Vote for choice
I attended an event sponsored by the League of Women Voters night to educate myself about the issues in the upcoming Nov. 4 election.
I am an activist for women’s health and and advocate for the right of women to have an abortion. I do not believe it is the government’s job to police my body.
I am sick and tired of my rights being degraded by men who go home to wives and daughters and who honestly think they should be legally forced to endure a pregnancy against their will. I am sick and tired of the sexist and racist political system that sees women, members of the LGBTQAI community and people of color as commodities for their political campaign.
We are not potential donor dollars or votes. We are people whose life and liberty is being stolen by the white men in power.
President Obama said perfectly in one of his speeches for the 2008 election, “Women are not an interest group.” Still, I feel like the interests of women are being commodified, and worse, ignored.
I spoke to State Rep. Kevin Cotter, R - Mount Pleasant, about his vote for laws that would essentially shut down every abortion clinic in Michigan. The law he voted for in the name of “protecting women” included regulating how wide a door has to be, how tall the grass must remain, and giving funerals to aborted fetuses, which can cost thousands of dollars.
I asked him how he could vote for such draconian laws that even the highest medical institutions are against.
His answer? To protect women.
In response I asked him about the 50,000 women who die each year from illegal, unsafe abortion and how he plans to ensure Michigan women will not meet the same fate should he once again vote to eliminate the right to terminate a pregnancy.
I could tell he was nervous. But spoken like a true politician, he flat out lied and once again acted as though he is a champion for women’s health.
Over half of Central Michigan University’s campus is made up of women. Half of us will have an unplanned pregnancy in our lifetime. And half of those who do will choose to terminate a pregnancy.
Currently there is no facility that provides abortions in Mount Pleasant. The last abortion clinic in Lansing just closed.
I am fearful for what this means for the students of CMU. I am afraid of a governing body of predominately men who are corroding a woman’s sacred right to choose - a right not only upheld by national law, but natural law.
For many people, abortion is a complicated issue, but as I have said time and time again, the legal right to terminate a pregnancy, and the right to have access to terminate a pregnancy, is not something that should be voted on by a group of elitist men. And it certainly should not be laughed at by our very own state representative, Kevin Cotter.
When your representative laughs at such a serious issue, he laughs at the 50,000 women who die each year from unsafe abortions, and more importantly, he laughs at you.
