really obvious examples are trickle down economics, raising the minimum wage reduces the number of jobs, outlawing abortions reduces the number of abortions.

It’s that last one that has been making it’s way around the internets since the Guttmacher study came out showing that making abortion illegal does not change the number of abortions sought, it just changes the safety of the abortions performed. Several big boys of the blogosphere have cried fowl because it doesn’t conform with their idea of common sense. Why would women risk their life, health and freedom to have an abortion in a place where it’s illegal? It does not compute for them. But then again, they have never been pregnant or even feared being pregnant themselves, so they cannot understand that the desire to not be pregnant is strong enough to outweigh the risks.

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty tired of being told that my reality isn’t based on common sense. My Cartesian common sense calls shenanigans on anyone who uses those phrases to frame an argument. In the Guttmacher study, it is pretty obvious that they did a gold standard investigation to deduce actual numbers instead of trying to gather numbers that conform with perception.

Please stop whining about paying child support- the statistics show that you are not actually paying it.

Jeff Fecke wrote a brilliant post at Shakesville explaining what an MRA is.

So are MRAs concerned about anything other than raping and beating women?

Oh, sure — they also don’t want to pay child support. There’s a huge segment of MRAdom that’s fed by divorced men angry that their ex got custody of the kids, and now they have to fork over money to support them.

There is much more that is worth reading there, but I am going to go pick apart the whole men’s choice/child support argument.

Here’s the basics of the Men’s Choice idea. MRAs want the right to opt out of fatherhood the same way a women gets to opt out of motherhood. Except, women who choose abortion aren’t so much opting out of motherhood as they are opting out of pregnancy- opting out of motherhood is a side effect, an important side effect, but still a side effect. MRAs claim that since women get to decide if they are going to let another human being use them as a life support system then men should get to decide not to be responsible for the child after birth.

That argument doesn’t fly for a couple of reasons. First, people choose (hopefully) who they have sex with and if they are going to use prevention measures like condoms or birth control. Both men and women have the ability to choose to sleep with someone who uses those measures or not and to not sleep with someone who is of a different view (I’m not counting rapes- that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms) . There is a risk that those measures will fail- and from that risk disease and pregnancy happen.

Now if disease happens, both partners can get treatment (or not get treatment if it’s untreatable). It’s equal there. If pregnancy happens- only one partner is at risk for death and other health problems related to either pregnancy or abortion. That is why women get to choose to continue a pregnancy. It is their body that does the work. But a child (or potential child- I don’t think either matters in the pro-choice argument) has already been created. And if that child is born- it needs to be supported.

Here’s where the MRAs get their panties in a wad. Women can choose to have an abortion or have a baby, men can’t. They think that in the interest of fairness, men should get to opt out of fatherhood before the child is born if the woman decides to continue the pregnancy. I can see the point kind of, but…

Children are part of society. Society has a vested interest in seeing that children are supported until adulthood because those children will grow up to contribute to society. Our society says that it is the parents job to care for those children. Women get the opt out option only before birth because it is their life and health that is at risk during pregnancy. Once the child is born, the women has no right to kill a child because the risk to her own life is no longer there. Men do not have a risk to their life or health because of pregnancy, so they never get that option (maybe someday when embryos are grown in incubators instead of women’s bodies then no one will get to choose).

But back to the children are part of society thing. They are not property like a car. With a car, you pay for the maintenance on it until the car is no longer in your possession. With a child, whether that child is in your possession or not, it needs care from it’s parents.

Because of the way society is structured, women do most of the caring for children. Fair- no but that is how it’s been structured. Slowly, it is becoming more acceptable for men to do the caring. Feminists fully support that change. But since women still do most of the caring, women are also most likely to be the custodial parent when parents are not together.

So women are doing the work of childrearing alone. Because children still need the support of two parents, we have child support. Child support is not parenting. It is financial support. No non-custodial parent has ever been put in jail for missing little Johnny’s baseball game or skipping Suzie’s dance recital. Any non-custodial parent is free to skip the hard work part of parenting- the actual being there part. You may be an asshole for it, but there are lots of assholes in the world and you’ll have company. Child support is the bare minimum of care that society requires of non-custodial parents. It is much easier to write a check than it is to show up and it benefits the child by ensuring housing, nutrition, health care, etc. All these things are needed to ensure a child reaches adulthood.

And most non-custodial parents have not paid child support according to what society (specifically the legal system) requires. According to the Office of Child Support Enforcement– 70% of child support cases are in arrears. (There are 11,157,421 cases in arrears and 15,844,238 cases total). Over 105 billion dollars is owed in past due child support.

$105 Billion.

