I was having a conversation with a woman who has had five children. She was only fifteen years old when she had her first child and she wanted to have her tubes tied afterwards. The doctor refused; however, because she wasn’t 21 years of age. She told me that she had tried every kind of birth control available, but she kept getting pregnant. Her last two babies were twins and after their birth, she was at last old enough to have the tubal ligation. This has made me realize how much harder women must fight for their rights.
A woman who is sexually mature and capable of bringing a baby into the world, should have the right to make decisions about her body! Whether you live in a state that grants you this right at 18, or one that prolongs it to age 21, this is not something that belongs in the plethora of laws in the first place. If a young woman is raped at the tender age of 13, resulting in pregnancy, she should not only have the right to an abortion – she should have the right to make all decisions about her reproductive life. She should have the right to have a tubal ligation. ALL women, once they are sexually mature, deserve this fundamental right. Doctors and pro-life activists will try to talk women out of permanent birth control because a few women have had regrets over having had tubal ligations and/or abortions. We all do things that we sometimes regret later and sometimes a woman’s purpose in this life is NOT to have children. Our planet is already bulging with 8 billion human beings and the prevention of a few babies is not going to affect that.
I learned of a similar problem that inflicts untold injustice on women. Some young women are raped by family members, relatives, and even clergymen; and they are then forced to marry their perpetrator. The woman is not even allowed to sign her own marriage certificate because she is underage. She may go through years of abuse – sexual, physical, verbal – from her husband, but she cannot divorce him until she has reached legal age.
The overturning of Roe v Wade is deplorable. Those who instigated it are about to realize just how strong we (women) really are. We are not about to concede the ground we have fought so hard to gain. We will continue to fight for our inalienable rights as citizens, regardless of our sex. We will fight harder. We will win.
