Blog for Choice

Today is the 35th anniversary of Roe V Wade.
From wiki: According to the Roe decision, most laws against abortion in the United States violated a constitutional right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
They were right 35 years ago and they are still right today. It should be my choice to have a baby or not. People who do not know me or my circumstances should have no say in what I should do if I become pregnant.
My friend Angela made a great point this morning in her blog. She wrote that being pro choice does not mean you are pro abortion. I personally do not believe in using abortion as a form of birth control, although I have known someone who did. In my head I see those right to lifers screaming about saving all of the unborn, but honestly, would you rather she be able to keep getting pregnant over and over and that the governement should force her to have all of those children? Do you think someone whose heart has been so hardened by the life they have lived that forcing a child into their lives would improve the quality of it? What about the child's quality of life?
I remember reading a letter-to-the-editor in one of my teen magazines probably 20 years ago now. It was from a 19 year old girl. In it she wrote that she wished her mother had aborted her. Think about that. She truly wished she had never been born. She wasn't just having a bad day or a bad week. She had never known happiness, or love.
Her mother gave birth to her in a bathroom and had stuck her in a trash bag and threw her away. She wrote 'unfortunately' someone found her. She was rejected by her mother, bounced from grandparents who openly told her she was unwanted into foster care system which felt no need to make her feel loved, just give her the basics of food, clothes and shelter. She was now out of the system attempting to piece together a life from nothing. She had never been loved or wanted or cared for in any meaningful way. She thought of suicide daily.
I think about her often, especially when Roe v Wade is being threatened. She is surely not the only person to be raised as unwanted, to be living a half a life in our good Christian society.
So to those who came before me who had the emotional fortitude to forge a new trail all those years ago, to those who fought for my right to choose, I will be forever grateful.