Ever since the March For Life in January, I’ve been noticing numerous pro-life campaigns popping up all around me. I’ve heard it talked about at school, seen it written about on this website, and faced criticism at church. In my personal opinion, I think it is all ludicrous. If you haven’t been able to tell by my opening remark, I am pro-choice. That does not mean I am anti-baby or want to murder unborn children. Instead, I want the right to choose what I want to be done to my body, not anyone else.

I have the right as a free American to own a gun, vote, get an abortion, and do many other things. The fact that pro-lifers are putting the rights of an unborn child ahead of mine is infuriating. An unborn child should never have more rights than a woman who needs an abortion. Notice how I said need, not want, but need. Many women all over the world get raped every day. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, one in five women are raped at some point in their lives.

Now, you want to tell me that a woman who has been raped cannot get an abortion because “what about the baby”? As anyone who passed sixth grade health class should know, women become fertile after they have their period. A woman gets her period normally between the ages of 9-16, but sometimes she can get her period earlier or later than those ages. The youngest person on record to have a child was Lina Marcela Medina de Jurado, who gave birth at the age of five because she was raped.

If rape isn’t a good enough reason to support legal abortion, consider the possible threat to a woman’s life. Some women decide to get an abortion because it is dangerous for their health to have the child. As USA Today reported, “Even a leading group opposing abortion, the National Right to Life Committee, issued a statement saying that its position is ‘to allow abortion if necessary to prevent the death of the mother.'” 

In other instances, a doctor may conclude that the baby won’t survive long outside of the womb or that the fetus is no longer living and a miscarriage is inevitable.  Another reason to support the pro-choice movement is that far fewer women than is commonly believed can actually afford sufficient birth control.

But perhaps the biggest reason that I believe we need the right to have an abortion is that it’s our bodies. Men can’t give birth, of course, but that hasn’t stopped them from telling us what to do.  In the end, if you want/need an abortion within the guidelines of state restrictions, you can get one, since we won the case. If you don’t want to get an abortion, good, don’t.