SEX CAN KILL YOU

I'm Pro-Choice. To me it's simple - government has no right to control what I do with or to my body.*

BUT I am in no way, shape or form Pro-Abortion. The idea that being pro-choice means you support abortion is ridiculous.

I will say I have never had to consider the idea. I've been with the same man since I was 18 and we were together 11 years before we had our first child and boy was she planned! And yes, the next one, 20 months later, was very planned as well. Just for the record, because even my grandma asked that question!

But having carried two children, seeing and hearing their heartbeats at 6 weeks and at 8 weeks, I cannot believe it is a simple decision to have an abortion. There is no going back from abortion, there's no unsealing records and maybe finding happiness. Once it's done it's done. So why not use everything in our power to prevent people from having to make that choice?

And I don't think abortions for the health of the mother should be called abortions. There has to be another way to say it. One person or the other will die, sometimes it's just a matter of who has a better chance of survival. Is it better to let them both die? How is that an OK thing with God? And sometimes it's not the baby who dies, sometimes its the mom. No one should have to chose between themselves and their child, sometimes that's just the way it is.

I don't understand, with all our knowledge, with all our medical advances, why people think abstinence is what to teach. I mean, come on, no on really thinks people are going to be celibate until they're 30 - good luck making it to 20. There's no such thing as an old maid. What is so wrong about educating our youth about birth control? What is so bad about moms telling their daughters they need to carry a condom too? Don't tell my husband, but that will be a part of my discussion.

What scares me is that in the midst of teaching abstinence, DISEASE has been left out. Forget moral and religious issues - sex can KILL you. Even the most curable diseases, ones that can be banished with a dose of penicillin, can cause some serious damage if left untreated. Then there are the ones without symptoms, that without regular checkups can eat away at your insides. Then there's the big scary ones - HIV, HPV and AIDS.

The funniest part of it is teen pregnancy keeps going down. You know who's out there having abortions - the 20 somethings. The ones who can go to a bar, pick someone up and wake up in a strange bed with no recollection of what happened. Now I need to watch what I say here or someone might think I'm suggesting prohibition again. What I'm saying is if people of ALL AGES (because you'd be surprised how many older people get STD's now-a-days) were EDUCATED on birth control and disease just maybe the number of unwanted pregnancies would go down.

Adoption education is very lacking in our society. Maybe if people were EDUCATED on ADOPTION they wouldn't think it was a keep it or kill it situation. You hear about the couple that can't have children, the ones who pay a great deal of money to adopt children from other countries. That's not a big deal. So why don't we tell our youth that this IS an option? There's even OPEN ADOPTIONS now that you can keep in touch with the child you've given up. It's not all closed-book, never-see-the-child-again rules anymore.

And seriously, if you still have religious problems with birth control try the SEX CAN KILL YOU approach, because plain old abstinence is not cutting it!

Bad things happen to good people. Less bad things happen when you're educated about them. So maybe I'm not pro-choice. I think pro-sex ed is a better catch phrase. I like that.

*for those of you who will comment, I don't have an issue with prostitution either. It's another thing that if it were "okay" there would be less disease and less death. I have an issue with forcing women and girls into prostitution, but doing it by free choice doesn't bother me at all.