I could not pull the lever for a candidate who doesn't support Reproductive Rights!

[Solly Mack]

10. It's not only about reproductive rights.

It's about how women are viewed overall. Either we are autonomous people, free to make our own decisions about our own health care and well being, or we're not.

No matter what "pro-lifers" tell themselves, once they start imposing demands on a woman - it's not about the fetus. It's about controlling women.

Once they support restricting access to health care through front door protests (blocking entry), and laws that place onerous and unnecessary burdens on the health clinics - it's not about the fetus - it's about controlling the actions of the woman.

Once they start demanding wait periods - that places added financial burdens on women - it's not about the fetus - it's about controlling women.

Once you start forcing women to listen to what amounts to nothing more than a shame-lecture before they can have an abortion, it's not about the fetus - it's about controlling women.

Once you start bombing clinics and murdering doctors - it's not about the fetus. It's about terrorizing women for the purpose of controlling them.

Whether or not to have a child is a decision that impacts our economic and educational well being, as well as our mental and physical well being. And all of those things go into making the decision.


Abortion is not a single issue and never has been. To dismiss it as such is to dismiss women as people.

Attempts at controlling women through our sexuality and the (warped) patriarchal notions of the role of women - "a woman's place"- reflect what society thinks of women. Of how little society thinks of women. Of how little society values women. That bias against women, nurtured and conditioned by years of sexism and misogyny, has impacted every area of a woman's life - jobs, wages, education, housing, credit, marriage, child-birth and rearing, violence against women, justice, the vote etc..

Our ability to have children has been (and still is being) used as a means to discriminate against us. To try and control us through shame. And when science and technology allowed us more control over our own bodies, the misogynistic authoritarians couldn't abide it. They still can't.

Well, fuck them.