Blog for Choice Day: What we're reading

Blog for Choice day is looking terrific... thanks pro-choice bloogers! Here are just a few posts I'd like to point out for your reading enjoyment

Remember, the topic was: What is your top pro-choice hope for President Obama and/or the new Congress?:

Outspeaking writes:

I'd like to start by going back to the debate between Obama and McCain on October 15, 2008. This was the night I decided I would vote for Barrack Obama. It wasn't because he was handsome, or his quiet chuckling, or the fact that McCain got so angry over little nothings. It was because of the following statement he made that coincides so completely with my beliefs:

"...what ultimately I believe is that women in consultation with their families, their doctors, their religious advisers, are in the best position to make this decision [whether or not to keep a pregnancy.] And I think that the Constitution has a right to privacy in it that shouldn't be subject to state referendum, any more than our First Amendment rights are subject to state referendum, any more than many of the other rights that we have should be subject to popular vote."

-quoted from the LA Times transcript of the debate

In the last year, I have realized how thoroughly and completely I believe these words. I began this blog largely to voice that belief - it is what I mean to be out speaking about the most. I am so glad to have a leader whose beliefs coincide so well with my own beliefs, and my own values.

Adena from MotherThoughts writes:

My greatest wish is to see comprehensive, sensitive, age-appropriate sexuality education instituted in schools throughout the U.S. Kids should start to learn from an early age the right names for their body parts, have their questions answered in age-appropriate ways about how babies are made, how their bodies work, how to critically look at the inappropriate sexual messages in our society. When they are in elementary school, they need to learn what changes their bodies will go through in puberty, about periods and wet dreams and body odor and all that jazz. And then, as young teens, they need to learn about sex, and birth control, and abstinence, and NOT abstinence, and relationships, and everything that goes along with that. 

UneFemmePlusCourageuse writes:

For me, this is pretty obvious.

• get rid of the Global Gag rule
• get rid of the new HHS regulations on birth control (Cristina Page tackles this quite well)
• stop funding abstinence-only sex education (Cara discusses the possibilities for this)

For me, you see, choice is not just about abortion. People want to say it is, people* want to pretend that that's all Planned Parenthood and NARAL do is tell women to have abortions. But no, that ain't it. They want to give women the best array of choices possible--hence, abortion, many forms of birth control, STD testing, information about sexual health, yearly well-woman exams.

I'll update again later today because the awesome pro-choice blog posts keep pouring in!