Women's Rights Blogging: One Late Term Abortion, Women's Reproductive Rights Debate Over At BlogHer's Guide for Women Bloggers

Women's Rights Blogging: One Late Term Abortion, Women's Reproductive Rights Debate Over At BlogHer's Guide for Women Bloggers

Hi,

I could have chosen to stay out of it, again.

But transformation of the planet is at stake and I'm choosing to step up the part I'm playing to help that along.

Two heart-rending shares over at BlogHer pulled me in. It started with Morra's post on the April 18th's United States Supreme Court decision to ban late-term abortion with no provision for the health of the mother.

I first read Morra Aaron's reference to a husband's and father's anguish. Then I read Health and Wellness contributing editor Ronni Bennett's account of her personal abortion experience, her choice, back when.

Then I read the rest of the thread.

And this is what I had to say:

I'm seeing this thread late.

Thank you, Ronni, for sharing your personal story. You could easily have argued on an intellectual level rather than with open, sharing heart and splitting gut.

Your account of what women were forced to go through before winning freedom to their own reproductive rights is a reminder of why it's so important to not lose sight of what's at stake.

Reproductive rights are central to the freedom of half of the population of humanity on Earth on a personal, life-long level. If even some women don't understand the importance of, and stand up for the right of all women to choose, irrespective of personal morals, how can men be expected to 'take care of us'?

Ronni Bennett said:
Men and women bring different sensibilities and attitudes to many issues. I have always believed society benefits from including and weighing these gender differences in public debate. But abortion is where I get radical.

Until a man is capable of giving birth and/or every man is forced by law to both financially support and participate in the gestation and raising of every child he fathers, and such law is enforced without exception (a permanent ankle tracking device for those who run comes to mind) no man has a right to discuss abortion, let alone to vote on it.

No one can convince me that pregnancy, birth and the choice to abort or not are anything but women’s domain, exclusively.

If God/Life allows choice and it is choice that allows us to each create our reality, which man, or woman, dares to take my, or any other woman's, right to choose, away?

I don't aspire to 'find heaven' in the sky somewhere. We each create our individual and collective heaven/hell right where we are. In this process of creating heaven on Earth, I insist that every woman, and only the woman, has the final say in whether a child is born via her own body, or not. I'm sorry but I'm constantly amazed that there is even a debate on this issue.

My husband to this day 'jokes' that he should sue the doctor who tied my tubes after the birth of my second child since the doctor didn't first seek his 'consent'. And I never jokingly ask him what say he thinks he had in the matter.

Billions of women continue to live in poverty across the globe and one common denominator amongst them is their inability to exercise freedom in their reproductive right choices, be it under the guise of cultural, religious or other factors.

The simple matter is that a woman's economic freedom is intrinsically and inescapably bound up with her freedom to choose whether she will have children or not.

Taking away a woman's right to that basic choice is not some high-minded spiritual or moral issue, although that serves to cloak it very well. Keeping the majority of this planet's women firmly in their place economically and socially is the true intent.

Slavery is alive and well for the majority of women on this planet and will continue to be until every woman, everywhere, has access to free, effective, safe contraceptives and when chosen, free, effective safe abortion facilities. This is only one, but a very basic, important aspect of establishing women's freedom planetary-wide.

As the Maroons in my own country, led by Nanny, Jamaica's only female national hero to date, knew, and as all revolutionaries and freedom enablers around the world throughout history knew and know, freedom is either total or it is something else entirely.

You can read more of this Women's Reproductive Rights Issue at BlogHer.

Until next time, Namaste,


Angela.

Women's Rights Blogging: One Late Term Abortion, Women's Reproductive Rights Debate Over At BlogHer's Guide for Women Bloggers