Class 10_29

The article, “Abortion, Vacuum Cleaners, and the Power Within”, bu Inga Muscio discusses her experience going through three abortions-two done the traditional way, and one done naturally/organically. While I admire her choice not to parent a child, I do wonder about her being responsible. I would think that after getting pregnant once, or even twice, one would learn to use birth control more carefully and regularly. I feel for her though and I would never want to go through the pain of an abortion. I was also very interested in hearing about an organic abortion. I have never heard of them before, and I wonder about the validity of them, and whether they actually work all the time. If so, I would wonder why more people don’t use these instead of going through the pain of a traditional abortion.

Going into politics, I was not surprised when doing research on the presidential candidates’ stances on abortion. Barack Obama strongly supports the pro-choice movement and believes that it is a woman’s choice what to do with her body. Barack Obama’s website has a specific webpage dedicated to women and women’s issues. He also wants to make birth control more widespread and easily accessible in order to prevent unwanted pregnancies. He also wants to promote sexual education and end discrimination preventing birth control. I strongly agree with Obama and believe that it is every woman’s choice. I see no problem with individual women being pro-life, but don’t take that choice and that option away from other women. It should not be anyone’s decision but a woman’s to have a baby.

On the other side of the road, McCain and Palin are staunchly against abortion. On their website, McCain pledges to nominate conservatives to the Supreme Court and overturn Roe v. Wade. He also wants to give funding and aid the pro-life supporters to continue to make abortion illegal. I cannot fully write how much this bothers me. Before last class I had no idea how strongly I believe in pro-choice. Now, reading McCain’s website makes me furious. The thought of trying to overturn Roe v. Wade and making abortion illegal is absolutely absurd. I think it is so unfair to promote something where a government has the right to make a decision for all women across the entire country. While I hope that it will never happen, it is such an unfair predicament. Again, while I can understand how people can be pro-life, there is no need to take away a woman’s choice. I cannot understand how it is fair to have the government decide women’s lives and health. In the end, I think we need to get past the dichotomy of pro-choice and pro-life. There needs to be another point of view, where people can be ok with women making decisions for themselves, while still not supporting abortion.