Let's Talk About Abortions! Yay!

So I was poking around Feministe about ten minutes ago and found this. I had about two thoughts. The simple one was, "Samantha Bee is made of win." The one I'm going to talk about went something like this: "AAAAARGGGHH L. E. SMASH!" (Told you I was violent on the inside.)

What is it about anti-choice buttwaffles that makes me angry enough to punch babies and kick puppies? Honestly, I'm not sure what about them pushes me quite so far into Capslock Harry territory, but I do know why I get angry in the first place.

My paternal family is pretty solidly Irish Catholic, and throughout my childhood took a much bigger role than my maternal family in raising me. (This might have something to do with the fact that my maternal family largely migrated from Jersey to Florida while I was not yet a hatchling.) I've lived with my older sister through two of her pregnancies and developed love and emotions for one-month-old fetuses in her belly. I don't think I need to go on much farther here; the point is that I don't want to get an abortion ever. I wouldn't want my future daughter to get an abortion ever. I wish there honestly was never any need for any woman ever to get an abortion. (This fantasy could perhaps maybe happen someday if we could get some affordable birth control and comprehensive sex-ed already for the love of all that ever was or could be holy.) Technically, yes, I'm pro-life. Incidentally, this also means I'm anti-war, anti-death penalty, and basically anti-anything that involves a human life being taken away.

But you know what? I'm open-minded enough to know that my experience is not everyone's experience. My personality is not everyone's personality. My circumstances are not everyone's circumstances. This is why I'm pro-choice. I'm not pro-murdering-infants. I'm not pro-punching-pregnant-women-in-the-stomach. I'm not pro-mandatory-abrotions-for-everyone. I'm pro-choice.

I'm pro-choice because I can't pretend to know what everyone who considers an abortion is going through. I'm pro-choice because there's no real definition of when a fetus stops being a clump of parasitic cells and starts being a person. If they find that line, then I'll absolutely agree to no abortions past it, but until then I'm not about to call someone a murderer for doing something that could be equivalent to swatting a fly or using antibacterial soap. I'm pro-choice because I don't think, when a teenage girl gets pregnant because the condom broke, that the only option should be to shrug and say, "Well, there goes your youth." I'm pro-choice because having sex does not warrant a punishment, and a human child shouldn't be seen as one. Ever, by anyone.

As a white girl with enough money to buy condoms and birth control, and a decent enough education to know how to use them so they work, I choose to avoid having an abortion unless there is some kind of horrible emergency. That, right-wing wankers who make me froth about the mouth, is what pro-choice means.

(Fun fact: I wanted my next post to be about how David Bowie et al turned me pseudo-gay, but this came out instead. Don't worry, I'll get around to that too. Probably. Maybe.)