$105 billion dollars that is not going to feed or house little Suzy and Johnny. $105 billion that either the custodial parents have to make up out of thin air or that society has to cover. That’s a lot of money, about $9500 per case. In my particular case- the number is $40,000 that is owed. Over the course of 12 years, that is about $277 per month that has not been paid (about the cost of feeding and clothing the kid, housing (the kid’s half) is about $600 more and we won’t even get into health care costs). the actual child support order is for $328 per month. That is way less than half the actual cost of raising the kid. It’s maybe a third. The Kid’s dad has never been threatened with jail if he didn’t pay it. He has never had anything bad happen to him for not paying it, other than a mark on his credit rating. His not paying child support has lead to bad things for his child though. We live at about half of what the poverty level is. Society has had to pick up a large chunk of the cost for keeping the kid fed and housed and we qualify for medicaid. If I, as the custodial parent were to stop contributing my money to raising the child (by not feeding him or clothing him) I would face jail for child endangerment- which has a much stiffer sentence than jail for failure to pay child support, though they are the same essential acts.

So please MRAs, your whining about paying child support is falling on deaf ears because it is a crock of shit. If you really don’t like the laws- then either lobby for greater funding for social safety nets for children or get a vasectomy- or both. But we see through your whining about fairness, because there is nothing fair about it.

So it turns out that having kids is no longer a top priority in a successful marriage. I think that’s pretty damn obvious, but people like having shiny studies to prove things that they already think are true.

But why do people have babies to begin with? Hell, I had one and I couldn’t even begin to tell you why. Is there ever an unselfish reason to breed? There are plenty of unselfish reasons to adopt, that would be taking in a child who otherwise would have no parents, but to create a child of your own isn’t saving a child from an otherwise horrible fate. It’s just more like not making bread with the bag of flour that is sitting in a kitchen cupboard. There is plenty of bread in the world, enough that you never need to make your own if you don’t want to, and the flour will never know the difference if you don’t turn it onto a loaf of bread. But maybe you like the work of baking and find the rewards of making the bread yourself to be worth putting the effort into.

The only way I can wrap my head around it is by using my own experience (with the giant caveat that not everyone has the same experience as me- I get that.) I was 17 when I met the Kid’s dad. We moved in together and on my 19th birthday we got engaged. 3 months later, I got pregnant.

From the moment I thought I might be pregnant, I knew that I wanted the baby. I didn’t have any illusions to how hard it was going to be. I knew that if I was going to have the baby, I was going to end up raising it on my own. I realized that I wanted the baby more than I wanted to be married to the Kid’s dad.

I am, and always have been pro-choice. I have one child, but I have been pregnant more than one time. If I had not wanted to be the Kid’s mom, I would have had no problem having an abortion. But I wanted him, in a way that I cannot explain or justify. I was poor, young, unmarried, underemployed, uneducated and a million other things that should have put me off having a child at that moment. But I wanted him.

I still can’t say why I wanted him, though I can clearly state why I don’t want anymore kids. I will be 38 when the Kid goes to college, young enough that I can travel and live like a nomad on very little money while still having my health and wits. If I have another child now, I can’t do that till my 50s. I have no interest in dealing with diapers or breastfeeding or paying $1000 a month for daycare ever again. I am also ambivalent enough about raising the almost teenager I already have. I certainly would not want to do this again a decade from now.

This was forwarded to me by my friend Omari after he found it posted on Craigslist. A few disclaimers- I have not verified these at all, and Republicans aren’t the only ones with histories of child abuse. But because they claim to be the only party of family values I feel completely justified in posting this. Apparently Jesus loves the little children, but Republican politicians love the little children longer and harder.

Ted Bundy worked for the Republican party, Republican bigot anti-gay Jim West is a pedophile…….
Republican Hypocrisy Revealed
STOP REPUBLICAN PEDOPHILIA

Republican Congressman Mark Foley abruptly resigned from Congress after “sexually explicit” emails surfaced showing him flirting with a 16-year old boy.

Republican executive Randall Casseday of the conservative Washington Times newspaper was arrested for soliciting sex from a 13-year old girl on the internet.

Republican chairman of the Oregon Christian Coalition Lou Beres confessed to molesting a 13-year old girl.

Republican County Constable Larry Dale Floyd was arrested on suspicion of soliciting sex with an 8-year old girl. Floyd has repeatedly won elections for Denton County, Texas, constable.

Republican judge Mark Pazuhanich pleaded no contest to fondling a 10-year old girl and was sentenced to 10 years probation.

Republican Party leader Bobby Stumbo was arrested for having sex with a 5-year old boy.

