Rights are not only guaranteed to the intelligent!

I was so excited to be quoted in Aaron Prill’s latest blog. Of course, my words were completely taken out of context, but he included a link to my blog and I always enjoy more hits!

This was part of the quote: “Life happens and there are so many things in our lives that are beyond our control. The choice, however, to create life or not, is in your hands. The choice to create a life for yourself, the choice to create a life for the person you love, and the choice to make a life together is yours. It is a blessing to make a life and it is a blessing to have the choice not to make another life . . . go out and make a life for yourselves.”

This was a call for young people to make good choices, to think before they have sex. The subject of my blog was BIRTH CONTROL! The subject of my blog was NOT ABORTION. While Prill is correct, I am indeed pro-choice, my blog was about the choices you have BEFORE you get pregnant. So I am sure there is another blog by a woman of equal candor and wit that would have been a better example of a pro-choice blog than that one.

OR maybe this is it!

Here’s where I confess something! Many years ago, as an idealistic young person with small children, I was a conservative. Oh, no really (we all have a few skeletons in the closet). I was even “anti-abortion.” You know what happened? Life happened. As a human, and as a parent we all end up experiencing things in our lives that we never planned on: heartbreak, abuse, illness and tragedy. You know what you learn as you grow older? You learn that you can survive things you never even imagined. You learn that life is not black and white. You learn that we all grow and change. You learn that when you are young, you don’t know everything! And most of all, you learn not to judge other’s lives, experiences or choices.

I am the mother of 3 grown daughters and a son. Like every parent, I want them all to have safe, happy, fulfilling lives. I want them to make good choices. What I never wanted for any of them was to have to face the awful decision of whether or not to abort a pregnancy. This is something I discussed with my son as well as my daughters, because as I told him, whenever a woman gets pregnant a man does too! No woman in the history of the world has ever gotten pregnant without the presence of sperm. (Of course there may or may not be that one virgin). There is only ONE source of sperm, and that is men. So the conversation about birth control and responsibility for unplanned pregnancy needs to be had with sons as well!

No intelligent, loving woman, ever wants to end a pregnancy for trivial reasons. No intelligent, loving man ever wants a partner to face such a procedure if it isn’t necessary. In order to prevent this we must help young people find purpose, meaning and self-esteem in their lives. We must educate them. We must provide them with healthcare. We must help them prevent pregnancy with safe birth control. We must give all of our young people, regardless of gender, the tools to make healthy choices BEFORE someone gets pregnant. And if some unthinkable or unplanned thing happens (as often does in life), then we need to consider ahead of time what we might do with that.

So this is why I became pro-choice, because if one of my children was in a position to choose abortion or not, I wanted that decision to be made within my family, with a doctor we trusted, according to our own moral and spiritual guidelines.

You know what Aaron Prill, I want the same for your family. I want you and your wife and your children to make the decisions that agree with your personal belief system, no one else’s. (I mean really, would you want ME to make reproductive choices for you and your wife. EXACTLY)!!! I don’t want the government to infer or tell you what you can or cannot do. These are private, personal decisions, like so many we face in our lives, and I would never trivialize or judge your choices.

See that’s the tricky thing. If we start making choices for everyone else how to do we decide who gets to choose? Whose morals do we go by? Whose religion is the right one? Whose convictions are the most important?

That’s what being pro-choice means. It  means the government has no say in my personal decisions. It means I get to believe what I choose, practice what I choose, worship what I choose. It means I get to make the decisions for my family based on those beliefs. That’s our right.

Granted that right does not, in every case, always come with the intelligence to make good decisions, but it is still a right. I can’t help that Josie Cunningham is a superficial idiot. I am sorry that she didn’t have an adult role model who could have guided her in a more healthy direction. Before she had the right to choose abortion, she had the right to choose birth control, or the right to choose not to have sex. If the dear girl had used a condom, we wouldn’t be here would we!

But none of that takes away from the fact that no one, NO ONE, not government nor religion nor anyone, has the right to choose for us. I will not defend Josie Cunnigham’s life choices, good or bad. I will, however, always defend her right to make them. And the same goes for you too Aaron Prill. Now next time keep the quotes in context and happy blogging!

Karen Foley

About Karen Foley

Karen Foley, has successfully been writing her blog for the BDN since May 2011. By successful, she means a few people read it, and she has not been sued, stalked or fired since starting it.