A blast from the past post from 2012
The Only Good Abortion is My Abortion by Maggie Koerth-Baker
This story was gutwrenching to read. This is why I am pro-choice. If you can take stock of your life and decide that undergoing the actual medical procedure known as abortion is a better option than the others, I will pray for you. This woman doesn’t make her choices lightly and, while some women may seem to, to assume she does is insulting.
I am not pro-choice because I love abortion. I hate abortion. It makes me want to cry, throw up and pass out when it is discussed. I would personally never be able to have one because my personal issues make that the most traumatizing thing I could undergo. To me, adjusting my life to care for a child would be far less difficult. I am lucky. I have a family that, no matter what choices I make, will love me and cannot say no to a baby. Others do not have grandparents that own land and will never let their family go homeless or hungry. Others don’t have anybody around them with anything to spare. I am very fortunate and very grateful.
My life could have turned out differently, though. I could have a criminal record. I could have become a coke addict. I could have been brutally raped one of those many nights I walked home alone in the dark. I could have been the unlucky “friend” that gets roofied. I could have never finished high school, let alone college. I could have felt like I had nothing to live for and no one to disappoint. I could feel like I am totally on my own. In a way, I am in the way that we are all ultimately on our own … but I’m not.
People don’t know and appreciate the lives they have. We are taught to appreciate nothing because then we will be attached to nothing and then we will not object when we are told we must have something different and nothing else. A lot of choices are taken away from us from day one whether by birth, circumstance, disability, genetics or chance. If we grew a population that truly cared for itself we would find that they would make the most good happen from what choices they still have.
Queer Pandemic 