Republican petition drive manager Tom Randall pleaded guilty to molesting two girls under the age of 14, one of them the daughter of an associate in the petition business.

Republican County Chairman Armando Tebano was arrested for sexually molesting a 14-year-old girl.

Republican teacher and former city councilman John Collins pleaded guilty to sexually molesting 13 and 14 year old girls.

Republican campaign worker Mark Seidenstickeer is a convicted child molester.

Republican Mayor Phillip Giordano is serving a 37-year sentence in federal prison for sexually abusing 8- and 10-year old girls.

Republican Mayor Tom Adams was arrested for distributing child pornography over the internet.

Republican Mayor John Gosek was arrested on charges of soliciting sex from two 15-year old girls.

Republican County Commissioner David Swartz pleaded guilty to molesting two girls under the age of 11 and was sentenced to 8 years in prison.

Republican legislator Edison Misla Aldarondo was sentenced to 10 years in prison for raping his daughter between the ages of 9 and 17.

Republican Committeeman John R. Curtain was charged with molesting a teenage boy and unlawful sexual contact with a minor.

Republican anti-abortion activist Howard Scott Heldreth is a convicted child rapist in Florida.

Republican zoning supervisor, Boy Scout leader and Lutheran church president Dennis L. Rader pleaded guilty to performing a sexual act on an 11-year old girl he murdered.

Republican anti-abortion activist Nicholas Morency pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography on his computer and offering a bounty to anybody who murders an abortion doctor.

Republican campaign consultant Tom Shortridge was sentenced to three years probation for taking nude photographs of a 15-year old girl.

Republican racist pedophile and United States Senator Strom Thurmond had sex with a 15-year old black girl which produced a child.

Republican pastor Mike Hintz, whom George W. Bush commended during the 2004 presidential campaign, surrendered to police after admitting to a sexual affair with a female juvenile.

Republican legislator Peter Dibble pleaded no contest to having an inappropriate relationship with a 13-year-old girl.

Republican advertising consultant Carey Lee Cramer was sentenced to six years in prison for molesting two 8-year old girls, one of whom appeared in an anti-Gore television commercial.

Republican activist Lawrence E. King, Jr. organized child sex parties at the White House during the 1980s.

Republican lobbyist Craig J. Spence organized child sex parties at the White House during the 1980s.

Republican Congressman Donald “Buz” Lukens was found guilty of having sex with a female minor and sentenced to one month in jail.

Republican fundraiser Richard A. Delgaudio was found guilty of child porn charges and paying two teenage girls to pose for sexual photos.

Republican activist Mark A. Grethen convicted on six counts of sex crimes involving children.

Republican campaign chairman Randal David Ankeney pleaded guilty to attempted sexual assault on a child and was arrested again five years later on the same charge.

Republican Congressman Dan Crane had sex with a female minor working as a congressional page.

Republican activist and Christian Coalition leader Beverly Russell admitted to an incestuous relationship with his step daughter.

Republican Judge Ronald C. Kline was placed under house arrest for child molestation and possession of child pornography.

Republican congressman and anti-gay activist Robert Bauman was charged with having sex with a 16-year-old boy he picked up at a gay bar.

Republican Committee Chairman Jeffrey Patti was arrested for distributing a video clip of a 5-year-old girl being raped.

Republican activist Marty Glickman (a.k.a. “Republican Marty”), was taken into custody by Florida police on four counts of unlawful sexual activity with an underage girl and one count of delivering the drug LSD.

Republican legislative aide Howard L. Brooks was charged with molesting a 12-year old boy and possession of child pornography.

Republican Senate candidate John Hathaway was accused of having sex with his 12-year old baby sitter and withdrew his candidacy after the allegations were reported in the media.

Republican preacher Stephen White, who demanded a return to traditional values, was sentenced to jail after offering $20 to a 14-year-old boy for permission to perform oral sex on him.

Republican talk show host Jon Matthews pleaded guilty to exposing his genitals to an 11 year old girl.

Republican anti-gay activist Earl “Butch” Kimmerling was sentenced to 40 years in prison for molesting an 8-year old girl after he attempted to stop a gay couple from adopting her.

Republican Party leader Paul Ingram pleaded guilty to six counts of raping his daughters and served 14 years in federal prison.

Republican election board official Kevin Coan was sentenced to two years probation for soliciting sex over the internet from a 14-year old girl.

Republican politician Andrew Buhr was charged with two counts of first degree sodomy with a 13-year old boy.

Republican legislator Keith Westmoreland was arrested on seven felony counts of lewd and lascivious exhibition to girls under the age of 16 (i.e. exposing himself to children).

Republican anti-abortion activist John Allen Burt was found guilty of molesting a 15-year old girl.

