When I was coming of age in the 1970’s, I had a road map in the form of a breakthrough book, Our Bodies, Ourselves, first published in 1971. It revealed a wealth of information on all aspects of women’s health -- birth control, sexuality and relationships, abortion, violence and abuse, and body image, to name just a few.
Most significantly, it laid the foundation for my belief that if we’re able to be informed, we can know our own bodies and take responsibility for our well-being.
I find the recent attacks on a woman’s right to choose the course of her life hypocritical and an invasion of personal freedom. I see hypocrisy in the claims of those who would have a woman give birth to a child while cutting the social services that family may need to have even a fighting chance in life.
No one is pro-abortion, but people make mistakes, birth control fails, and crimes are committed against women. Ultimately, I don’t think the government should have any say in what a woman and her physician deem to be the best choice when faced with an unwanted, untenable pregnancy.
Attacks on personal freedoms, like a woman’s right to safe health care of her choice, should sound another warning bell in what has become a deafening cacophony of alarms being set off by self-serving power brokers and their weak constituents.
I’m Paula Garrett and that’s my perspective.
