Sure, I Support the Right to Choose

I write a lot of columns which, in one form or another, fall under the feminist label. Safety for women, leaving domestic abuse, that’s my bread and butter, if you will.

This means I’m by default a supporter of the health and reproductive issues young women face, but not for the reasons one might think. I most certainly believe it can be deadly for a woman to be anchored to an abusive man by children.

I know for a fact a great number of women have turned a blind eye to abuse of their children by a new partner, as I’ve covered story after story of their murders. 80% of child deaths in the US involve at least one parent of the child.

I believe that having a baby when you’re already living in poverty can nearly be a death sentence for some women, just unleashing the worst of the predators to come along and promise them everything, then deliver nothing but misery and pain.

For those women, reproductive rights are not some sort of special privilege, they’re a necessity, and it’s inhumane to force people to live shitty lives, simply because of my own daughter’s death, and my inability to have more children.

Although I would love to be a mother again, to have a baby to love and nurture, to be a member of the PTA, or be a cheer mom, that won’t be happening for me. Some things just aren’t a part of our destiny, or so I’m told by well-intentioned friends at all the appropriate times.

Rationally, I understand that a thousand teen mothers could give birth today, right here in this city, and not a single infant would magically be my child. Just as the married couple down the street wouldn’t ask for my opinion on their third autistic child, I have no say the teen mothers decisions either. Neither of them will bring my daughter back, nor replace her, so why would I involve myself in the right to choose for those mothers?

Many women in my position are simply outraged at the thought of a person “blessed” with a pregnancy, then choosing termination instead of adoption. I’m not. I know that none of those babies up for adoption would be given to me; I’m single, broke, and have a checkered past.

It doesn’t make me angry when women who are in dire straits choose termination. It makes me sigh with relief that I won’t see some potential child trafficked, or beaten by a stepfather, or murdered by a mother with PPD. I don’t work myself into a tizzy about life beginning at conception, because no matter when it actually begins, it will never be my child.

If it were me, if I could somehow wake up and be pregnant one day, would I terminate? Absolutely not. I know that I would find a way, because I wasn’t ready for a child when I had my daughter. I was far from ready, but I loved her with the power of a thousand hearts, and never thought of any resolution that didn’t involve me being her mother.

Just because becoming a mother was the right choice for me, it doesn’t mean it’s the right choice for all women. Just because I cannot have children today doesn’t negate another womans right to choose what is best for her. There isn’t a single part of the Vinn diagram where the two circumstances overlap, meaning it’s none of my fucking business. My own tragedies and circumstances should never have the ability to overshadow someone else’s life.

So, yes, I support reproductive rights for women, absolutely across the board. Not because I would ever need the services some women do, but because no matter the outcome of their choice, I won’t be a mother again. I would simply be forcing a woman and child to live some hellscape out of moral superiority, or belief thereof, and nothing about that sits right with me.

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This post was previously published on April Hawkins, Ask A Bitchface.

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