A radical doula

I am a doula.  I love babies and birth.  Like looooooove birth.  It is one of the most awe inspiring, spiritual acts that you could ever witness.  I am a hippy "liberal" for lack of a better term.  I believe in peace and am distraught by the amount of joyful violence and how it is seen as "necessary" by most people. This is why I don't understand people who deem invading and conquering as appropriate, shooting people as ok, and love watching videos of people getting their ass beat.  However, mention abortion or the rights of a mother over that of an unborn child and all hell breaks loose.  These same people whom embrace war will accuse someone of being a murderer, of commiting genocide.  Seriously people?  These people who think drones are necessary, that it's ok to spend billions on weaponry that never see the light of day, who have become desensitized about children being murdered in war, who scream about any new taxes that will help impoverished children, want to make sure that baby can be born, no matter what happens to the mother.  No one cares what happens to the baby after it's born.....they all say adoption is the answer.  Which their taxes pay for, which they don't want to keep paying because they can't afford it, but don't support raising the minimum wage either.  So many children are left in orphanages and in the foster system....is that really any way for a child to grow up?

Then there is the fact that so many women have been duped by men with no medical background or experience into believing that this is all their fault.  That women are the only ones to blame for having sex, that women are the only ones to blame for getting pregnant, and we are the only ones to blame for abortion.  They act like this isn't some heart wrenching decision for almost all women who make that choice.  Then they persecute them, jail them.  Then they say "stop getting pregnant" and take away our birth control while simultaneously allowing Viagra to be paid for by insurance and handing out condoms like they are candy.  So it's ok for the boys to have sex, but they can't be gay so they can only have sex with girls.  The girls who are burned at the stake for having sex and left without any way of trying to protect themselves.  And we think this is normal.  This is not normal, and it is not ok.  We are taught in school that it's our bodies, that we must never let a man take advantage of us, never let us feel that we don't have a choice to say no.  Then they turn around and tell us that a bunch of men are going to decide what we can and cannot do with our own bodies and that it is law.  If that was another country we would be invading them to rescue the women from such "sharia law", provided they have oil of course.

I say these things not to try and dissuade anyone from their thinking, but to get them thinking.  I am pro-choice.  The statement is simple.  I believe it is your choice (and father if applicable) whether or not to have an abortion, or have and keep the baby, or to put it up for adoption. Belief on a moral stance does not dictate law.  You are still a person, a human being.  It seems like the media has allowed women to believe that they are nothing more than dangerous incubators that babies must be rescued from, and the government and medical community act accordingly thus keeping this belief alive and well. There are more murders with guns, knives etc every day than there are of abortions.  Yet if you were to believe the media and the conservative groups, it would seem as though women are simply flocking to abortion clinics to keep having sex and not dealing with the consequence.  And people believe it.  Why?  Why is sending our troops to die for oil ok, but not allowing a mother who cannot feed this next baby to make a decision she feels is in it's best interest.  

I won't lie.  When I found out I was pregnant I thought about aborting.  But I felt the same pull as I did when I saw my dog at the ASPCA; that there was no choice, that that was my dog and she was coming home with me whether I wanted her or not.  And she has been the best thing in my life.  But that was MY choice.  What is best for me may not be best for someone else.  And vice versa.  I'm not the mother of 5 who just found out she and her husband have gotten pregnant again, just as they are about to be foreclosed on.  I'm not the single college student who forgot her birth control, and now the father is claiming to have no ties with.  I'm not even the coke addict who realizes that she can't beat her addiction and doesn't want to bring another human into that life, that environment.  

I'm not them, how can I judge them?  

Who says sex is only for college educated, well-off married couples?  The government and conservative groups apparently.  Women are shamed and shunned if they are unmarried and having sex.  But boys will be boys.  

How is any of this ok?  How is any of this considered normal.  Simply because we live in a patriarchal society where men have no consequence of birth, they have deemed it the women's burden to bear.  If the shoe were on the other foot with men giving birth and having to need contraception I garauntee the laws would be a complete 180.  

And people wonder why I'm a feminist.  Because of shit like this right here.