Taylor Marsh – TaylorMarsh.com – News, Opinion and Weblog on Progressive Politics

The Abortion War updated below

South Dakota is set for the Supremes. Overturning Roe the goal.
It might take a couple of years to get there, but get there it will.

Women around this country have to quit selling their souls for
some bargain of safety. If you're not free, safety isn't worth the price you
paid for your liberty. Because in the end, women across this country have to take part of the
blame for the push to overturn Roe. No one likes it when I say that, but it's
true. When 20 million single women don't vote they get what they deserve. We
either are entitled to the legacy of our sisters or we are stepchildren of lives
misspent. We do all the women who came before us dishonor when we ignore their
legacy, which was built on lives of women who gave their all to make us equal.
Could it be anymore clear that the fight is not yet won?

If you don't have control and full domain over your own personage
you're simply not equal. My body is not your territory, not a man's either and
it most assuredly isn't the state's. I can say this because I've paid the price
and know the cost. I'm not the only one.

Between me and my God.

I did what I think men do all the time when they take
us to war: They choose violence because, although they believe it is bad,
it is still better than the alternatives. The \”just war\” theory
assumes that human beings get caught in terrible choices all the time. This
freedom is not just for men; it is for women also. When I made my choice to end one life on behalf of
other life, I was terribly troubled. I was in a double bind. I prayed and
anguished. Then I made a choice. Adults make choices.
My
Choice – Minister's difficult abortion the right choice
h/t shakespeare's
sister

Bush talks about fighting for the Iraqis' freedom, going to war
for that fight. But right now, this minute, women in the U.S. military serving
overseas don't have the same rights you and I have on American soil. Bush kills
in wars he calls just, but doesn't understand similar fights for freedom and survival.

Women in the throes of choosing abortion go through no less
a struggle. For many, it is choose or die, because most women who make the choice
actually have none at all. Some women just cannot have the child they are faced
with in times of personal strife. Other women have fetuses that are disfigured
or abnormal and couldn't handle the burden, financially or emotionally. Some desperately
want the child, but the fetus is so sick the battle to keep it alive would
kill the parents, or the birth itself would kill the mom. But every choice is
made in a moment of heart wrenching soul searching sacrifice.

No woman chooses abortion easily. But I've never known one who
regretted that choice. The fetus or me? is often the question. It's in that
moment you find self preservation the most powerful force on earth. The surety
of that power giving you the strength and courage to do what you must. It's
then many realize there was actually no choice at all.

I do not believe that life begins at conception. I do not believe
a fetus is more valuable than the woman on which it would depend. I believe
a woman is the mistress of her own fate, which no man, state, or law can take
away. That's why you will never ban abortion, not ever. We will die in order
to stay free, many have, long before South Dakota decided to dare the rest of
our country to side with the barbarism of Nazism.

Give me liberty or give me death is a cry for more than a nation's
freedom. It is the battle yell of every modern woman who demands the God given
right to choose her own fate. With that comes great responsibility for our liberation,
coupled with the crushing weight of the consequences of our mistake, which we will
carry all our lives, until the moment we are standing before the face
of our God. He will judge our actions. Those of us who have walked through the
pits of our own personal hell to make a decision that comes back every year as a
gnawing mystery of what if? However, I've never once doubted my decision.

In the anguish of a choice that is made for self, my God understands
the torment. He will judge me, and I believe forgive me, because only He
understands what was in my heart in that dark instant. It is what should forever
be between a woman and her God, for all women, for all time, especially in America.

If you've never voted, register. If you've never paid attention,
start reading.
If you don't know what it's like to cross state lines, trust me, you don't ever
want to find out.

Prevention is the key, not banning abortions, and this is where
the hypocrisy of the soulless right's cause shows them out. They won't support
full sex education, Plan B or anything that stops abortion, because they prefer
our teens ignorant and assigned to a church group, our women beholden to the
demands of the state. They have decided it is their charge to play God, a duty
in odds with all of His teachings. Meanwhile, millions of teens and pre-teens
are having sex earlier and without protection, getting STDs from all sorts of
other sexcapades, remaining uninformed and continuing to have unintended pregnancies.
Abstinence isn't the be all and end all, because the majority don't choose it
and also ending up losing it, unenlightened and unprepared.

The religious right is to blame for South Dakota's draconian ascendancy
into state controlled gynecology. Bush is to blame too, as is every Republican.
And so is every voting age woman who was too lazy to care and left us in this
predicament.

If you want to talk about ending abortions, start talking about
real prevention and full access to contraception, including Plan B, because you will simply never ban abortions. Self preservation is stronger than law.

UPDATE: This is the subject of today's podcast, also found here. It's serious, but it's very important.