Blog for Choice 2008

Today is the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and Blog for Choice Day.

This year's topic: tell us, and your readers, why it's important to vote pro-choice.

Because legal, safe, doctor-provided, state regulated abortion is far superior to illegal, unsafe, black market abortion performed by criminals or by pregnant women themselves.

Legal abortion both spares women's lives and reduces abortion rates. This is true both in the US and around the world. If you care about keeping women safe, and you care about preventing as many abortions as possible, then you should care about keeping abortion legal and regulated.

And legal abortion providers have good reason to follow those regulations. They don't want to lose their medical licenses, for which they have worked so hard. The typical legal abortion in the US is performed in a clean, safe environment, by a qualified medical practitioner, and involves pre-abortion counseling, receiving information from the state on fetal development as well as all your options and risks, parental involvement or judicial permission for minors, an ultrasound, and a waiting period to think it all over. After a legal abortion, patients receive follow-up care, birth control and post-abortion counseling, if they need it.

With illegal abortion, all those regulations and safeguards go out the window, as abortion is taken over by organized criminals looking for fast, easy money. We can not allow this to happen, after 35 years of improving safety and diminishing abortion rates.

I may be a member of the post-Roe generation, but that doesn't mean I'm naïve enough to want to go back to the bad old days. Prohibition doesn't work for alcohol, doesn't work for drugs, and doesn't work for abortion. Regulation does work, has worked, and should be allowed to continue working.

A vote for choice is a vote for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.