My abortion story, and my right to choose
ESSAY - I had two abortions years ago in the first trimesters, and today the only regret I have, is that I didn’t speak up sooner about what the right to choose means to me...
When we talk about advocacy for women, the only choice to make is “choice” — and it should never be exploited for political purposes.
North Dakota Republican State Representative Kathy Hawken said it best: “one of the key tenets of the Republican Party is personal responsibility. I am personally pro-life, but I vote pro-choice, because you can’t make that decision for anyone else. You just can’t.”
North Carolina joins the ‘war on women’
This state-by-state, spiteful “war on women” campaign to restrict women’s healthcare choices made it’s way to my home in North Carolina recently. The North Carolina Senate Judiciary Committee unexpectedly added six sweeping anti-abortion measures to an “anti-Sharia” law in a deceptive attempt to shut down all but one Planned Parenthood clinic in the state. The bill parrots almost verbatim what is currently under consideration in places like Texas and around the country — bills which all seek to force abortion clinics to meet very strict and expensive standards, or to close their doors. To add insult to injury, they’re calling this bill in North Carolina, “The Family, Faith, and Freedom Protection Act.” They have the audacity to use language like “faith,” “freedom,” and “protection” in a bill that’s deeply rooted in the worst parts of patriarchal pathology, sexism, and in the case of the “Sharia” bill, Islamaphobia.
When I heard about the bill, I rushed to join several pro-choice allies and friends to protest HB 695 at the North Carolina State Legislature. Our presence didn’t seem to matter to state lawmakers at all. Despite the outcry and outrage of more than 600 people, 29 State Senators, 27 men and 2 women, passed the bill anyway. It’s now off to the Republican controlled House where there are enough votes for it to succeed, though hopefully the Republicans in control will heed their peer Kathy Hawken in North Dakota and remember that they can be pro-life personally but vote pro-choice politically.
If not, they will force abortion services underground, which jeopardizes women’s safety, and prove once more that they don’t see women as whole human-beings or value their right to exercise freedom of choice, any more than they value the cows and pigs that they send to the slaughter house.
Either way, pro-choice advocates will be there and we will remember this moment during the next election cycle.
Crystal Hayes is a mother, a reproductive justice health advocate, social justice worker, social work educator, and occasional blogger. Crystal can be reached via Twitter @motherjustice.
