Guarantee freedom of choice

This node is part of the 13 challenges for the 13th generation.

Problem:
Little support for women willing to undergo an abortion and many violent incidents at abortion clinics, are limiting not only the safety, but also the freedom of choice of those women.

Solution:
Ensuring long-term protection and support for a woman's right to choose.

Today, only 17 percent of American counties have even one medical provider willing to perform abortions. Most women must travel significant distances to obtain services. Many clinics are picketed daily or weekly. And there have been over a thousand violent incidents at clinics, including firebombings, arsons, acid attacks, invasions, and shootings, since the early 1980s.

States across America have enacted laws requiring women to wait 24 hours before having an abortion once they’ve arrived at the clinic. These laws wrongly assume that women make this difficult personal choice on impulse and must be sent home to think about it first. Anti-choice forces have been stymied in their efforts to overturn Roe outright, but the combined effects of such state restriction, anti-choice violence, and the shortage of providers place “freedom of choice” at risk in the coming decades.

Why do you want an abortion?

I don't have the time/money to raise a kid.

How did you get pregnant?

I had sex. Like, duh!

Why did you have sex? Didn't you know you could get pregnant?

Of course I knew! Everybody knows that. But I didn't think it would happen to me!

Why didn't you?

Well, I used protection, and everybody knows that keeps you from getting pregnant...

Apparently it doesn't.

Yeah. It must have been defective.

So, are you going to stop having sex until you're ready to take care of a child?

Of course not! Why'd I do that?

That's your freedom of choice. To have sex, and have a kid, or not have sex and not have a kid.

Maybe I like to have sex. Did you ever think of that?

You're so responsible.

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My point is that WHEN it is the women's choice, it may make sense to take away her ability to terminate the pregnancy. In the case given by you, I agree that abortion would be acceptable.

Why do you want an abortion?

I do not want to bear this child.

How did you get pregnant?

I was pressured by my boyfriend/raped/molested by my own father.

Why did that happen?

Because my boyfriend/the guy I went on a date with/a hooded stranger in the park/Daddy didn't feel I should have a choice about what he wanted to do to me.

But you're carrying a living child. Why would you want to kill it?

Every day I bear this child, I am being forced all over again to do something I did not choose.

It's not the child's fault, what happened to you.

It's not MY fault either.

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My point is, until conception is ALWAYS a woman's choice (this includes everyone getting adequate, unbiased sex education), we dare not take away her ability to choose to terminate a pregnancy. I will leave to others the arguments involving consensual sex and faulty contraception.