A continuing defense of reproductive freedom

A continuing defense of reproductive freedom

Throughout high school, I never thought that I’d ever need an
abortion. For years, I didn’t even consider it because frankly, I
wasn’t having any sex. I personally was not, as my mother once
advised me, "financially and emotionally mature enough to handle
abortion, adoption or motherhood." And I knew that none of the guys
I dated were either.

After graduation, I decided that I had reached that level of
maturity, and thereafter, sex became an option.

This was not an easy decision for me to make. My family, the
government and the ever-present Roman Catholic Church made sure
that I knew every potential risk involved. Unplanned pregnancy had
thrown a wrench into the plans of more than a few of my extended
family members. I feared pregnancy more than disease. So when I
became sexually active, I’d been faithfully taking birth control
pills for months, made sure I knew my partner’s sexual history and
made sure we used a condom.

"Your period should arrive every four weeks ­ like
clockwork!" the doctor at Student Health chimed as she prescribed
me the pill. I sat in the small office thumbing through the little
pamphlet she’d handed to me. It said the same.

And she was correct. It arrived like clockwork ­ at first.
Then one month, it decided not to show.

It decided not to show!

"Um, Matt, I gotta tell you something," I told my then-boyfriend
Matthew as we drove eastbound on the 10 freeway one Friday
afternoon to his house in Rosemead. "It decided not to show. My
period, I mean. It’s been over a week and it didn’t show."

"What? Babe, you’re pregnant?" he asked.

"Well, I haven’t found out for sure, but, yes I guess I might be
and I thought you ought to know."

"You’ve been taking your pill everyday, on time, right?"

"Yes."

"Well then, what the hell?!"

I stared at the Toyota pickup in front of us with the bumper
sticker that blared "SHIT HAPPENS" at me and didn’t answer him. A
few moments later he pulled me toward him and put his arm over my
shoulders.

"Aw, it’s OK, baby," he consoled me. "We’re young, but you know,
I love you, and we’ll dig being married."

Jesus!

I pulled away sharply. "What … Matt, I’m not having a
baby."

"Well, yeah, if you’re not pregnant you’re ­ "

"No, Matthew, I’m not having a baby. And maybe some day we’ll
get married, but it won’t be for a long time and it won’t be
because of something like this."

He took his eyes off the road for a second and glared at me.
"Girl, you are not having an abortion."

"Matthew ­"

"It’s fucking wrong, and I don’t want to hear another word about
it!"

Some potential husband he’d make, huh?

* * *

When I tell my friends this little story, I usually get similar
responses. They furrow their eyebrows and stand with their mouths
agape. "I can’t believe you let him talk to you like that!" they
usually exclaim.

Well, I can’t believe I did either, but the way I see it, he
wasn’t just yelling at me.

Sisters, he was commandeering you, too.

Because, see, my ex-boyfriend votes. And in this past election
when, according to an editorial in the January/February issue of
Ms. magazine, only 39 percent of all eligible voters showed up at
the polls, you’d better believe every vote counts.

And oftentimes on Friday evenings or Saturday afternoons, my
ex-boyfriend talks politics with his family and friends. And
believe it or not, he can be very persuasive and influential.

At first glance, to the rest of us, his opinions might appear
irrelevant. After all, how much influence can a guy in his 20s
attending junior college really have on the rest of society? How
influential can any of us really be?

More than we might think at first. Change takes place gradually,
but it eventually happens, fueled by personal experience and by
discourse among individuals.

It is no coincidence that the emergence of my ex-boyfriend’s
anti-choice sentiment coincided with his family’s burgeoning
religious right fervor. Their opinions didn’t sink into his mind
through osmosis. They got there via debate among individuals.

Over time, little shifts in opinion can turn into larger,
nationwide movements for change. This is precisely what has
happened with, among others, the issue of reproductive choice.

On Jan. 4, anti-choice majorities emerged in both the Senate and
the House of Representatives. This was no accident. It was a
deliberate, calculated ­ and successful ­ goal of
anti-choice activists who have worked to limit reproductive freedom
since Roe vs. Wade legalized abortion in 1973.

The recent legislative takeover is only one indication of a
growing anti-choice sentiment. It should be obvious when there is
only one abortion clinic in the entire state of South Dakota, when
over winter break two women were shot and killed outside of a
Boston Planned Parenthood establishment by a religious zealot, when
reproductive liberty is rapidly and violently chipped away and the
country shrugs its shoulders and continues to watch the NFL
playoffs.

I sincerely wonder where our citizens’ priorities are ­
especially those of the young women in this nation. Many of us,
especially those of us raised in urban environments, may not be
familiar with what it is like to live in a nation where abortion is
literally criminal. I know I’m not. The best I can do is get
secondhand descriptions from my mother.

But I know what it’s like to be sitting in fright at Student
Health, waiting for pregnancy tests that, luckily for me, came back
negative. And I know what it’s like to be relegated to the status
of a baby-carrying vessel, because that’s how Matt viewed me that
Friday afternoon. I wasn’t a person with plans, goals and a future.
I was the body in which his baby was to be carried ­ no more.
Had this not been the case, he would have respected my right to
choose if motherhood, at that point, was the course I wanted my
life to take.

More importantly, by taking conservative stances on reproductive
freedom, this is how the majority of the members of the 104th
Congress view women ­ as people only until pregnancy. From
that point on, our rights are stripped and we are viewed as we
historically have always been seen. As vessels. Replaceable.
Silent.

If this were not the case, the government would be in an uproar
over the two killings outside the Boston Planned Parenthood clinic,
just as they were over other acts of terrorism like the World Trade
Center bombing. But they aren’t. So it is time for us to defend
reproductive choice, before all of us hear the same words my
boyfriend snapped at me ­ "it’s fucking wrong and I don’t want
to hear another thing about it!"

Only this time, they’ll have the law to back them up.

Assistant Viewpoint editor Roxane Marquez is a fourth-year
student double majoring in history and English/American
studies.