Pro-Choice Voters

While I was researching abortion clinics several years ago for a paper, I called around to see what the costs were and how many women generally obtained abortions from the clinics. I was only able to locate one clinic within driving distance to our county and was astounded to learn that it was a half a day’s drive there. The person I talked to told me that it’s very common to have to drive far to get an abortion in the United States; in fact, at least 4 out of 5 counties do not have access to an abortion provider. Though she couldn’t tell me any information about the clientele—which I understood—she did tell me that the procedure was around $500. Add that to the gas women had to use, plus a night’s lodging (she said you had to come back the next day to finish the procedure in most cases), and then a follow-up visit (and its gas and possible lodging) later, you’re talking around $1,000 for an abortion.

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In the Western world, we take it for granted on a daily basis that we can control the number of children we have—or whether or not we can have them at all. We do have some huge setbacks in terms of equality, ridiculous laws regarding ultrasounds, notification, and waiting periods when it comes to abortion (not to mention that nearly 90% of U.S. counties don’t have access to an abortion clinic), and we could all definitely use a more reliable, safe method of birth control rather than the options we already have—but when compared to many other nations, like so many other things we are privileged with, we can largely make our own reproductive decisions and manage our uteruses.

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If there’s anything children need to learn in school more than physics, chemistry, Chaucer, or how to pass standardized tests, it’s childcare. Statistics show that the majority of them will eventually become parents, while the majority will not become astrophysicists. (Schools are pretty famous for not preparing people for things that they will really experience in life, after all; not that these subjects are not important for the few who go on to actually use them in life.) It’s kind of ridiculous that students are required to take so many math, science, English, and social studies credits—at least a third of which, if not more, they will not be using in life—while childcare, cooking, money budgeting, and other life skills courses are “optional.”

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The United States doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to sexual and reproductive health. We go back and forth on the Global Gag Rule every presidential term. We have huge numbers of pregnant children and teenagers while we have schools that refuse to teach them how to have responsible sex—or we give our funding for sex education to abstinence-only religious groups. We even have legislators demanding that women get vaginal ultrasounds to have enough “information” before getting an abortion—which is just as good as mandating that women be raped before getting the procedure done. Yeah, none of this is very impressive by any means, and it’s no wonder that we still have many mothers dying every day from being pregnant—many of them still of high school age.

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