Female.

I am not here to convince anyone of anything. The issue runs so deep, people have their minds made one way or another, nothing I say will change their path, make them see it through my eyes anyway. But maybe they can see how I got to where I am on it. If nothing else, this will serve as a little therapy for me. At the end of the day I only answer to myself.

I was never going to get an abortion. As it turns out, for me, most likely it wouldn’t have ever have to come up as an option. I found out a few years ago that my fallopian tubes are relatively jacked up, so getting pregnant likely wouldn’t have been possible. I never wanted to have children, I haven’t ever felt that maternal urge, or need. Growing up with mental illness in the family, and some other genetic pitfall possibilities, I was good with letting it end with me. I likely was never going to have to make the inquiry about how to go about the process of ending a pregnancy. But, like I said, I only found this out a few years ago, when I had some ovarian cyst issues. I was in my 40s, so considering I had hit puberty and got my first period just before I turned 12, that’s 40 years of possible situations. That’s a long time to think about stuff.

Kids get sexually active younger and younger it seems these days. Girls get their periods at pretty young ages, and I thought 11 was young for me. So they can get pregnant that early, should a male ejaculate in or near their genital area. She wouldn’t even be done growing that young, still a few growth spurts to come, hips and such are still coming in and maturing. So a young girl gets pregnant and is at risk. It is just the way things are. Emotionally, 11 year old girls are a mess. Hormones start to kick in, and they rage. From one moment of mirth to unexplainable tears the next, you couldn’t pay me to go back to that age when everything is an ordeal, because your hormones have taken over. I hate that young girls that age sometimes end up pregnant for so many reasons, but the thing is, they are not equipped to be a parent at that age. Our nation just guaranteed that they have no choice in it. They will carry that baby to term. Or will they? Desperate people do desperate things. Will she tell her parents, or hide it? What if she tries to do something on her own, or have one of her friends help her out? What if she kills herself? Because these things still did happen with legal, safe abortions, now we will see more of it.

I was sexually assaulted, back in the 90s. I think if you ask a lot of women, you will find an awful lot of them who have been. I wasn’t raped, but it was close to that, really. I was at a party at a friend’s apartment. I was drunk and tired, so I went in a bedroom to sleep for a bit. Those were my party days, for sure. We would work until midnight, go to the bars, then to after bar parties all the time. Some creeper friend of a friend found me in there passed out, and saw an opportunity. He climbed on top of me, held me down when I started to wake up and was making his move when one of the other guys at the party came by, the door was open enough to catch what was happening. He yanked the guy off me and called a couple more people in to kick the crap out of him. I was fine, he hadn’t made it too far into his assault. I am forever thankful to the guys who stepped in, and beat his ass. But, what if dumbass had actually shut the door all the way, and he had raped me? What if I had ended up pregnant from that assault? Today, I would have had to live with it, for at least 9 months of my life. No options. Maybe he would lie and say I wanted it, he didn’t rape me. See, with this new possibility that abortion in the event of a rape not being an option, women aren’t going to be believed anymore when they report a rape. So many women already don’t report rape, because they fear no one will believe them. This is going to make it so much worse.

I don’t doubt for a minute that there have been women that have used abortion as a birth control. But making it illegal doesn’t make it stop. It just increases the risk involved for the woman. Not the man. It is never a risk for a man. Women hold the bag when it comes to pregnancy. Not every guy is a bad guy, they aren’t all rapists or sexual predators. We all know that. The majority are good guys, and most pregnancies are wanted, or at least become wanted if it is a surprise. I said above, I likely would never have had an abortion anyway. It just isn’t me, really. But I don’t know, especially when I look at a rape scenario, or an incest possibility. Until you have walked a mile in those shoes, you don’t know what you would do.

What worries me to my core, is now that this is gone, what do they come after next? There was a time not long ago when women couldn’t vote. What if they come for that? They can take everything from us, if we aren’t paying attention and careful. I am a woman in my 50s, so illegal abortion does not overly affect me. But it affects my nieces, and their friends. If affects my friend’s daughters, and all of the girls and young women who are walking behind me. There are states where access to birth control will become illegal or incredibly limited. I do not understand how we could get to this point, in a country that promotes freedom and equality, we pick at the loose strings of those freedoms until it unravels.

I have always considered myself to be Pro-Choice. I came to that at an early age, in my late teens, after I read stories about what happened to desperate women before Roe v Wade. Back alley butchers, women ending up mutilated or dead because they bled out. Stories of women who looked for help in a sad situation and ended up maimed or dead. I thought to myself, who am I to judge a woman for making that decision? The stories of the wealthy men who knocked up their mistresses, took them for abortions they may not have wanted to have, but forcing it on them, and they ended up never able to have a child because their forced abortion went so badly. There are tons of these stories when you look for them, and now there will be tons more. Safety and medical knowledge will be withheld. Abortions will still happen, they always have and always will. We have taken the option of safety and thrown it away. Control, it is and has always been about control. I am not a judge, whatever reason a woman sought an abortion is not my business. That woman will have to reconcile what she decided with herself, not me. I don’t wish anything for peace for women that make that choice, because I never had to live one minute of her life, only my own.

I am not here to convince you of anything but this: This is not over. There are many voices that will be heard, and while there is going to be some very difficult times in the near future, this does not end here. We still have voices, and women still have a vote. Listen, and then be heard.