Seventeen years old.
You wake up feeling sick. The strip turns a deep pink. You are overcome by a wave of emotions. Your dreams are destroyed, your ambitions impossible, your life forever changed, and everything you have ever worked towards flushed down the drain.
One lapse in judgment and the course of your life is altered indefinitely.
Ten years old. Assaulted. The strip turns a deep pink. Your childhood is lost, your life is unrecognizable, and the pain is unbearable.
Thirty years old. You are trying for a baby. The strip turns a deep pink. Six months into a planned pregnancy with a loving husband by your side, but at your check-up, the doctor explains that the pregnancy is life-threatening and recommends the pregnancy be terminated. You seek medical aid, but no doctor within a 200-mile radius will perform an abortion, paralyzed by the fear of prosecution.
Should a seventeen-year-old have to reject an offer from their dream school because of one lapse of judgment influenced by one too many drinks? Should a ten-year-old, who has already undergone an unforgettable trauma be forced to give birth to a child with the same face as the man who violated her? Should a thirty-year-old mother of two be forced to carry a child to term, that will inevitably end her life and leave her two children motherless?
No.
A misconception surrounding anti-abortion laws is that they decrease the number of abortions; however, this is misleading.
These laws only decrease the number of safe abortions and in return cause an increase in dangerous abortion methods. This is evident in international data which proves that countries with abortion restrictions and countries without restrictions, still have a similar amount of abortions per year, but only 1% of abortions are unsafe in unregulated countries, versus a vast 31% in countries with limitations.
The debate on abortion is not based on morality, and what is right, but on what is constitutionally allotted to every person with a uterus.
As citizens of the United States, we are guaranteed certain unalienable rights, Life一impossible to achieve when the life of the mother is deemed less important by law, than that of the fetus,一liberty,一the freedom lost when one is forced to provide for an unwanted child and put their passions aside,一and the pursuit of happiness,一unattainable when a childlike ignorance is lost to the horrors of the world, with the lasting reminder of a child and a body more akin to an adult female, than the ten-year-old child it belongs to.
No matter the context of the situation, women should be allowed to make choices about their bodies, and not be forced to undergo a life-changing experience based on the political and religious beliefs of others.
Women should have a choice.
Whether their choice is to abort or to keep a fetus, it is a violation of our autonomy to be denied the right to choose.
Editor’s note: This piece was written by Grossmont High School student Evin McDowell.
Top photo credit: Pixabay.com
