"How come when it's us, it's abortion, but when it's a chicken, it's an omelette"
There's a new clinic in Ireland.
Well actually it's in Belfast.
And actually you can only avail of this up to the nine week stage.
Oh and actually you must be able to provide proof that to continue on with this pregnancy, that your mental or physical health is in danger.
And before I forget, if you live in the Republic of Ireland, you actually still technically have to travel to a different country to avail of the service.
I could go on with the terms and conditions, but I won't. Abortion involves many different procedures from simply taking a pill to make the lining of your womb inhospitable to the egg, to surgical dilation and removal up to twenty-four weeks of pregnancy. It's not pleasant for anyone involved, and I cannot imagine what someone must be feeling when they make the decision to do this. Any female with a working uterus and fully functioning fallopian tubes can fall pregnant, not just people who are careless, people who go out solely looking for a shag, people who practise safe sex and those who don't, people who are doing it for the very first time on their fifteenth birthday or the fortieth time on their anniversary holiday, it can and does happen. There are of course ways and means to prevent an unwanted pregnancy, the pill, condoms, the coil, the implant, abstaining etc known preventatives but still sometimes, every so often, the strongest swimmer will earn his stripes and get to the egg before his buddies do and boom: Preggersville: Population 2. Because at the end of the day, that's what pregnancy is, it's a woman and her body carrying a child.
I cannot tell you what I would do in the situation where I found myself pregnant, because it has never happened to me. But as a woman, there has been a scare or two along the road, happening at different stages of my life and both having different reactions to the same situation. It happened first when I was nineteen and I was late. Not a couple of weeks late, but enough days had passed for me to begin to panic. We've all been there! For me, a termination was the only option. There wasn't a hope in hell I could ever have brought a child into this world. Having to tell my parents, having to let the extended family know, having to tell people at work, having to carry on with a pregnancy that I didn't want to have a child that I couldn't cope with, would have been too much for my nineteen year old self to deal with. I had already started making plans in my head to call my sister, tell her what happened, somehow raise the money to get rid of it and then carry on as is possible normal. The other scenario happened a while back, and this time instead of panicking, I actually coped OK with the thought of me, Laura Child Allergic, having a kid. I thought, yeah, I could do this, I've not got much money but if there were a child on the way I could start saving. I have a good job with a maternity leave clause, I'm old enough to kind of settle down and be a bit more responsible, I could actually maybe do it? I could have a baby? Lucky for me, nature stepped in and I wasn't pregnant. But despite all the precautions I had taken, it could have happened. And it does. And who knows, if I had been actually pregnant at nineteen and decided not to terminate it, but to have it, where I would be now or how my life would have ended up. But surely it's my choice right? It angers me that the country I am from, women still have to travel to the UK for this choice.
So, really shouldn't there be that option for people like nineteen year old Laura who find themselves pregnant against (or precaution-less) the odds? Shouldn't there also be an option for the seventeen year old who was raped to be able to terminate the foetus that grew out of a frenzied sex attack? Shouldn't there be the option for any woman of any age who knows better than anyone else that her bringing this child into the world would be a bad mistake and wants to get rid of it? I'm not lobbying for abortion clinics to appear on every street corner, and I am disgusted with the people who use this service as a means of contraception. I'm looking for The Option. The Choice. A Woman's Right to Choose. Her right to make a decision for her body. Not a politician in a suit making it for her. Not someone who has never been in the throes of misery that an unwanted pregnancy can bring. Something this personal to a female should never be decided by someone else. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has said it better than I ever could. "The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman's life, to her well being and dignity. When the government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a full adult human responsible for her own choices". I agree wholeheartedly with her. It's not that I am pro-killing, I find it hard to kill a fly or a wasp, preferring to shoo them out of the house with a newspaper and an open window. You can choose to work or not to work. You can choose to go to college and university or not. You can choose which car you buy, which supermarket you shop in, or which airline you fly. So why, when the situation is a serious as whether or not you feel it's right to bring another person into this world, why does it create such a fuss. I choose Pro-Choice.
