keep your laws off my body

I am pro-choice, and damn proud of it.
I've just begun my Constitutional Law class and wish so badly that we could skip over Marbury v. Madison for today and talk about the 34th anniversary of Roe's success, but since that is highly unlikely, I'll settle for discussing it here. In Roe v. Wade, the court recognized for the first time that the constitutional right to privacy "is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy." I have always considered myself pro-choice, based purely on the belief that I have a right to control my own body, but I took a particular interest in pro-choice issues my senior year in college and found a great article that expressed my broader feelings on the issue. So Happy Birthday, Roe--here are 9 reasons why we celebrate you.

9 reasons why abortions are legal:
1. Laws against abortion kill women.
To prohibit abortions does not stop them. When women feel it is absolutely necessary, they will choose to have abortions, even in secret, without medical care, in dangerous circumstances. In the two decades before abortion was legal in the U.S., it's been estimated that nearly a million women per year sought out illegal abortions. Thousands died. Tens of thousands were mutilated. All were forced to behave as if they were criminals.

2. Legal abortions protect women's health.
Legal abortion not only protects women's lives, it also protects their health. For tens of thousands of women with heart disease, kidney disease, severe hypertension, sickle-cell anemia and severe diabetes, and other illnesses that can be life-threatening, the availability of legal abortion has helped avert serious medical complications that could have resulted from childbirth. Before legal abortion, such women's choices were limited to dangerous illegal abortion or dangerous childbirth.

3. A woman is more than a fetus.
Some people argue these days that a fetus is a "person" that is "indistinguishable from the rest of us" and that it deserves rights equal to women's. On this question there is a tremendous spectrum of religious, philosophical, scientific, and medical opinion. It's been argued for centuries. Fortunately, our society has recognized that each woman must be able to make this decision, based on her own conscience. To impose a law defining a fetus as a "person," granting it rights equal to or superior to a woman's — a thinking, feeling, conscious human being — is arrogant and absurd. It only serves to diminish women.

4. Being a mother is just one option for women.
Many hard battles have been fought to win political and economic equality for women. These gains will not be worth much if reproductive choice is denied. To be able to choose a safe, legal abortion makes many other options possible. Otherwise an accident or a rape can end a woman's economic and personal freedom.

5. Outlawing abortion is discriminatory.
Anti-abortion laws discriminate against low-income women, who are driven to dangerous self-induced or back-alley abortions. That is all they can afford. But the rich can travel wherever necessary to obtain a safe abortion.

6. Compulsory pregnancy laws are incompatible with a free society.
If there is any matter that is personal and private, then pregnancy is it. There can be no more extreme invasion of privacy than requiring a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. If government is permitted to compel a woman to bear a child, where will government stop? The concept is morally repugnant. It violates traditional American ideas of individual rights and freedoms.

7. Outlaw abortion, and more children will bear children.
Forty percent of 14-year-old girls will become pregnant before they turn 20. This could happen to your daughter or someone else close to you. Here are the critical questions: Should the penalty for lack of knowledge or even for a moment's carelessness be enforced pregnancy and childrearing? Or dangerous illegal abortion? Should we consign a teenager to a life sentence of joblessness, hopelessness, and dependency?

8. "Every child a wanted child."
If women are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, the result is unwanted children. Everyone knows they are among society's most tragic cases, often uncared-for, unloved, brutalized, and abandoned. When they grow up, these children are often seriously disadvantaged, and sometimes inclined toward brutal behavior to others. This is not good for children, for families, or for the country. Children need love and families who want and will care for them.

9. Choice is good for families.
Even when precautions are taken, accidents can and do happen. For some families, this is not a problem. But for others, such an event can be catastrophic. An unintended pregnancy can increase tensions, disrupt stability, and push people below the line of economic survival. Family planning is the answer. All options must be open.

At the most basic level, the abortion issue is not really about abortion. It is about the value of women in society. Should women make their own decisions about family, career, and how to live their lives? Or should government do that for them? Do women have the option of deciding when or whether to have children? Or is that a government decision?
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While my beliefs originate from the conceptual arguments found in #3 and #6, the facts about women's health cannot be disputed and have become the primary reasons why I am so adamant about this issue. #1 and #5 are particularly troubling to me, and I think could stand alone as arguments as to why legal abortions must be available. I also highly recommend watching a Frontline special called "The Last Abortion Clinic" to understand what happens when abortions are made unavailable to women. Unfortunately, my generation has grown up with Roe, so we don't know life without a right to a legal abortion and therefore don't recognize the need to keep fighting for it. The truth is that the government is still trying to rid us of our right to privacy, and we had better be prepared to get more vocal before our opponents do.