and this —

I’ve said this before: that choice is between you, your partner, your family and friends, your doctors and whatever conversation you choose to have with God. And it is no one else’s business. Because no one else can possibly know all the variables in your individual situation.

i’m with you on the it is no one else’s business, so why the family, friends, partner, and god? the doctor needs to be available for medical advice, and for performing any procedures, but the rest of the people can butt out unless the woman specifically wants their help, advice, input, or support.

we need to change the conversation so that it is NOT the norm to expect women to need or want the input of all these other actors. fine and good and totally legitimate if a woman wants to look to others for help, in which case they need to step up and provide that help and society needs to expect them to if they are asked to, but we need to undo the default societal assumption that women are somehow incapable of making this decision on their own.

but i take issue with this —

I’ve written about that a lot — no one I have ever met is pro-abortion, even the most strident pro-choice folks that I know. What they recognize is the reality of the world in which we live: sometimes, you face an incredibly wrenching, difficult and heartbreaking choice for which there is no one right answer, but a whole lot of really tough questions that can only be resolved on an individual basis.

count me firmly in the pro-abortion camp. it’s just another medical procedure, and it needs to be safe, legal, affordable [well, *i* think it should be taxpayer-funded and completely free], widely available [in hospitals, not off in some shabby building on the edge of town, where the women, and the medical staff, are vulnerable to bomb-throwing, gun-toting outlaws], and common enough that any woman who wants an abortion [for whatever reason] lives within a reasonable distance of a practitioner who’s got up-to-date skills [you would expect no less if you needed heart surgery].

and what’s with all this handwringing? incredibly wrenching, difficult, and heartbreaking? puh-leeze. yes, if it’s discovered late in a wanted pregnancy that something is terribly wrong, you’re right, it’s an emotionally-fraught decision.

the overwhelming majority of abortions are first-trimester, and they are the backup for when the primary method of birth control failed. yes, for some women this is still an emotionally difficult decision, and this too is perfectly legitimate.

but for many women the only guilt and angst they feel is over the fact that they DON’T feel guilt and angst over ending a pregnancy that they were explicitly trying to prevent in the first place. they DON’T feel like they’re ‘killing their baby’. what they feel is relief. meanwhile, the society they live in, including their sisters in reproductive freedom, continue to insist [or subtly suggest] that the only normal and correct feelings are the emotionally wrenching ones.

either one, or a mixture of both, is perfectly legitimate and common and ordinary and acceptable, and we need to make this a part of the conversation.

and this —

I’ve said this before: that choice is between you, your partner, your family and friends, your doctors and whatever conversation you choose to have with God. And it is no one else’s business. Because no one else can possibly know all the variables in your individual situation.

i’m with you on the it is no one else’s business, so why the family, friends, partner, and god? the doctor needs to be available for medical advice, and for performing any procedures, but the rest of the people can butt out unless the woman specifically wants their help, advice, input, or support.

we need to change the conversation so that it is NOT the norm to expect women to need or want the input of all these other actors. fine and good and totally legitimate if a woman wants to look to others for help, in which case they need to step up and provide that help and society needs to expect them to if they are asked to, but we need to undo the default societal assumption that women are somehow incapable of making this decision on their own.