There's a new clinic in Ireland.
Well actually it's in Belfast.
And actually you can only avail of this up to the nine week stage.
Oh and actually you must be able to provide proof that to continue on with this pregnancy, that your mental or physical health is in danger.
And before I forget, if you live in the Republic of Ireland, you actually still technically have to travel to a different country to avail of the service.
I could go on with the terms and conditions, but I won't. Abortion involves many different procedures from simply taking a pill to make the lining of your womb inhospitable to the egg, to surgical dilation and removal up to twenty-four weeks of pregnancy. It's not pleasant for anyone involved, and I cannot imagine what someone must be feeling when they make the decision to do this. Any female with a working uterus and fully functioning fallopian tubes can fall pregnant, not just people who are careless, people who go out solely looking for a shag, people who practise safe sex and those who don't, people who are doing it for the very first time on their fifteenth birthday or the fortieth time on their anniversary holiday, it can and does happen. There are of course ways and means to prevent an unwanted pregnancy, the pill, condoms, the coil, the implant, abstaining etc known preventatives but still sometimes, every so often, the strongest swimmer will earn his stripes and get to the egg before his buddies do and boom: Preggersville: Population 2. Because at the end of the day, that's what pregnancy is, it's a woman and her body carrying a child.
I cannot tell you what I would do in the situation where I found myself pregnant, because it has never happened to me. But as a woman, there has been a scare or two along the road, happening at different stages of my life and both having different reactions to the same situation. It happened first when I was nineteen and I was late. Not a couple of weeks late, but enough days had passed for me to begin to panic. We've all been there! For me, a termination was the only option. There wasn't a hope in hell I could ever have brought a child into this world. Having to tell my parents, having to let the extended family know, having to tell people at work, having to carry on with a pregnancy that I didn't want to have a child that I couldn't cope with, would have been too much for my nineteen year old self to deal with. I had already started making plans in my head to call my sister, tell her what happened, somehow raise the money to get rid of it and then carry on as is possible normal. The other scenario happened a while back, and this time instead of panicking, I actually coped OK with the thought of me, Laura Child Allergic, having a kid. I thought, yeah, I could do this, I've not got much money but if there were a child on the way I could start saving. I have a good job with a maternity leave clause, I'm old enough to kind of settle down and be a bit more responsible, I could actually maybe do it? I could have a baby? Lucky for me, nature stepped in and I wasn't pregnant. But despite all the precautions I had taken, it could have happened. And it does. And who knows, if I had been actually pregnant at nineteen and decided not to terminate it, but to have it, where I would be now or how my life would have ended up. But surely it's my choice right? It angers me that the country I am from, women still have to travel to the UK for this choice.
So, really shouldn't there be that option for people like nineteen year old Laura who find themselves pregnant against (or precaution-less) the odds? Shouldn't there also be an option for the seventeen year old who was raped to be able to terminate the foetus that grew out of a frenzied sex attack? Shouldn't there be the option for any woman of any age who knows better than anyone else that her bringing this child into the world would be a bad mistake and wants to get rid of it? I'm not lobbying for abortion clinics to appear on every street corner, and I am disgusted with the people who use this service as a means of contraception. I'm looking for The Option. The Choice. A Woman's Right to Choose. Her right to make a decision for her body. Not a politician in a suit making it for her. Not someone who has never been in the throes of misery that an unwanted pregnancy can bring. Something this personal to a female should never be decided by someone else. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has said it better than I ever could. "The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman's life, to her well being and dignity. When the government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a full adult human responsible for her own choices". I agree wholeheartedly with her. It's not that I am pro-killing, I find it hard to kill a fly or a wasp, preferring to shoo them out of the house with a newspaper and an open window. You can choose to work or not to work. You can choose to go to college and university or not. You can choose which car you buy, which supermarket you shop in, or which airline you fly. So why, when the situation is a serious as whether or not you feel it's right to bring another person into this world, why does it create such a fuss. I choose Pro-Choice.
