There’s been a lot of talk lately about the “a” word -- abortion. You’re either heavily pro-choice, or you’re heavily pro-life. There’s no “eh” or middle ground. I, like many other women, am absolutely exhausted from having to explain to other people why women have the right to make decisions in our best interest and over our bodies, and yes, that does include abortion.

A lot of pro-lifers think that women who get abortions are selfish whores that just choose the easy way out. This is hardly the case -- and that is what I'm here to prove to you. Someone rightly said, “A woman does not want an abortion like she wants an ice cream cone, a new dress, or a Porsche; she wants an abortion like an animal caught in a trap wants to gnaw off its own leg to escape.” Abortion is not just an easy choice that a person makes to get rid of a tiny blemish in their body.

I interviewed a woman who works as an escort at an independent clinic in New York (whose name shall remain anonymous due to privacy reasons), and she told me the story of a woman she met on the job, "Patients or companions sometimes come outside the clinic to smoke or get some air. One woman approached me and another escort… She then told us a bit about her story -- she’s a single mom with a son that she loves. She told us that she almost died during pregnancy -- doctors told her that she was allergic to one of the pregnancy hormones. After her son was born, the doctors told her that she shouldn’t have any more kids for the sake of her health, though it was unlikely she would be able to get pregnant again. But lo and behold, some ten years later, there she is. She showed us her arms and legs, which had spots all over them, like chicken pox. She sighed, “I used to be against all of this, but now I get it. I mean, what am I supposed to do? I want to be a mom to my son, and I can’t do that if I’m dead."

That's not to say that the only women who are allowed to have abortions are women who physically have to because of their health. Sometimes it is just the best decision for the woman and the sake of the potential baby. I also interviewed a woman via email who was kind enough to share with me her experience. Here is her story: “I actually had two abortions. I would have had three but one miscarried right before I was scheduled for the procedure. I was 22 the first time and probably 23 the next. I am now 39. I never did have kids -- I never wanted them. I also wasn’t a responsible person at this time. There was no way I was going through with a pregnancy… My first abortion I honestly don’t remember at all... I went down there [to the clinic] alone and came back without anyone even noticing. The third time I got pregnant, I was visiting my boyfriend who was spending the semester in Spain…again, not much memory of the whole thing. I didn’t really feel anything after the abortions, to be honest. I thought of them as medical procedures to remove something I didn’t want on/in my body. I’ve never had any regrets or wondered even for a minute what my life would be like if I’d had babies back then… I was never scared or unsure or sad. In fact, I felt pretty confident every time. That first time I went to the clinic, I remember getting out of the car and all those protestors were out there with signs and stuff, and I just remembered thinking how ignorant and uneducated and bored they all must be. There was a woman who came in with her husband, probably in her mid-30s, and I heard her telling the nurse that she would need to call back to make the appointment because she’d need to get a babysitter for her daughter. For some reason, it had never occurred to me that married women who were already mothers could have abortions, too. That made me feel validated -- like this wasn’t just because I was some irresponsible loser, but because I was a woman with choices and control over my body and my health.”

There are many reasons that a woman would choose to go through with an abortion. Unlike what many pro-lifers would assume, abortion is usually not a selfish decision. It is what's best for the woman and the potential baby. Maybe a woman is not responsible enough to raise a child, maybe she wouldn't be able to provide the love and care that it deserves. Maybe it would affect her health or her well being like the woman described in the first story -- there are lots of reasons, and if you are pro-life, and you really care about life, then you have to recognize that sometimes an abortion is the best case scenario for all lives involved.

I will leave you with an analogy that I found from user “fandomsandfeminism” on Tumblr: “If my younger sister was in a car accident and desperately needed a blood transfusion to live, and I was the only person on Earth who could donate blood to save her, and even though donating blood is a relatively easy, safe and quick procedure, no one can force me to give blood. Yes, even to save the life of a fully grown person, it would be illegal to force me to donate blood if I didn’t want to. See, we have this concept called “bodily autonomy.” It’s this cultural notion that a persons control over their own bod is above all important and must not be infringed upon. Like, we can’t even take life saving organs from corpses unless the person whose corpse it is gave consent before their death. Even corpses give bodily autonomy. To tell people that they must sacrifice their bodily autonomy for nine months against their will is an incredibly expensive, invasive and difficult process to save what you view as another human life (a debatable claim in the early stages of pregnancy when the VAST majority of abortions are performed) is desperately unethical.”