Wampeters come and wampeters go

So, lots of abortion posts lately, I know.  But here’s the thing - I am committed to reproductive justice, and will be for the duration of my career, whether or not it ends up being my primary focus.  As a 1L, I am already on the exec board of Law Students for Reproductive Justice.  And while I realize that this issue didn’t become SUCH a big deal to me until after I started having sex regularly, the fact that a lot of people don’t ever think about it (especially men people) and trust their unexamined gut feeling that has nothing to do with the realities of reproductive healthcare and almost everything to do with tacitly accepted unjust cultural messages is really troubling to me.  I dream of a day where I don’t have to explain why being anything other than pro-choice is basically unconscionable for a rational person who is even remotely informed to people that I am/want to be sleeping with (the informing bit usually does the trick - but this is a hugely significant political issue these days so it’s frustrating that I need to lay out the most basic arguments).

I don’t want there to be more abortions.  The ideal of a pro-choicer is that everyone has the means and education to make the choice beforehand and effectively use birth control.  A society that embraces reproductive justice is a society that has less abortions because of access to sex ed, birth control, and health care, so being anti-choice ends up supporting a system where there are more abortions.  And outlawing abortion doesn’t decrease their number, it just increases the danger and death toll.

If you feel that your own abortion would be murdering your child, that’s your business, just as long as you recognize my right and the right of every other woman to make that moral determination for ourselves.

And if you have a gut feeling that abortion is wrong and women should be discouraged or forbidden from having them, take some time to inform yourself before letting that belief become entrenched.

Pretty much all the other points I want to make are made much more eloquently in this article I’m linking and the last one I quoted, so I think it’s time to go to bed.