Who is abortion for? Recently, with the bills passed in Texas, abortion has become a hotly contested issue again as women’s rights to their bodies are once again challenged. If women can’t have the choice to choose abortion after 6 weeks, they are then forced to have the child regardless of their circumstances, which could be rape, incest, a birth anomaly, or the safety of the mother’s life. Some pro-life people say we should be thinking about the rights of the unborn child, but are they thinking about the safety of the mother? Or are they simply looking to control the narrative about what women can and can’t do? There are varying reasons why some are anti-choice and that may include: their religious beliefs, their political leanings, or simply pure misogyny.

On Facebook, a man commented that it’s not the baby’s fault that women decided to open their legs for a momentary pleasure while thinking they didn’t have to deal with the consequences of that act, completely denying that a man was also involved in that transaction. In that comment, what he is implying is that a woman is solely responsible for when she has sex, regardless of if she was raped, coerced, or unconscious. He is stating that women are responsible for their pleasure, while men are not. If this isn’t good old misogyny, I don’t know what is. I once had a talk with a man about abortion, where he got belligerently upset because I said that sometimes it’s a mistake and women need a choice. He, very red-faced, asked me if it was a mistake he decided to have his children instead of aborting them. Like really? Did you really just make a women’s issue that didn’t affect you at all about YOU?

And so I ask, who is abortion for? Let me tell you about my mother. My mother is a devout Christian who once chastised a young girl for having an abortion. She believes deeply in her faith and does not believe in abortion. She believes abortion is the act of killing a baby. However, when my mother was in her older years and pregnant with her 7th child, she thought about it. She THOUGHT about it. She decided not to go through with it, but she thought about it, and that’s who abortion is for. It’s a choice and and I’d hate to think what situation my mother would be in if she didn’t have that choice. Abortion is for everyone and everyone should have the option, regardless if they are going to choose it or not. For more often than not, even those that fight fiercely against it, like my mother, need it more than they care to express.

Photo by 🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič on Unsplash