(Note: This article is a response to "Why I Can't Support the Right to Abortion". Read it to learn about the other side of this debate!)

1. Abortion is not birth control, but can be prevented with greater knowledge and access to birth control.

States such as Alabama and Lousiana have the highest rate of teen pregnancy, and feature some of the vaguest and misleading sexual education in the country. Actually attending the sexual education classes in Alabama, I was taught that sex was wrong and not to have it. I did not learn how to use a condom, or that there were more forms of birth control aside from that. There were multiple pregnant girls in my class, and I wonder how that may have been prevented with something as simple as access to condoms and more knowledge on preventing pregnancy. (As a side note, Viagra was covered under most insurances while birth control was not until 2012, furthermore, states were allowed to ban the use of birth control until 1965. In Massachusetts, single women were not allowed to purchase birth control in 1972.

2. Pregnancy should not be used as a punishment for sex.

The common phrase "If you have sex you will get pregnant and die" is jokingly thrown around, but there is truth to it. There is nothing selfish about deciding what is best for yourself, and knowing that if you were to carry the pregnancy to term that you would not be able to offer a suitable life to a baby. A mother is stuck taking care of a baby, a father can easily skip out and not worry about it. Sex is a normal and healthy part of life, and with the preventative measures we are offered, women should be able to take full advantage of them. If they fail, women need a way out to make sure they have control of their own life.

3. Women may or may not be traumatized after an abortion, but they will always be traumatized after being forced to carry a pregnancy to term.

An example of this are the women who died after not having a way out. If abortion is not medically accessible, women will still find a means to abort a pregnancy, and none of them are safe. Coat hangers were actually used. Women throwing themselves into walls, or tripping onto fire hydrants were not unheard of. Soap and turpentine were shot into the cervix, causing burns and massive health problems. Women died from this, from infections, bleeding out, or being poisoned from the chemicals they were putting into their body because they knew they had no way out. Hospitals had "septic wards" devoted to caring for these women. Taking away access to safe and sterile abortions will cause the numbers of women dying of these causes to rise.

Women are also more likely to be traumatized after being forced to hear the heartbeat, see the ultrasound, or be told about the fetus's fingers and toes, as well as being called a murderer and harassed by protesters at abortion clinics.

4. Women have bodily autonomy.

There is nothing selfish about wanting control on one's body. Pregnancy is a forever life and body altering event, and there is nothing selfish about not wanting any of it, at all. You cannot take someone's liver to save someone else's life, similar to how you cannot tell someone what to do with their uterus.

5. Pro-choice is not pro-abortion.

Pro-choice is exactly what it states. It is the chance to have the decision that matters. Just because someone is pro-choice does not mean that they are pro-abortion and want to abort every pregnancy, they simply support the fact that women deserve and have the inherent right to control what goes, comes out, and stays in their own body, without an all male panel making the decisions for women they will never, about a situation they will never feel.