Be for women's rights, reproductive health & privacy and make choices appropriate in your life

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Be for women's rights, reproductive health and privacy and make the choices that are appropriate in your life.

Who makes your decisions for you? Your spouse, your boss, your church, your circumstances, your government? Who has dominion over your life, your decisions, your body?

So many decades later, the word "choose" or "choice" may be a stumbling block for some. Women are perceived as more liberated than before. The fact remains that women are not equal in this country, in terms of socioeconomic status or rights to reproductive health and privacy.

Women are largely left out of the equation of reproductive health discussions, as if they are incidental to -- rather than vital and in charge of -- the process. Due to the controversies over sex education in schools, many people are ignorant about the reproductive process.

The biggest point that may be missed in the passionate urge to express opinions on the topic is: it's none of your business. Unless it is you and your family, it's none of your business.

That is not an affront. That is a fact. If women had equal rights and socioeconomic status to men, it wouldn't even be a question. If men got pregnant, it wouldn't be a question. So anyone who finds reproductive privacy a personal affront, please take a breath and imagine simply affording other people the respect they reasonably -- and legally -- require.

Until not that long ago, women were property of men, without rights, without voices, without choices. Decision making power and socioeconomic status was the domain of males. Childbirth and domestic labor was the duty of women. Up to and including the 1960'-70's, when women's rights struggles peaked, those attitudes and laws were in place. Some still are.

Women's socioeconomic status in 2009 is still unequal to males. The circumstances that made women fight for the right to choose their reproductive life path have been altered, not changed.

If more people better understood the reproductive process; if more people quit ignoring the woman and pretending she is not vital to the process; if more people accepted and respected that someone else's reproductive health and life is none of their business -- the discussion would be much briefer and much simpler:

Woman are not incubators. They shall not remain second class citizens. They shall have reproductive health and privacy rights. They shall have equal opportunity BY LAW to provide for themselves and their families.