‘Keep Your Hands Off My Body!’

By Judi Curry

Yes, I am old.  Very old.  The chances that I will ever need an abortion in this lifetime are almost nil.  But I have daughters, and granddaughters, and great-granddaughters that may, some day, find they are in a predicament where an abortion is the answer to their problem.

And that is not between that female and her Congressman; her Supreme Court Justice; her representative.  No! That decision should be between her and her physician.

I remember, as a young child, maybe 4-5 years old, overhearing my parents talk about “Patsy” – the young teenager next door that “died because of a hanger abortion.”

I didn’t know what a “hanger abortion” was, but for the longest time I was afraid to use a hanger in my closet. I remember my mother yelling at me to hang up my things, and I answered, “but I might die.”  She was speechless – the first and only time my mother didn’t have something to say about something – and asked me for an explanation.  It was then I found out about hangers and abortions.

A few year later my mother told me about another neighbor, Suzy, that died because she was pregnant and didn’t want her mother to know so she swallowed some bleach to abort the fetus, and died from that gesture.

Although I have not yet found a verification to the report I heard yesterday – 90 Republican congressional representatives have agreed that the United States Government should make abortion rules, not the individual states, it makes me wonder if these Republicans ever had mothers.

If you ask me, those people that acted as their mothers should have had abortions long before the fetus was born.  Just who do these people think they are?  There were not elected to pretend to be God; they were elected to run the government.  61% of Americans recently polled say that abortion should be legal.

I don’t know how many of the 90 Republicans are women, but I suspect that some are.  For the life of me I cannot understand who a woman could let someone other than her doctor make such a momentous decision for her.

It is more understandable about a man, who can impregnate hundreds of women and bear no consequences. Some of the comments that are being made by men are nauseating – some of the decisions being made by right-wing judges that even in case of rape the woman cannot have an abortion; the woman who knew that her baby did not have a brain was told she had to carry it full term.

How many babies have these men – and women – adopted? Who is going to take care of the mother and the child?  What is their mental attitude going to be like as they mature – if they do – into viable human beings?  How many women are going to die because of botched abortions?  How many babies are we going to find abandoned in fields, garbage cans, trash bins?

As I grow older I am more upset by the narrow-mindedness of the human race.  Do not foist your religious beliefs on me.  The constitution separates Church and State.  The Church and their beliefs should never enter into a decision.  Your own feelings should never be what makes the final decision for someone else.  Living your own life is hard enough without imposing your beliefs on others.

Vote against those representatives that are for abortion restriction. Any kind of restriction.  Be it at 6 weeks or at 15 weeks or later in the pregnancy.

One cannot say, “oops, you missed the deadline by one day”.  Human life does not behave that way.  The toll such an unwanted pregnancy will take on the mother, the child, and others involved is unprecedented

The cost of aiding these unwanted children will be great, both monetarily and emotionally.  The only way I can say it strong enough is to “keep your f- – – ing hands off my body and mind!”

The decision should be mine and no one else should have a part of it. Go to Church and pray for that poor woman if you need to, but it is her life, and should be her decision. Not yours; not a representative; not a judge.