pro choice

Full disclosure: This is what I believe. 

Where it starts for a woman

As women, we start having doctors appointments pretty young. Often as teenagers. And let’s be blunt for those men who don’t understand. When we go to a gynaecologist, we get naked and have a hospital gown on, then get on the exam table, put our feet up, and skooch down toward the edge of table. Then the doctor puts a metal device in our vagina and opens it so to get a good view of the cervix and then takes a swab to get a tissue sample for testing. That is a pap smear and it is recommended we get those annually. Every year. For our entire life…

So yeah, our relationship with our gynaecologist is intimate and respected.

Now imagine you have a different doctor every time? Imagine the anxiety this type of procedure can bring up? Sometimes to get through, we have to just gut out that whole procedure. It isn’t easy. It’s scary and stressful.

If we are fortunate we are able to select a doctor that we trust and see that same doctor year after year. Even if the doctor themselves isn’t the same, the facility and support staff are familiar and that familiarity helps to ease our anxiety.

Through the many times we see our doctor for normal checkups and to treat normal issues, like UTI’s or vaginal yeast infections, we form a relationship. It’s often our doctor that helps us decide our birth control options. Our doctor shares pamphlets and knowledge and experience and explains our choices. Our doctor knows us and knows our history.

When a women gets pregnant, regardless of the situation, she wants to be able to discuss her choices and options with a trusted doctor that already knows her. The restrictions of our normal doctors not being able to preform an abortion and the fact that abortion clinics are still being targeted by protesters and are not covered by insurance at all, make the whole conversation very uncomfortable. A women is now having to go to a strange facility, talk intimate medical and personal details with a doctor that is a stranger, and thus makes this hard situation much more difficult.  

Desensitised

When a women has no option but impersonal care, we become desensitized to our body. We compartmentalize in our mind in order to get through the uncomfortable.

Some women avoid the anxiety of the impersonal nature created and thus are never explained all the birth control options or what all is happening in her body.

Nurturing the relationship our young women have with their body and how it works from the beginning with wellness centers that ease us into the first experience of a pap smear and help us understand appropriate touch would go along way into preventing unwanted pregnancy. 

when does life start? 

This has no place in the debate about medical procedures.  No one knows.  We can postulate and theorise, we can believe and have faith. But we don't know.  This is not defensible and this is not what policy should include.  

Body Freedom

The medical procedure should not be regulated by the government. People are allowed to do all kinds of things to their bodies going to legitimate doctors, with legitimate licences and while some of things are elective and aren’t covered by insurance, we are allowed. Those doctors selling those procedures even offer payment plans or financing.

People get nose jobs, boob jobs, tummy tucks, chin implants, penis implants, tattooed makeup, etc etc. The medical profession has their own oversight and research to do these procedures with the least risk and with much training.

Government does not need to tell people what is morally right or wrong about any of these elective procedures. It’s a free country. You do you. If there is a demand for certain services there will be doctors that are willing to do them.

If it’s acceptable to get eggs and sperm inserted in my vagina, then it should be acceptable to get them taken out.

The decision is personal and the reasons to decide are not one size fits all. These are complex emotional decisions. Decisions that men and women do discuss, but they aren’t calling their senator or congressperson.

Where it ends for a woman

She will talk with her partner, her family, her friends, her partner, her doctor, her clergy, her therapist, her counsellor, her local women’s organisation, heck even her HR person at her job. She is going to be discussing her situation, the specific details that landed in her here, and she will discussing it with people that know her. They are best suited for this conversation and will be able to help her weigh the pros and cons. She will be thinking about her life, her financial ability to care and provide for a child.

She can choose for herself.