I understand that everyone is allowed to have their own opinion. Especially, when it comes to something as sensitive as abortion. However, there is an insurmountable difference between disagreeing with abortion and fighting to ban it in your state/in the United States. I have always identified myself as pro-choice; yet, I knew if something ever occurred to me (an accidental pregnancy) I would most likely not abort, due to personal choices. So why would I identify as pro-choice, if I myself would not even get an abortion? Simple. I believe that every woman has the right to decide what is best for her body and her life, regardless of interference from the federal/state government.

I have seen many pro-life posts on in the Internet, stating how ‘it’s not just your body, it’s the babies body’. While, personally, I believe that calling a 6 week old fetus a baby is a little bit of an overstep, I still feel that point is easily invalidated. This post (shown below) circulated throughout Tumblr and other social media sites within the past year and I could not have agreed more with what it states.

Furthermore, many Facebook posts that are shared are a mother of a premature child, showing how their ___ week old baby survived and how it looks so much like a full term child, and yet it is legal for it to be aborted in some states. Yet, what they fail to realize is that most of abortions, according to the CDC (actual statistics are shown below), are done during the first trimester. This is typically when a woman finds out that she is pregnant, and determines that she wants to terminate that pregnancy, for whatever reason. Of all abortions performed, only around one percent of them are done after 20 weeks. That is typically the time that a woman will find out of any birth defects that the baby has or of any life threatening issues carrying the child to full term might include. As this Facebook post (shown below) shows is that often times the woman who get late-term abortions were women who wanted that child. Who wanted nothing more than for their child to be healthy and breathing, yet that was just simply not the case.

Moreover, the Facebook post shown above illustrates how hard it is to receive a late-term abortion. Not only is it more expensive ($2,000 as opposed to around $400 for a first-trimester abortion), the obstacles that a woman will have to overcome in order to receive one are outrageous. The woman in the Facebook post above clearly stated that she wanted her baby and that the child was conceived intentionally, yet she still had to undergo questioning as to what birth control would be used in the future and was not allowed to face these questions with her husband. Instead, she had to go through, what was already a traumatic experience, alone.

Another argument is that why not simply just put the child up for adoption? There are currently almost half a million children who are in the foster care system. These children will most likely not get placed right away, as in CA alone over 38% will be placed in five or more homes. These kids will also be 50% more likely to be unemployed after leaving the foster care system and the girls are 60% more likely to become pregnant. They are also 28 times more likely to be sexually assaulted in foster care. So is adoption really the answer?

Pro-choice does not mean pro-abortion, instead, it mean that I support allowing the woman to decide what is right for her, the fetus, and her own body. Banning abortions will not stop them, but it will stop them from being carried out safely and legally.