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Restricting Abortion Steals Freedom — And Perpetuates Inequality
Laws imposing forced births strip away self-determination— creating a two-tiered society of who does and doesn’t have bodily autonomy.
People who have had an abortion are yet again telling their stories in public. They are trying to humanize a medical procedure that has granted them power and control over their bodies and lives.
What comes out of these stories, if you pay close enough attention, is what abortion really offers those who elect to have one: freedom.
Freedom to lead a life of one’s choosing. The freedom that derives from a sense of self-determination that those who cannot get pregnant take for granted.
Who is anyone to impose upon another person the requirement to carry a fetus to term against their will, without any choice or say in the matter?
By stripping away a pregnant person’s bodily autonomy, those who impose a de facto policy of forced birth steal away a pregnant person’s agency over their life in the most intimate and consequential ways, imposing life-long physical, emotional, psychological and financial consequences.
For we live in a time, scientifically and medically, when an unwanted pregnancy can be safely ended. To take advantage of that is absolutely a form of freedom: a freedom of…
