Blog For Choice LOOK AWAY! But isn't that the problem right there in a nutshell?

How many years ago was it?
I know actually, how many years, how many months, how many days - I am not stupid and despite what I was told from the beginning, I have never been stupid.

I have been young, ignorant, unaware, overwhelmed and in over my head - struggling with the fallout of being sexually, physically and emotionally abused.

I spent too much time trying to find my value in what other people thought of me.
But I didn't know it at the time.

I thought that was what I was supposed to do, try and make other people happy no matter what it cost.

That is what I had been trained to do.

I have been pregnant when I didn't want to be.

And I made choices as to what to do about it, that were based on everything I knew about myself and all my experiences.

No one else could do that. No one else should do that.
The presumption that anyone else could or should, is about controlling and owning someone else's body and that is slavery.

Be it an individual who wants to do that or a church or the state.
And that is shameful.

I don't see abortions as shameful.

Private, yes.

Emotionally excoriating, yes.

But so have each of the times that I have chosen to have children.

Even if I had grown up in the most supportive of families and societies, with love and support and knowledge of risks and how to stay safe - even if I had been that woman - perhaps a woman like my daughters will grow up to be - even then -

the decisions about my body should be mine.

I'm glad it was, I will fight for it to be that way for other women now and in the future.