40 Years and We're Still Fighting for This?

Wow. Over a month (coming up on two actually) without a post on this blog.

To be honest, I got a little overwhelmed, feeling like I had to write about "Important Issues" on this blog. I often wanted to write but was afraid that my topics weren't feminist enough, and I found myself not writing at all, and feeling guilty for not keeping up the blog.

I decided to take a break and start a new blog, a blog where I could write about anything and everything, whenever I felt like it. And I really enjoy it. I don't feel restricted by a theme or topic. I think eventually, I may just merge this blog into the new one, since writing about feminism fits pretty easily under the "writing about anything and everything" umbrella. But I'm not ready to let this one go just yet. So here we go with the first post!

I was going to write about this piece, A Letter to the Guy Who Harassed Me Outside the Bar, because it's awesome. And you should absolutely read it. Everyone should read it. But then I found this: Fifteen Women (and a Few Men) on Aborting.

Today is the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and abortion rights are still very much (maybe even more so?) in danger. In my home state, our governor and legislators are actively trying to shut down Mississippi's only abortion clinic. My Facebook feed today was full of women (women I'm so proud of, by the way) standing outside the clinic in Jackson with signs saying, "This clinic stays open!" and "You trust me with an assault rifle but not my own uterus?" Diane Derzis, the owner of our clinic in Jackson, said, "...while Roe v. Wade is still the law of the land, it is totally inaccessible in Mississippi." (For more on this, check out this video from MSNBC.)

Photo courtesy of Cristen Hemmins, an amazing advocate
in Mississippi.

With abortion rights still very much in question, I think it's important for women (and men) to share their stories and experiences, and that's what this article does. The piece is full of short stories about all types of women who have all types of feelings about their abortions. Some women just didn't want to have children. Others felt they had no choice. This particular quote broke my heart, "I was made that there wasn't some kind of support system that would allow me to raise the child not in total poverty." (BTW, did anyone notice that in Obama's inaugural speech, when he mentioned a person in poverty, he specifically said she? Because he did. Because that's accurate. Women and children in poverty, often because of the lack of support for mothers in this country.)

What I love about this piece is that it's not full of emotional stories. Or, I should say, only emotional stories. One woman simply write about the difficulty of paying for the abortion. The point of the article is that abortions are complicated and the lives of the women who have them are complicated. There are lots of reasons to have an abortion. For lots of women, abortions are the right decision. And I think the best reasoning I've read in a long time for why abortion should remain a legal and viable choice for women to make for themselves came in story #9, written by a woman who had an early abortion and then had children later in life:

"Being pregnant is like having a parasite literally sucking the life out of you. You should be totally onboard."