Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Pro-choice

I believe that women and men should have the right to choose what they do with their own bodies. Whether that means having an abortion, using birth control, choosing sex partners instead of having sex forced upon them, deciding what foods they put into their bodies, and smoking cigarettes or marijuana.

We give up freedoms out of fear. Anti-abortionists fear women having control over their bodes instead of becoming enslaved to the product of sex, so they oppose abortion and birth control. Those who fear getting beaten or killed give in to rape as a lesser evil. Irrational fear of black men stealing white women was used to outlaw marijuana.

Now, we are being pressured to hand over our freedom to eat what we like out of fear of an epidemic of fat, with horror stories about health insurance costs and a nation filled with 500-lb citizens.

If you don't think the current fat hysteria isn't related to being pro-choice about what we do with our bodies, then you aren't paying attention.

4 comments:

Erishkegal said...

I'm...feeling a strong urge to hump your leg right now. I hope that's ok.

OK, but seriously, I couldn't agree more about the link between reproductive choice and other important issues of body autonomy. I don't know whether I'll find the energy and/or focus to Blog for Choice today (at my LJ, not my Blogger account, if I do), whether I'll do so on the 30th in honour of Morgentaler here in Canada, or whether I'll leave it to everybody else this year. Regardless, I'm glad so many people are writing about something so important.

Mercurior said...

i am childfree my wife is childfree i run a childfree forum, as you guess i am childfree.

being cf you have bingos, "it will be different if it is your own" and more and i never thought of the anti fat brigade as being linked, but now that you have i can see it clearly.

being cf being fat being straight, are all linked to we know better than you, you know nothing.

RioIriri said...

Mercurior,
We are too! I can usually stop people from pestering me about having kids by making some comment about eating babies or whatnot.

Anonymous said...

The thing that always puzzled me about birth control, is that I imagine most people realize birth control is used for more than trying to keep from getting pregnant.

I take birth control to avoid having periods, cause they really mess me up. Lots of women do the same. It's not fair to take away birth control from women who use it for a reason aside from trying to prevent pregnancy. I guess, though that would require the anti-abortionists, to think past "OMGz it's like the pill makes people abort the little babeeeezzz"