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Apr. 21st, 2010 07:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
la_vie_noire posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
politicsUppity Brown Woman: My mother did not have a choice in having me
As my mother explained to me, I felt a familiar sadness inside of me. She told me that she eventually decided she couldn’t go through with it because it would be too big of a shame on her, and she didn’t want to commit a sin, even though giving birth meant gambling with financial ruin. She had internalized the shaming of women who had abortions that it impeded her own decision-making process. Certainly, she wasn’t forcefully coerced into having an abortion (or coerced out of having one), which I find dominates discussions about abortions, and for good reason. But, the culture of shaming matters too. I don’t want to live in a world like this. If it did not break several laws of the universe, I wish I could have been there to support my mother, comfort her, and tell her that whatever decision she made, to terminate or not to terminate, had to be made for what was best for her, not for what other people thought of her.
Often, you see anti-choicers relaying stories from ‘abortion survivors’, or those whose mothers made the decision to not abort (therefore everyone should). Do they want to hear my story? Unlikely. They don’t want to accept that they forgot about my rights after I was born. Every day, I have to live with the fact that my mother felt shamed out of getting an abortion. This was not a choice. The option was there for her, but she did not take it, even though she wanted to, because of the rhetoric and stigma surrounding abortion – sinful, devilish, shameful. While she says now that she doesn’t regret having me, I cannot be anything but pro-choice. I do not take pride in being the product of a forced pregnancy.
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Date: 2010-04-22 02:09 am (UTC)I know for a fact that if it had been legal for her to do so, my mother would have aborted me. It wasn't, so here I am.
BFD. Seriously. All that matters is what I choose to do with the fact that I'm here. Blaming her for having me? Wrong target. Blaming lawmakers for not letting her abort me? Wrong target.
I'm here. I think it's a safe guess that half the people my age or up to 5 years older is in the same boat I am. I have to deal with that. So does the rest of the world. Even you. What will you do?
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Date: 2010-04-22 02:38 am (UTC)No really, I think you are oversimplifying much. First, 1) Not all women have, not even decades ago had, the same choices. 2) She is talking about women's choices and freedom, and not really blaming law markers or her mother, more like society, with its shaming as a whole. I think the issue is not you or me who are here, it's how much rights have women over their own reproduction.
Yeah, maybe we all were, but our mothers were definitely not in the same situation, nor are the people who make laws or stigmatize women. And, they don't have the same right over a woman's reproduction than herself.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-22 01:08 pm (UTC)Anyone who doesn't quit is here because they chose to stay. Period. It really is that simple.
Trying to look at the conditions we were born under (nearly 5 decades ago in my case) doesn't give us the means to do anything effective. What matters is here and now. We are here. Now we must decide to live the best that we can, or quit.
The choice is ours. Not our mother's, nor lawmakers, nor society's. Ours. Take responsibility for your life and do something with it.
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Date: 2010-04-22 05:45 pm (UTC)The choice is ours. Not our mother's, nor lawmakers, nor society's. Ours. Take responsibility for your life and do something with it.
Yeah, that's pretty if you think that you live in a empty space. But it isn't like that.