Abortion is a very emotional and divisive issue and people feel passionately on both sides of the issue.
Here are some thoughts from the pro-choice side:
Pro-choice does not mean pro abortion. Many of us who hold pro-choice views would not personally choose an abortion. The difference is that all of us believe that this subject should not be legislated but needs to be a private, personal choice made by a woman and her doctor.
They are the only ones who need to know why a woman makes the heart-wrenching decision to not carry a fetus to term. Government bodies, the majority of which are made up of men, do not have the right to govern when a woman chooses to have a child and with whom.
Making abortion illegal or more restrictive does not eliminate abortions, it just makes safe abortions more difficult to obtain without addressing why women seek abortions in the first place. We support readily available reproductive health education and to give all girls and women, no questions asked, universal access to birth control.
There is no legal or biblical definition of when life begins. To take one Christian denomination's definition of when life begins and apply it to secular law violates the separation of church and state. No one should be forced to follow the tenets of a religion whether it is Islam, Protestant, Catholicism or Judaism.
Finally, as Sister Joan Chittister says: “I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth.”
Our state has one of the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the U.S. If Missouri were a country we would rank 111th.…on par with countries like Tajikistan and Romania. (KC Star).
If Republican legislators truly cared about life, they would improve the lives of women and children instead of forcing women who have been raped or are victims of incest to raise unwanted children in probable poverty.
Regarding the recently passed bill…many businesses who could grow our economy do not support backwards leaning bills like this one.
Even the current Republican President has said this bill is too restrictive. This new bill is wrong for women and wrong for Missouri. The abortion rate has been falling.
There are many other measures which could be taken to continue the decrease, and improve the health of Missouri women and infants. But to make abortions so restrictive and/or illegal is not the answer.
