Quiet Mountain Essays; vo.I, no.II

Copyright,2003

Choice Is A Right, Too

by Suzanne Sunshower

I am holding open an edition of Random House dictionary. Beside the word 'civil' it reads: "...pertaining to the private rights of individuals..."   Down the page I see that "...the rights to full legal, economic, and social equality" defines the phrase 'civil rights'. There is another term I would add to this list of civil rights, one which is the very embodiment of the quoted definition of 'civil', and that term is 'reproductive rights'.

Clearly the women's movement has fought for reproductive rights, as well as legal, economic, and social equality for women, but while great gains have been made in the last three areas of battle (enough so that it would now be considered incredibly imprudent to oppose such rights aloud), the one lingering arena of gender-based discrimination in which all people's minds have not been won over to the side of sense is that of women's reproductive choices.

There are still people who believe that it is not only acceptable, but preferable, to direct women in their individual, private reproductive choices - unlike men, who have complete and total reproductive freedom.  There is still this insidiously persistent segment of American society that believes women need to be told what to do with their bodies and when to do it; a segment determined to trample a woman's civil right to her individual, private reproductive choices.

This misguided segment operates under the false banner of eliminating abortion. However, to this end, there are no calls to curtail the reproductive rights of men. I fail to find one example of religious groups, courts, congress, or a presidential administration, weighing-in on the issues of 'sperm management' or 'erection reduction' - both of which (sperm and erections) lead to many unwanted pregnancies, and thus, abortions, year after year!

To the contrary.  It escapes abortion-opposition outcry that every message promoted in American culture regarding male sexual reproductive activity is specifically geared either toward increasing male sexual reproductive activity or toward fixing decreased said male activity.  To the extent that someone just arriving in-country might believe these two issues to be all that are on the male reproduction-related agenda in America.

Conversely, what does one see to be the issues continually before women, regarding their sexual reproductive activity? We find women fighting for birth control coverage in medical insurance plans, fighting for birth control to be approved in this country (RU-486, 'morning after' pill), fighting for birth control that is safe and does not maim or sterilize (as some women have experienced), and last, but not least, we see women continually fighting to keep a pregnant woman's choice for abortion.

Given that it can be largely assumed that male sperm and erections - and the male's reproductive freedom to do with either as he chooses - are the reasons for most female pregnancy, where is the balance between the aforementioned reproductive issues of the two genders? Where is the equality? There isn't any.

Men are pushed to have sex until they die (thanks to Viagra), just as if women are not getting pregnant as a result of this activity; while women, the only people who become pregnant, are the ones who must continually battle to control the various aspects of their unique reproductive life - including if and when to get pregnant or to terminate unwanted pregnancies.  Unlike for the man in the Viagra ad (who would be carefree again, if only he could just have sex), the sexual reproductive life of a woman is an ongoing consideration in which she must be fully engaged or suffer real-life consequences, not at all something about which she can be glib, lazy or mindless.

Whereas the push for males to have sex as much as possible (potentially leading to a woman's unwanted pregnancy) presumes that all males are capable of making wise and mature reproductive sex choices, restricting access to abortion and certain methods of birth control makes the tacit pronouncement that women - the only people who directly experience either pregnancy or abortion - are incapable of making wise and mature sexual reproductive choices themselves.

When someone - anyone - indicates that an individual woman should not have the right to make sexual reproduction choices for herself, that person is saying that the very being most directly impacted upon by the consequences of heterosexual sexual activity, is incapable of making decisions in her own best interests, in regards to that activity.  This belief casts women in the prime of their reproductive lives as being childlike, weak of bearing, and incapable of deciding or caring for themselves, when in actuality, women are the burden bearers of all human sexual reproduction.

When a baby is found abandoned, do the news headlines scream that its father be found? No, the demand is for penance from the mother - the one who gave birth.  No one asks where the male is who impregnated the woman, which led to the unwanted birth.  The police do not begin tracking males, and demanding the records of local male patients; males are free from interrogation, persecution, and prosecution surrounding their own sexual reproductive activity, in these cases.

Too, a woman can be policed - her prenatal activities monitored and judged - during pregnancy, while the male who impregnated her is completely free from such impositions.

Basic human and civil rights in a democracy include an individual's right to govern his own sexual reproduction choices, as part and parcel of an individual's right to self-determination.  Men have this right.  Rarely ever is a male's right to self-determined sexual reproductive activity challenged (chemical castration for repeat sex offenders notwithstanding; that's another essay), only women remain continually embattled for their own reproductive freedom.

Where is the logic in that while women, alone, are held responsible for pregnancy and childbirth (wanted or unwanted), they are deemed too irresponsible to be entrusted with the unfettered freedom of personal reproductive choice? If society insists that women, alone, are responsible for their circumstances surrounding pregnancy and childbirth, why then is it only women's sexual reproductive choices that lead to ongoing challenge, from societal discussion to threatened abrogation?

No one should take this matter lightly.  The woman engaged in her own freedom struggle, and that for her sisters and daughters, does not take this issue lightly.  All thinking women and men must maintain vigilance against the further erosion to, and looming abolition of, women's reproductive rights.  This is a Rights issue.   It is a civil and human rights issue.  It is an equal rights issue! And it must be seen as such, with clear eyes.

We women know what we need, we know what we want, and we know what we deserve; most importantly, we are sick and tired of being told that we don't know!

I know my Rights, and I won't back down.  No other woman should either.

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