A Woman's Rights
I'm about to get political. I don't do it often, but I initially wrote this as a comment on naamah_darling's LJ and realised it really deserved a post of its own.

What inspired the forthcoming was the news that the US Supreme Court has upheld an controversial ban on 2nd trimester partial-birth abortions, plus naamah_darling's rant on the subject.

You might think it odd that a heavily-pregnant woman, due to give birth any day, might be writing about abortion - particularly a woman who has stated on more than one occasion that she does not consider herself a feminist - but I do feel that abortion is a subject that touches all women's lives, regardless of whether they ever intend to have children or not.

With regards to the judgement handed down by the US Supreme Court, from what I can see, they're not outlawing 2nd trimester abortions per se - only one of the methods in which 2nd trimester abortions can be performed. Though personally I don't feel that dismembering a living fetus inside its mother's womb before extracting it is any more "humane" than partial birth abortion (where basically birth is induced so that part or all of the fetus leaves the womb before being aborted); I suppose it's just less distasteful for the doctor performing the abortion to scrape out dead pieces than extract a living creature before killing it or just leaving it to die.

However it is the thin end of the wedge - the start of a very slippery slope towards denying women abortions. They're trying to make out it isn't - that it's all about methods used rather than the final outcome - but where are they going to stop?

When you think about the main reasons why 2nd trimester abortions are performed, it's overwhelmingly because it is not until the second trimester that the various diagnostic tests are performed that would reveal any gross abnormalities or deformities in the fetus - such as the various trisomy disorders, or ancephaly for example. It's heartbreaking enough for a woman to be told her unborn child is not viable for life - but to then force her to carry the thing to term is nothing short of mental cruelty. How can you insist on the right to life of a thing that was effectively dead before it was even born??

That is all quite aside from the whole issue of women's choice. I have been faced with making the very hard choice between carrying a child full term or having an abortion myself; when you're a single mum on benefits in a tiny high-rise flat, still struggling with extreme PND from your first two kids, finding you are pregnant is the last thing you need. I eventually decided that abortion just wasn't for me and that PND was far preferable to the severe depression I knew I would fall into after an abortion. As it happened, the decision was taken out of my hands and I miscarried at 10 weeks. But at least I had the choice.

I'm pregnant now (in fact, I'm in the very early stages of labour as I write this, with my third daughter due to be born any day now), but I still absolutely support the right of all women to choose what happens to their body - and that includes the right to an abortion, regardless of what their reasons for wanting that abortion may be. And though I don't consider myself a feminist, I feel that abortion is one area in which no man should have the right to dictate to that woman what should or should not happen to her body. Not even the man who fertilised the egg that made her pregnant in the first place; because at the end of the day, he is not the one who has to deal with the very real physical consequences of pregnancy and labour or abortion. Pregnancy, even with modern medicine, is not a risk-free condition. Labour has permanent effects on a woman's body. And having an abortion does pose risks to a woman's future fertility. The man does not have those risks; his future ability to sire more children is not affected. His body will remain unchanged. He is not the one who has to face the months of tests, poking and prodding, feeling his body changing and knowing it will never be the same again; not for him the risk of major abdominal surgery if something goes wrong and a caesarean be needed. He takes no risks, and therefore should have no say in what happens to that woman's body. Why should he? It's her body, not his.

Until men develop the ability to carry babies to full term and give birth themselves, they should have no say whatsoever. And should that day come, they will have the right to dictate what may happen to their bodies - but never a woman's.

I am a pregnant woman and a mother; and I am pro-choice.