Republican County Councilman Keola Childs pleaded guilty to molesting a male child.

Republican activist John Butler was charged with criminal sexual assault on a teenage girl.

Republican candidate Richard Gardner admitted to molesting his two daughters.

Republican Councilman and former Marine Jack W. Gardner was convicted of molesting a 13-year old girl.

Republican County Commissioner Merrill Robert Barter pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual contact and assault on a teenage boy.

Republican City Councilman Fred C. Smeltzer, Jr. pleaded no contest to raping a 15 year-old girl and served 6-months in prison.

Republican activist Parker J. Bena pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography on his home computer and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and fined $18,000.

Republican parole board officer and former Colorado state representative, Larry Jack Schwarz, was fired after child pornography was found in his possession.

Republican strategist and Citadel Military College graduate Robin Vanderwall was convicted in Virginia on five counts of soliciting sex from boys and girls over the internet.

Republican city councilman Mark Harris, who is described as a “good military man” and “church goer,” was convicted of repeatedly having sex with an 11-year-old girl and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Republican businessman Jon Grunseth withdrew his candidacy for Minnesota governor after allegations surfaced that he went swimming in the nude with four underage girls, including his daughter.

Republican campaign worker, police officer and self-proclaimed reverend Steve Aiken was convicted of having sex with two underage girls.

Republican director of the “Young Republican Federation” Nicholas Elizondo molested his 6-year old daughter and was sentenced to six years in prison.

Republican president of the New York City Housing Development Corp. Russell Harding pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography on his computer.

Republican benefactor of conservative Christian groups, Richard A. Dasen Sr., was found guilty of raping a 15-year old girl. Dasen, 62, who is married with grown children and several grandchildren, has allegedly told police that over the past decade he paid more than $1 million to have sex with a large number of young women.

Republican Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the rape of children in Iraqi prisons in order to humiliate their parents into providing information about the anti-American insurgency. See excerpt of one prisoner’s report here and his full report here.

and does that question even have an answer? But more importantly- is it necessary to know when debating abortion? My answers are – we’ll never know, probably not and no.

I told Jovial in comments that when is a zygote a person is a moot question. I should have explained it in more detail. So here goes.

When a zygote is no longer just a clump of cells doesn’t matter at all in the abortion argument. It is a red herring thrown out as a distraction.

In any situation except for pregnancy, we allow people the freedom to choose to risk their own health, happiness and life in order to save the life of another. We do not force people to donate blood, or tissue, or kidneys. We do not require people to risk their lives to save another or face legal ramifications. We do not jail people who don’ step in front of a bullet for someone else, or throw themselves into traffic to push someone out of the way of a speeding bus. We don’t have a draft for the military (yet), or for the police force or fire department either. They are people who have chosen to risk risk their life for the benefit of others. We don’t even force parents to donate blood or tissue or kidney or bone marrow to their own dying child- the parents get to choose if that is a risk they want to take.

It is up to each individual to decide if risking their life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is worth saving another person.

But not when it comes to pregnancy, though the situation is not any different than forcing someone to give a kidney to someone else. It doesn’t matter if you think that it is a clump of cells or a baby from the moment the sperm hits the egg, because it is up to the person who is risking their life, liberty and happiness who gets to decide to take the risk to save a life (or carry a life in this case).

I know, this is a modern country and the risk of dying from pregnancy has been drastically reduced. But there is still a risk. There is also a risk in having an abortion. The only person who can make that choice, who can choose which risk they want to take, is the person who will suffer the effects of that choice.

Everyday a large number of women choose to take that risk and others don’t. Some women have easy pregnancies. Some (me included) do not. Some women want children so badly that there is no risk they wouldn’t take. Some don’t want children (or more children- me included) and would rather risk the consequences of an abortion than a pregnancy and motherhood. That so many women choose to take that risk everyday does not negate the risk.

Now I know what some of you are thinking- a woman decides to have sex, if she didn’t want to get pregnant she shouldn’t have sex. Except that sex is a biological drive, and if women weren’t meant to have sex except to reproduce, then women would only have orgasms when they are ovulating. We also have a biological urge to eat, yet when someone gets food poisoning we don’t blame them for having a failure of discipline. If we eat so many times a day over the course of our lives, the likelihood of getting food poisoning at some point is pretty high. Same thing is true of sex and pregnancy, though only very lucky people get sex three times a day.

So the chances are that even with birth control, most women will get pregnant at some time in their lives. When that happens it is up to the woman to decide if risking her life, her health, her economic status and her liberty are worth the risk of having a child. When that clump of cells becomes a child is not the real issue, who gets the choice to take the risk is.