Freedom - To Do What I Choose With My Own Body

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July – Independence Day here in America. The holiday brings to mind to many Americans fireworks, backyard barbecues, homemade ice cream, a day off from work. To others, it is a reminder that we have so much to be thankful for, living in a country where we can say and do pretty much what we want. The Fourth of July reminds us of those who fought and died so long ago (and who continued to do so in the following centuries) to establish and maintain our freedom.

Freedom. What does that word mean to you? According to Webster, freedom is “1: the quality or state of being free: as a: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action b: liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another”. Although there is still poverty, sadness, abuse, war and neglect in this world, Americans enjoy freedoms we often take for granted.

As a young woman (well, relatively young), I sometimes forget that there was a time when women weren’t allowed to vote, were considered chattel, could be abused with no help from the law. There once was a time when a woman, when finding herself pregnant, had to resort to either having the baby and supporting it alone or giving it up for adoption. Or, God forbid, going to some butcher and possibly becoming sterile as a result of a back-alley abortion, or even dying of complications from that abortion. I too often take it for granted that if I were in a similar situation, I’d have more than just one or two options presented for my choosing.

I was pregnant once, at nineteen. At the time, I wasn’t engaged, but merely dating my future first husband. Fortunately, I never even knew I was pregnant, not until the miscarriage. I didn’t have to make a decision I would remember for the rest of my life. There have been a few times I have wondered what it would be like if I had that (would be now 13 year old) child. How would I be? Would we have stayed together or resented each other possibly more? Would I have even carried the baby full-term, or would I have chosen to have an abortion? I don’t think I would have had the child since motherhood was never on my list of things to do. But I will never know.

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