It’s the 35th anniversary of the U.S.A. Supreme Court in the case of Roe v. Wade, a decision which allowed the legalisation of terminations of pregnancy in the U.S.A. on what is widely viewed as essentially a technicality, which is why the case is still so important. There is no Federal legislation decriminalising abortion, merely a court decision which could be overturned either by the court itself or by new legislation. The right to abortion in the USA is a fragile thing, and that is why it is so important to vote pro-choice, especially in this Federal election year.
Women in other countries also need to ensure that they vote pro-choice to protect the right of women to control their own bodies. In many other countries around the world the situation is similar (although perhaps not so precarious): laws have been passed which allow legal abortions on technicalities (e.g. a requirement that a doctor or doctors sign a declaration that the woman would be psychologically damaged by going to a full term pregnancy, and there are many doctors who believe that any woman forced to carry an unwanted foetus to term would be psychologically damaged, therefore it is simple to get such a doctor’s signature). Are there any states, provinces or countries which have fully decriminalised abortion and allow a woman to make her own choice without having to have that choice monitored and judged by officials? There are still many jurisdictions which continue to criminalise abortion entirely.
I firmly believe that no woman should be forced to bear a child that she feels unable to want, and neither should any woman be forced to abort a child that she does want. Women are capable of making their own choices about the medical and surgical options they choose to use on their own bodies, and nobody else should constrain those choices to suit their purposes rather than the best interests of the pregnant woman.
The official Blog for Choice Day website at NARAL will have a list of all the posts from bloggers who signed up to Blog for Choice. Check them out. If you come across a really wonderful post, please let us know about it in comment below.
Mind you, they’ve limited the field a bit. If you blog under a pseudonym that is only one word, they won’t accept you because they’ve set up the registration form so it has a compulsory double name field to take first name and last name, instead of just having a single name field. And why do they need to know the street address of bloggers? So, if you have Blogged for Choice but decided not to register with NARAL because you are pseudonymous and don’t want to give them those details, please do leave a link in comments below.
Update: Many Bloggers for Choice have concentrated on pointing out that abortion is merely part of the scheme of reproductive justice, which works for “the complete physical, mental, spiritual, political, economic, and social well-being of women and girls”. Jessica at the NARAL blog gives some excellent links to posts discussing the concept of holistic reproductive justice: Commemorate Roe, but work for reproductive justice
shakesville
tekanji
tigtog
unofficially, many of us blogged for choice today. and some of us are Elderbloggers–myself http://www.alittleredhen.com and my alaskan friend,
http://mayagranny.blogspot.com/.
there are so many reasons!
I like your condom amulets, naomi!
I also found these paragraphs from Maya’s Granny about anti-choicers to be right on the button:
[...] federal election last year explains why I didn’t want to do a post about voting. (I did write a brief post on Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog with a few links.) Here’s my Hoyden effort for last year’s Blog for Choice [...]
Great post from Helen at Surfdom and Cast Iron Balcony on abortion rights from an Australian perspective.