Saturday, January 22, 2005

Strung-together thoughts on Roe v. Wade

On this day in 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down their famous decision on legalizing Abortion using a trimester system. The woman behind this case was Norma McCorvey who has now come out as a huge Anti-Abortion campaigner who blames her lawyers for forcing her to go through with the case, and who has become a rabid version of a born-again Christian. I saw her on Hard Talk with Tim Sebastian on BBC last year, and he literally ripped her a new one. She kept trying to bring her faith into her answers and denying that she was at fault. Talk about delusional.

What a hot button issue. Abortion. By now, you could guess how I feel about it without my having to explain my position. I'm entirely pro-choice. The way I see it, no one has the right to tell me what I can and cannot do with my own body. Would I have an abortion myself? I'm not sure. When I was younger I would have said probably not, but when I was younger, I wasn't a survivor of sexual assault. It has been more than 8 years and I've had plenty of time and support in dealing with it and getting over it for the most part, but when it happened, it was like I grew a spine of steel, and no one else was going to get to determine what happens to my body ever again. That's my job.

So now, when the U.S. is taking a big swing to the Right in general, and there are very real reasons to fear that Roe v. Wade is overturned, I am supremely glad that I live in Canada. I find the Right Wing very enigmatic. This is a political grouping that tends towards wanting smaller government with less interference in people's lives, yet what they seem to want is for that small government to legislate everyone's morality. The Left on the other hand, wants to legislate everyone's opportunities.

Freedom of Opportunity is the real basis for Roe v. Wade. Women aren't saying that they want Abortion en masse. They are saying if we so choose as an individual, no government should stop us. It's using the Right's own arguments of 'Less government involvement' against them.

Oh well. Time for breakfast.

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