C is for Cookie

. . . and cookie is for me. I couldn't post because of my cookie settings. How can cookies be bad for you, I don't understand! Well, I took those cookies and I fixed their asses.

C is also for Choice.

Expect lots of blogs on choice this week (and letters to the editor). I have been thinking a lot about Choice since the 34th Anniversary of Roe V. Wade is coming up on January 22, 2007.

For those of you in and around Helena, NARAL is sponsoring a big event. For those of you who are not in or around Helena, find out what your local group is up to.

Here is today's big question: why are you pro-choice? Or if you are not, stop reading this blog, you are dead to me. Ha ha. Here is my answer.

I have always been pro-choice. Ever since grade school, there was no other option. I even grew up in a pro-choice church. I can't say that the national church was pro-choice, but my church was. And it is not one of those hold hands and worship the goddess churches. Seriously. In my youth group we talked openly about abortion, everyone viewed it as a sin to legislate women's wombs. I have spent the last 20 years sailing through waters that I thought were friendly. I was dumb enough to think that everyone thought like me. The only pro-lifers I knew growing up were mormons and well, we all know about them.

Imagine my shock when I started to come to the realization that I was more alone than I thought, there were hideous bills being proposed in the state legislature, freedom killing partial birth abortion bans and then all of a sudden holding up signs with dead babies and killing abortion providers was becoming more commonplace. Outrage. I figured this would force "normal" people to shift hard to the left and become more pro-choice. Boy was I wrong. Politicians became afraid to side with the Pro-Choice Movement. There are Pro-Life Democrats. More shock and awe. People are afraid to be pro-choice or at least talk about it for fear of being publicly called a baby killer.

Let's talk about what being pro-choice is all about. It is about telling the government to stay out of PRIVATE decisions that you (and your family) make with your doctor. It is about working hard toward reducing the number of abortions by advocating for easy and affordable access to birth control and emergency contraception. It is about empowering women to engage in family planning on their clock, not on someone else's.

If you think that those anti-choicers are not all about controlling women, you are wrong. Those people want white babies, tons of them, quivers full. They could care less about parental notification, fetal pain, and death certificates, those are just chips to erode away our rights, they care about full abortion bans like the one we saw in South Dakota. EVEN in the cases of rape and incest, EVEN in the case of the health of the mother, full ban on abortion.

Bad anti-choice bills in the 2007 Montana Legislature. Bad. EVIL!