I Know This Will Piss Anna Off To No End, But She's My Friend So She'll Respect My Opinion

Abortion is a touchy subject. And today I was reading an editorial in the paper that just rubbed me raw.

Do I believe that life begins at conception? Absolutely. Do I believe that that life is realized at conception? No. Sometimes God, that life, or a woman's body realizes that it will not survive, or it is not meant to be and the woman miscarries, which is called spontaneous abortion. And sometimes, that woman, with or maybe without God's input decides that the best thing she can do is abort that life. I do not in any way believe that it is a light or easy decision to make.

I do believe that abortion is a woman's choice. I do NOT believe that an institution has the right to tell me as a woman what I am allowed to do with my body, and any progeny I may eventually provide if they have no qualms about keeping certain groups of people, including women, oppressed in this country. I feel the same way towards abortion as I do towards the Patriot Act. If they are going to take this right to myself and my body away from me now, what rights will be taken away from me next? The right to have a profession? To have Land? To vote? To color my hair? Whom or when I'm allowed to marry?

My next point of contention is simple. I have seen friends and family go through teenage pregnancy. And it's a difficult journey. But lucky for them, they HAD friends and family to trust to help them through it. Some other girls do not have that luck. I would rather they have clean clinics and staff that can council them into good and healthy decisions than resorting to (ever see Dirty Dancing?) a "guy with a dirty knife and a folding table." We need things like comprehensive sex education in schools, decision training for young people, and to be open to discussing problems with our youth, not deciding things for them.

Making abortion illegal isn't going to stop abortion from happening. All it is going to do is put bodies, people, and rights at risk. Abortion is not the problem. It is the results of a deeper problem in our society.

My position is NOT that abortion is wonderful and we should all suscribe to it. I'm not saying the thought of abortion makes me do cartwheels and break out into a song and dance groove. It is something that cannot be stopped by something so ineffectual as a law.

Susan Lenfestey: Views from both sides of the great divide on abortion