However, I’ve read enough heart-breaking testimonies of women who were poor, got pregnant, panicked, aborted and spent the rest of their lives regretting it and seeing that they had other choices if only they tried to look for help. If the money that’s been poured in to support abortion providers (from the government and private donations, etc) and various pro-choice organizations were used to create a sustainable system to provide help to women in crisis pregnancies, I can bet you a 100$ the abortion rates would go down immediately.

BUT I believe that all children should be wanted and loved. What sort of life will a child have if its parents don’t want it or love it? If he or she will be abused and neglected because the woman gave birth despite herself? I worked with abused children for two years until I burned out because my heart broke for them every day. Have you listened to a 10-year-old cry and say he wished his mama never had him? Have you heard the story of how an 11-year-old was beaten with a wrench until he was a mass of blood and bruises on the floor? Have you sat at the emergency room with an 8-year-old girl who told you she’d been sexually abused by a stranger in the woods, only to have her later confide that it may have been her father and her brother?

Aside from that, what about the life of the woman? I was fairly “lucky” that pregnancy’s lasting effects on my body were a ruined digestive tract and a pouch of extra skin on my abdomen. And the inability to deny the underlying anxiety disorder and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome that had gone ignored for several years. Many women aren’t so lucky. If a woman is forced to carry a child and decides to give it up for adoption because she can’t handle raising it, she still has to deal with the aftermath of pregnancy and birth on her body. Let’s not forget postpartum depression. I had that, too, though it went undiagnosed. A poor woman with no support system who may already have an untreated mental illness and then ends up with postpartum depression may just end up killing herself because she doesn’t even know enough to seek treatment. Hell, I have a Master’s degree in Psychology, and I didn’t recognize that I needed help until after the fact! No one even thinks about these things when trying to control what another woman does with her body.

I can’t wait for the day that no woman gets pregnant unless she wants to be pregnant and can afford to raise her child in a loving home. I can’t wait for the day when medical science has advanced to the point where no woman will die because of pregnancy complications. I can’t wait for the day when men stop raping women. I can’t wait for the day when every woman has access to birth control and has been educated about its proper use. I can’t wait for the day when all babies are wanted, loved, and can be provided for.

Until that day, abortion needs to remain a viable, legal option. And that is why I am pro-choice.

I am a mother of 3, have seen the beating heart on a monitor, have felt the kicks and thumps, have caught my newborn baby in my hands. And I am pro-choice. Because I honor life.

I think “pro-life feminist” is an oxymoron of epic proportions. But then again I don’t believe there are really “pro-life” people, just anti-choice, anti-women, and pro-pregnancy-as-a-punishment-for-sex-you-dirty-slut-should-have-kept-your-legs-closed-now-shut-up-and-do-what-the-men-tell-you-to But pro-life? Nope, rarely do they even acknowledge the life right in front of them if said life has a vagina and a voice.

While I believe every woman should have a personal belief about whether one believes in abortion for ONESELF, to infringe upon other woman’s right to choose because it infringes upon your own personal belief is overstepping. An abortion is a hard choice to make and for someone who’s not in that person’s shoes to judge and be self rightous isn’t really supporting, it’s cramming your personal belief down someone’s throat probably at their most vulnerable time.

Some have commented that life begins at conception. Actually no one really knows when life beings. Scientists are still trying to figure that one out. Maybe to you, life begins at conception, but to someone else, it starts at birth. To someone else, it begins at the first heartbeat, or maybe an ultrasound… again it’s all out personal belief, but that’s not a basis to ban abortion because YOU believe life starts at conception.

What would be worse is to not give a woman the option, So she’s forced to have a child that she doesn’t want or doesn’t have resource to have for one reason or another, and then the child will be in a home where he or she is not wanted or even worse resented. So what then, will be your answer?