{"id":219150,"date":"2010-01-22T11:12:11","date_gmt":"2010-01-22T16:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rhrealitycheck.org\/blog\/2010\/01\/22\/choice-its-too-complex-legislate"},"modified":"2010-01-22T11:26:43","modified_gmt":"2010-01-22T16:26:43","slug":"choice-its-too-complex-to-legislate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/219150","title":{"rendered":"Choice: It&#8217;s Too Complex to Legislate"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<p>\n\tThis post is part of our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rhrealitycheck.org\/blog\/tag\/37th-anniversary-roe-v-wade\">&quot;What Does Choice Mean to You?&quot; series<\/a> commemorating the 37th anniversary of <em>Roe v. Wade<\/em>.\n\t<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>My grandmother was Catholic and a life-long Republican.<br \/>\nDuring the Democratic National Convention in the summer of 2008, she asked me<br \/>\nwhat my opinion on abortion was. This was an incredibly awkward conversation<br \/>\nfor me as I do not discuss politics with my exceptionally conservative family.<br \/>\nMuch to my surprise, she was simply confused. She had heard stories about women<br \/>\nwho honestly needed abortions. By the end of it, we had both decided the issue<br \/>\nwas very complex, too complex to legislate.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nChoice isn&#8217;t simply deciding on pregnancy. It&#8217;s about the<br \/>\ncomplex nature of life. Women and men follow a variety of paths in life. Even<br \/>\nthose remarkably similar are starkly different. Most of us just want what is<br \/>\nbest for ourselves and our families. We must have access to information and be<br \/>\ngiven the opportunity to consider it, weigh it, and make a decision that best<br \/>\nmeets the needs of ourselves, our families, and (hopefully) our communities. We<br \/>\nmust be able to discuss it openly and honestly with people, be they our<br \/>\ndoctors, our families, or our friends. If our conversation is dismissed, our<br \/>\nlives are dismissed.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nOur choices aren&#8217;t always the right ones, but if we are<br \/>\nunable to discuss them, we have less of a chance of making healthy decisions.<br \/>\nAll too often, we are dissected, categorized, abused, ignored, labeled,<br \/>\nidolized, molded, belittled, negated \u2013 regardless of our sex \u2013 and if we veer<br \/>\noff the path decided for us, we are haunted, taunted, mortified, attacked,<br \/>\ndemolished all in the name of faith, family, community, country, rightness,<br \/>\njustice. People are lost to ideology.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nChoice is the conscience decision-making process we<br \/>\nengage in to do what is best for ourselves, our homes, and our families. It is<br \/>\nhaving access to information. It is having access to our options. And it is<br \/>\nbeing able to carry out our decisions. Choices are sometimes easy, sometimes<br \/>\ndifficult; sometimes our own, sometimes made for us; sometimes public,<br \/>\nsometimes private. But they are what make us human. And humans are too complex<br \/>\nto legislate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This post is part of our &quot;What Does Choice Mean to You?&quot; series commemorating the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. My grandmother was Catholic and a life-long Republican. During the Democratic National Convention in the summer of 2008, she asked me what my opinion on abortion was. This was an incredibly awkward conversation for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4265,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}