The Cider House Rules question

Having been raised in a pro-life household, it was many years before I formed my own independent opinions about abortion.

Stories like Cider House Rules, both fiction and non-fiction, opened my eyes to the historical significance of a woman's individual right to choose whether or not to continue a pregnancy. In the years before reliable birth control, women really had very few options when it came to planning their families and having some control over their own reproductive health.

What I think is most disturbing in recent times is that reliable, safe birth control methods are available but so many women are uneducated or otherwise prevented from accessing the information and materials they need to prevent pregnancy so that the question of abortion becomes a less frequent one.

Sadly, many of the most vocal opponents of abortion are also adamant that sexual activity should come with consequences and try to prevent reasonable efforts to make birth control options available to all women of childbearing age.

If you are against abortion, don't have one. Otherwise, MYOB.

As a paramedic, who's SEEN that all these MALE lawmakers trying to make abortion "so impossible" has driven women to do them in truly alarming ways, I think the control freaks who want to instruct strangers on how to live their lives are losing the battle.
What it talked about in the book, where they gave abortions to themselves and died from infections and other things, are fact and not fiction. I've seen it happen repeatedly, so what have the people trying to prevent it gained by passing their silly little laws?

I'd never get an abortion myself, bc I don't believe I could stop a pregnancy from continuing to its end result, but why should I be able to tell total strangers I'll most likely never meet what to do with their lives?
I don't believe I should and MALE politicians CERTAINLY shouldn't be doing so.

I also agree with John Irving. He said he "doesn't necessarily agree with abortion" but that he doesn't think someone should use their religion to manipulate a desired reaction from another person.

Making a choice whether to have an abortion or not is a terrible choice to have to make. BUT it is the choice of the MOTHER to be, not a bunch of politicians or "holier than thou" religious folks who want every child born, then want to cut social service spending and want to ban all birth control education for teens. Pro life is NOT pro life - it is antiabortion and pro poverty.

It has been a few decades since I read Cider House Rules, but I remember that after reading it, the abortion issue seemed a great deal clearer.

Abortions date back to prehistory. Nomadic tribes aborted fetuses when food was scarce. My mother went to have her fourth pregnancy terminated in the late 1950s long before Wade and Roe were household names. And, I can't count the young women I have known who terminated pregnancies while in college, again long before the procedure was legal.

As Cider House rules makes abundantly clear, I think, the issue is whether safe abortions will be made available to those, primarily the poor, without means.