I grew up in a generation that had lawful access to contraception and birth control. This meant that I was fully equal to my male counterparts to choose my education and career path, make my own life and health care decisions, make my own family planning decisions, and live in a society, that for the most part, understood that freedom must include respecting a person’s right to decide what happens to their own body. It is the basis of our laws requiring the informed consent of a patient. It is the basis of our laws recognizing the crimes of sexual assault. At the core of this is a deeply helpful recognition that if a person cannot decide what happens to their own body, they are not truly free nor truly equal.
My mom grew up in a generation without lawful access to contraception and birth control. She knew friends whose entire lives were side-tracked, women legally stuck with abusive men who impregnated them, and others who pursued illegal back-alley abortions, because that was all that was available. Women were often forced to give birth to children they did not want and could not afford, in a society, where the impregnating man was only sometimes held to account for his role in the pregnancy or to step up to owning the life and financial responsibilities that entails.
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The choice to have a child should be one of love and joy and no one else has a right to make that decision for you.
The idea that our US Supreme Court could take us back to a point where women were not full people, capable of making their own life and health care choices, but instead to face a future of either government-forced childbirth, facing illegal or unsafe abortions, or be criminalized based on their gender and biology is cruel and barbaric. Elections matter. Every office. Every seat. Every year. They impact our laws, our rights, our lives, our courts, our policies, our opportunities, and our freedoms. Will you help us in this fight?
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Morgan Carroll Chair, Colorado Democratic Party |
