Contributed by Emi Webb
I am a proud mother of two amazing and beautiful children. I am a fantastic mother, actually. I am a stay-at-home mom who homeschools my two youngsters and douses them in age-appropriate curriculum. I relish in their growth, and I am downright fierce in my protection of my kids.
I am also pro-choice.
The fact of the matter is, I view the choice to become a parent to be a vital one to the health of children. I view it vital that children are wanted and loved. I care about the upbringing of a child. I am outraged when I hear of a child falling victim to a tragic event at the hands of a caregiver. I am heartbroken for the women who are given no choice in their parenting.
My eldest is an unplanned child. I readily admit that. My husband and I conceived her in college while we were broke, often starving and struggling. I was on birth control and we used a condom. We did everything right. We were great students who also liked to blow off steam somewhat recklessly, as college students often do. We were living together, but had been together barely a year. Certainly we were serious and talking marriage after graduation, but nothing prepared me to spend my 21st birthday knocked up with an unplanned baby.
Still, I never once felt trapped into parenthood. Initially, when I first found out I was pregnant, I planned an abortion. My partner and I were terrified. It was planned for a couple weeks out and then we started soul-searching. We came to the decision before the end of those two weeks that we wanted my daughter. We wanted to raise her. We wanted to have her and cherish her and see her grow into an amazing child and adult. In those two weeks, we thought deeply, laughed, cried and made plan after plan. We quickly had to get our lives together.
We went onto welfare. We just recently were able to ease our way off. I was blessed with support and an amazing community. If I hadn't had that community, I would have been lost. I was privileged with the ability to access a community like that and access to critical welfare to get us into a healthy environment for our child. Community factored into my choice.
And I feel like my choice to become a parent is what made me so committed to my babies. I believe that being able to make the personal choice to have a child carried and brought to life within my body is a vital decision that no woman takes lightly and is essential to her freedom. It is wrong to take it away.
It is not about the fetus, often aborted before the vital organs are completed in utero. To take away abortion is solely to attack women's freedom to make essential life decisions for themselves. For the sake of the children and the lives of the mothers, being allowed to choose is vital to the health of families.