Blog for Choice

In honor of Blog for Choice Day, please turn your attention to Feministe, whose commentary on Crisis Pregnancy Centers will perhaps make you think a bit harder about the ethics of the pro-life movement in this country.

I was also taken by this post about Jimmy Carter's new book by Mediagirl. I saw Carter interviewed on The Colbert Report about a month ago, and he came across as a very kind, gentle, fair man. This commentary reinforces that overall impression. Perhaps not a very good president, but a good man.

I have so many reasons for believing in reproductive rights. Many of them are deeply personal. My family is very Catholic, and I know they would be disappointed to know of my feelings. My mother still wears a pro-life rose on her purse. It makesd me angry that women's choices are being held up as both a religious and a political issue, and that churchgoers are being called on as a moral army to right the situation. The first blog post above contains a quote from a representative of a crisis pregnancy center who claims that young women are "bombarded" with pressures to abort. The most bombardment I ever felt on the issue was in church, in parochial school, driving down the road and being faced with billboards claiming a link between abortion and breast cancer (false), and, best of all, posters of fetuses placed in the windows of a house situated alongside the local Planned Parenthood.

No one wants to get pregnant and have an abortion. But every woman deserves the right to have control over her own body. Hopefully once Samuel Alito is approved (and he will be, bet on it), he won't take this right away from our daughters, sisters, nieces, and friends.