Trust Women: Blog for Choice Day 2010

Today, on the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, bloggers around the country are taking part in NARAL's Blog for Choice Day. The prompt is in honor of Dr. George Tiller -- killed in his church last year for daring to provide women with legal abortions -- who used to wear a button simply stating, "Trust Women." Pro-choice bloggers are asked to lend their voices for this online day of action, to tell the world what "Trust Women" means to them.

Many of the posts already online (which you can find on the Blog for Choice website) are moving, eloquent, often personal pieces in support of women's reproductive rights. I encourage you to read these stories.

For me, "trust women" means that our society is deeply, desperately flawed.

I shouldn't have to tell anybody what "trust women" means to me.

Nobody should have to argue that women have the right to control their own bodies, to explain that forcing a woman to act as an incubator against her will is tantamount to slavery.

Nobody should have to point out that attempting to deprive women of their right to access a safe abortion is rooted in misogyny, in the assumption that women are either callous murderers or too infantile to make thoughtful decisions about their own bodies and the responsibility of bringing a life into this world, so somebody else needs to legislate their flesh and blood.

Trusting women means accepting that you don't have the right to judge anybody else's personal situation regarding their bodily integrity. It means that if a person is pro-life, that does not make them anti-choice. It means putting passion, energy, and money into reducing the need for abortion -- through promoting contraception and sex education in order to prevent unintended pregnancies, or working to alleviate poverty and provide better child care so that fewer women have to base their decision on economic constraints -- instead of fighting against reproductive rights and harassing women.

Trust women means trust women. It doesn't mean pointing to any given woman who advocates for dominating other women's bodies as proof that reproductive rights are not truly inherent human rights, rather than an indication of how ingrained sexism and misogyny is in our society. It means trusting each and every woman to make the right decision for her own body -- and nobody else's.

Trust women means treat women as human beings who deserve respect and the ability to protect their own bodies. It means standing adamantly against anybody else exerting control over their bodies, whether that control comes in the form of abortion bans or rape. It means believing that a person's right to bodily integrity is not dependent on their sex, that it in an inalienable human right, which for women includes the right to abortion.

"Trust women" shouldn't be a suggestion we have to ask support for; it should be a given. It shouldn't be a statement we have to defend and blog about -- just like reproductive rights shouldn't be something we have to constantly stand guard over and fight to protect. Which makes it, I suppose, the perfect prompt for Blog for Choice Day. Maybe one day we'll be able to stop arguing for the obvious.