Tag Archives: Blog for Choice

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Blog For Choice Day 2010

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Question:  What does “Trust Women” mean to you?

“Trust Women” means that we should trust women to make the choice that’s right for them, their bodies, their families, and their situations–even if we disagree with them. It means that we should trust the women who may have an accidental pregnancy and choose to carry to term even if others would say that there is no way that things will turn out well. It also means that even if a woman and her family can afford (in ways financial and otherwise) to carry a pregnancy to term, that she doesn’t need to. This means that our bodies are ours, and it is not up to anyone else to tell us what we must do with them–whether that be friends, family, doctors, strangers, or the government. They can offer suggestions, but it is up to the woman in question to make the final decision.

But it also means that we need to trust people, in general.

It is also relevant when it comes to sex and birth control. It is hard for us in this country to understand that teenagers will and do have sex–hence the widespread teaching of abstinence only sexual education. We need to understand that safe sex is especially crucial when one starts having sex and studies have shown that people are more likely to use one or more forms of contraception/STD control when they know what exists and how effective they are. We are more likely to be able to trust people when we know that they are making an educated decision–which sometimes will include sexual activities without the use of contraceptives and/or barrier methods. So why not educate all the people possible, so we know that no matter what decision they make about their reproductive health, it is an educated one, based on knowing the facts about birth/STD control and mitigating them with the facts of the situation?

Previous years of Blog for Choice:
2009 (Didn’t participate)
2008
2007

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Blogging for Choice

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Blog for Choice Day

Question: What is the importance of voting pro-choice?

On the blog Pam’s House Blend, blogger Autumn Sandeen mentions the concept of a “deal breaker” in the next presidential election:

What is the issue that I demand a candidate to have said “magic words” in support of to get my vote?

My issue is the right to choose. I will not and cannot consciously vote for anyone who does not support a woman’s right to reproductive choice, including abortion.
Now why is that important to me?

  • I want the children of my generation and their children, and so forth and so on to have the same ability to choose that I have today, if not more freedom of choice.
  • Women are not stupid. They know what an abortion is. They are fully grown human beings, capable of deciding whether the circumstances are right for them to give another human being life.
  • Abstinence only education is a joke. It doesn’t work. This study proves what many have always thought.
  • I know that comprehensive sex education works. My health teacher in tenth grade, who taught us high schoolers about sex, may have been a steadfast Christian, but she still held a whole class period where we got to look at and learn about birth control methods. Abstinence may have still been the focus, but we were told about the options should we choose sex of any kind. A study just came out that agrees with me on just how well it works.
  • Queer children should learn about their options when it comes to having (safe) sex. A heteronormative sex education program cannot teach them this very well. All sexual education teachers should be required to include information for their queer students in their classes.
  • Queer women have an equal stake in reproductive choice. They also have children, who may someday have children as well.
  • The fact that 87% of counties in the United States do not have an abortion provider . That is ridiculous. Just another way a woman’s right to choose is limited in this here United States.
  • All people must know that no means no, and how important it is for sex (of any kind) to be safe, sane, and consensual. Period. No gray rape, no question of whether a woman has consented or not. I am for enthusiastic consent by all parties involved in a sexual encounter, as written about here and here. Not just heterosex, but all sex.
  • All rape is unacceptable and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
  • My body is mine. It belongs to me and not to anyone else. Not to any government, not to a church, and not to any potential partner. I am fiercely protective of what things are mine, and this is one of them. My body, my choice.

It is important because I am a woman and so is 51% of the rest of the world.

Reproductive choice is an essential human right, not to be limited by race, class, age, upbringing, location, sexual orientation/preferences, gender, or sex. It is just as important to me as it is to a mother of five in the Sudan or a Japanese lesbian.

This is why I blog for choice.

P.S. This is the second year I’ve done this. The first year exists on this blog.