When My Worlds Collide

[image error]

Do you have different personas?

I do. I’m a book editor, have a career as an author, and raise and show English Show Labradors as a hobby. And I do have somewhat different personas online and for marketing the editing side and author side.

But of course I’m the same person underneath it all J

And while there is some overlap as per editor and author (although not as much as you would think!), most of the time these are three different entities.

Sometimes, however, my separate worlds merge. And this just happened in the most delightful way.

I blogged a few weeks ago about letting go of worry, which was about my last baby boy puppy. And that out of the blue, the most perfect home came for him when I let go of the outcome.

Sometimes I post about political things, such as why we march.

Now and then, I post about a woman’s right to choose. It is an issue close to my heart.

It’s funny too—whenever the discussion comes up, pro-life folks go into detail about why they’re personally opposed to abortion. Why they wouldn’t have one. And I can understand and respect their thoughts and feelings. It is, in essence, a very personal decision.

But that’s the absolute rub here—it’s a personal decision. One based on beliefs, religion, health, and a host of other factors. It’s as personal a decision as any woman can ever make.

Where the decision must be left is with each woman and her doctor.

And that is the essence of choice.

If we as women don’t have sovereignty over our own bodies, we have no Civil Rights.

That I believe in a woman’s right to choose doesn’t make me pro-abortion. It means that at its core your decision whether to have one is yours to make—not mine.

I grew up in an era before Roe v. Wade. I know what it’s like to have limited options if an unplanned pregnancy occurred. I watched the girls who did get pregnant shamed to the hilt, or ferreted away as if they disappeared in the night, only to reappear all those months later as if nothing happened . . .

And then came R v. Wade, which was decided in 1973 by the US Supreme Court on the basis of privacy.

The Court ruled in a 7-2 decision written by Justice Harry Blackmun that the Texas statute violated Jane Roe’s constitutional right to privacy. The Court went on to say that the Constitution’s 1st, 4th, 9th, and 14th amendments protect a person’s “zone of privacy” against state laws, and cited precedent cases ruling that marriage, contraception, and child rearing are all covered in this “zone of privacy.”

Again, a woman has the right to choose what happens with her own body.

Of course, Texas wasn’t done. We live in the buckle of the bible belt, which wouldn’t be an issue if evangelicals didn’t hold fast to the idea that if you don’t believe the way they do, you’re going to hell.

In 2013, Texas HB 2 would have shut down dozens of clinics across the state. It mandated that abortions take place in ambulatory surgical centers, or min-hospitals, instead of regular clinics. Under the guise that this would protect women’s health.

It went all the way to the Supreme Court. In a 5-3 decision in June of 2016, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a concurring majority opinion in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, issuing a scathing criticism of the anti-abortion activists’ arguments, which stated that these sort of provisions are necessary to keep women safe:

“[I]t is beyond rational belief that H.B. 2 could genuinely protect the health of women, and certain that the law ‘would simply make it more difficult for them to obtain abortions,’” Ginsburg wrote. “When a State severely limits access to safe and legal procedures, women in desperate circumstances may resort to unlicensed rogue practitioners ... at great risk to their health and safety.”

What does this have to do with puppies and my worlds coming together?

I’m getting there