Good Reasons

I have a small confession to make. I hate the abortion debate. I hate it with a passion. Abortion should not be a political issue. Abortion is a personal issue of health and well-being. 

 If we focused on health and well-being, we would focus on ways to prevent the need for abortions by finding ways to prevent unwanted pregnancies rather than condemning those who make the choice. For example, sex education, affordable access to birth control, and affordable access to healthcare are all ways to prevent unwanted pregnancies and therefore lower the abortion rates.

 I know several women who have had abortions. There are always reasons. There are always circumstances. There are always  situations. Not a single woman I know who has had an abortion came to the decision easily or lightly.

Some of those women still claim to be anti-choice. The women who still claim to be anti-choice explain that their abortions were okay because they had "good reasons unlike those other women..." I'm fairly certain those other women probably also had their own good reasons, probably some of the same reasons. Then there are those who call their abortions something other than abortions as if calling it something different changes what it was.

I'm convinced some of these lawmakers pushing abortion laws don't really want abortion to be illegal, at least not for everyone, as has been demonstrated by those who have been exposed for paying for their mistresses, daughters, and/or wives to have abortions. Once again, when it's personal, there are "reasons", but when it's someone else, there can be no good reason. 

I have never been faced with needing to make that decision. There were a several times when I worried I might have to make that decision, including after I was sexually assaulted, an ectopic pregnancy scare, and a broken condom scare, but in each of these cases I turned out not to be pregnant. I don't know what I would've decided if I had needed to make that decision, but it would have been my decision to make. No one else's. It's not my place to make that decision for anyone else just as I wouldn't have wanted anyone else to make the decision for me.

 This is my body and it will be my body until the day it turns back into compost to feed the Earth. It's my right and my responsibility to decide what I do with it and when I do it. And, my reasons are always good because they're mine...







T. L. Cooper is an author and poet whose work aims to empower and inspire through an exploration of the human condition. Her poems, short stories, articles, and essays have appeared online, in books, and in magazines. Her published books include a collection of short stories, Soaring Betrayal, her Silhouette Poetry Series, and a novel, All She Ever Wanted. She grew up on a farm in Tollesboro, Kentucky. She currently lives in Albany, Oregon with her husband and three cats.

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