Roe vs Wade = choosing life

I don't think my politics get any less radical as I get older, but I do keep quieter about them. I often think about why this is.

Some of the reasons are good ones, involving acknowledgement that life is complicated and messy; that compromise does not necessarily equal weakness (and may often in fact equal strength); that reality, frankly, bites.

But some of them are bad ones... involving a reluctance to stand up and be counted. Who's got time for all those difficult conversations? Let's instead talk about organic veg delivery miles and the latest Web 2.0 mash ups. We can debate our unease at our successful middle class post-modernity and everyone's a winner.

M stepped out of that box the other week, when he got up early to go on the Pro-test march in support of Oxford University's new animal testing facility. Ten (fifteen?) years ago, I'd have been on the opposing march. This time, I stayed in bed, to avoid arguments. I used to be black and white on this, now I'm grey. I felt confused, in the way that I felt confused when millions marched against the war in Iraq and I didn't. I profoundly disagreed with my boyfriend, but not so profoundly that I'd stand on a barricade when he would. How uncomfortable.

So it has come as some relief to realise that there are still some things, or at least one thing, that I *would* chain myself to a railing for. And that one thing is a woman's right to choose to have an abortion.

I cannot believe what has just happened in South Dakota. I cannot believe that Roe vs Wade is under threat. I cannot believe that the land of the free is potentially about to remove such a hard won freedom from the daughters and grand-daughters of the women who fought for it. In short, I cannot believe that religious fundamentalism has gained such a freakish stranglehold on the USA. It will be its downfall, mark my words.

You bunch of fuckers.

So in the face of such medieval recidivism, I feel I ought to front up. I'm not pro-abortion. I don't believe anyone is pro-abortion. I have never had an abortion myself (mostly down to assiduous use of contraception and, latterly, choice of vasectomised partner, partly down to luck), but I know many women who have, and I don't believe any of them did it lightly. It's not a light thing. It shouldn't be a light thing. It should be a last resort thing. But it's a resort that needs to be there.

Take it away and you are saying to women that a bunch of cells has more rights than they do. I don't buy that. The life that's already happening has the right to decide what happens. To have it otherwise isn't valuing life, it's devaluing it.

And let's not forget that unwanted pregnancies, carried to term, might become unwanted children. What kind of start in life is that? What kind of life is that full stop? I don't know if I completely buy the link, but a few years ago two US academics produced a paper pointing out that crime rates in the US dropped significantly about 18 years after abortion was legalised.

Finally, and more pragmatically, take legal abortion away and you don't stop abortion happening, you just make it more difficult and more dangerous.

So. Hope those rednecks come to their senses soon. Rant over.

joella