Most importantly, or disturbingly, I realized that this is what a lot of people think being a woman means: being sacrificial. Giving up your own self, your own goals and beliefs for someone else’s agenda; reducing your body to little more than fertile ground. Spilling your own blood for some vague greater “good.” Perhaps that’s why the archetype of the Virgin, of immaculate conception, is so pervasive in our culture: she wasn’t given a choice, and yet.
But I was given a choice and I chose myself. I chose self-preservation over sacrifice; I can’t say what anyone else would have done in my position because I am myself and couldn’t have done differently. I chose to do what’s best for me so that if and when I’m ready to be a mother, I can actually be a good one. Just because you can have a child doesn’t mean you should.
And I know there are people who will always see that as selfish, but to me it’s just the opposite.
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The World has so much beauty, if only we look.
At a recent protest in favor of reproductive rights in Richmond VA, protesters assembled on the Virginia Capitol’s steps. Police, many in riot gear, demanded that they disperse or be arrested. 33 people refused to leave the steps, and were arrested.
Top picture: The 33 arrestees, shortly before police moved in.
Bottom picture: Protester, identified as Mara Hyman, faces down cops in riot gear.
[Pictures from Style Weekly’s facebook page. Full article on styleweekly.com.]
(Source: andrewtsks)
“Woman: Don’t Let Them Come At You With Fables. Your Body Is Yours”
International Women’s Day, Santiago
MUJER QUE NO TE VENGAN CON CUENTOS. TU CUERPO ES TUYO!!
1. How many years do you consider to be a fair prison term for a woman who has an abortion?
2. How many years for a doctor who performs one?
3. What other punishments would be suitable for such a breach of law: a fine, community service, submission to regular pregnancy tests, for instance?
4. Will the punishments be greater the second time around? How else will you handle recidivism?
5. Where will the state get the money necessary to prosecute one-third of all American women for this crime?
6. 42% of women who have an abortion have incomes below 100% of the federal poverty level (that’s $10,830 for a single woman with no children, for those of who are counting). When women are forced to have children they cannot afford to raise, will those children become wards of the state or new Medicaid recipients? Where will the state find the money necessary to support them?
7. Will you be willing to watch your wife die in front of you when her life is threatened by an unsafe pregnancy that no one is allowed to do anything about? Your daughter?
8. Will rapists have to pay child support to women who are forced to have their children?
9. Will the child of incest be in the custody of its rapist father or the father’s teenaged daughter, his mother? In fact, 18% of women who have an abortion in America are teenagers. Will they be required to drop out of high school to raise their children or will the state provide free childcare?
10. Will upper-class white women be prosecuted as vigorously as other women who have abortions?
10.b. You are aware that upper-class white women have abortions, aren’t you?
