Abortion
There we go, I've said it and if you're wondering why it's there in big red letters, all singing and all dancing, it's so that we can just get over the word and move on.
Manchester is a pretty liberal place, given that it's home to more that 80,000+ students and one of the biggest gay communities in the country, that is hardly a surprise. So you can imagine my disgust when, as I walked towards the bus stop this morning I saw a small sandwich board with the words 'Warning: Graphic Abortion Images Ahead'. Instantly, my Obama led good mood burst into a million tiny pieces. I was furious, especially when, as I grew closer to the cluster of fairly bloody images I noticed that, low and behold, the majority of the protesters were men. Enraged, and with 10 minutes until my class and 20 minute bus journey ahead, I got on the bus and tweeted until my fingers bled (alright, that may be an exaggeration). What the hell do men have to protest on what women do with their bodies? Why is it that they were the ones holding up the posters and handing out the leaflets? And why was it that yet again, women were allowing men to tell us how we can and cannot be seen and what we can and cannot do?
Then I realized something; yeah the blokes were protesting against a woman's right to an abortion, but more importantly there were two women there, protesting their own right to an abortion. It's like cutting off your nose in spite of your face. Not every women will require an abortion, not every women will chose to have one, even if she does fall unexpectedly pregnant, but the important part is that the choice is there and that it is ours.
Last night saw President Obama be voted back into the White House for another 4 years and here in the UK it appeared to most that he was the only candidate worth considering. Romney had, on more than one occasion, come across as ignorant, racist, sexist homophobe, leading many of us to question how anyone that wasn't a straight, white man could bring themselves to vote for him. Yet, it was one of the closest elections in US history and even now, not all the states have been counted for, despite the President having been re-elected. The speech Romney and his senators gave about women's healthcare, their plans to cut planned parenthood and their want to make abortions illegal again sent shivers down the spine of near every woman I know.
Could it be that the UK is going the same way? Not so long ago, I read that there is movement growing within Parliament to review abortion and women's rights and we've seen a massive increase in Pro-Life/Anti-Abortion protests taking place outside various Abortion Clinics in the UK in the same way they do in the US. These people line up outside and heckle the women going in and out of the clinic, as if the choice to terminate a pregnancy isn't arguably the most difficult choice a women will ever have to face. These people make the whole ordeal far more horrific than it need be. Just two weeks ago the opening of the new abortion clinic in Belfast was met on the head of thousands of protesters carrying graphic posters and sayings.
Here in the UK, the cut off point for an abortion is 24 weeks, which, in my opinion may be too far into the pregnancy as, premature babies born at around this stage have been known to survive. Even still, it is no excuse for people to dictate whether or not we are allowed the choice to one. It angers me that these people feel they have the moral high ground to tell us what a women should and shouldn't be allowed to do with her body on such a grand and important scale...
Yes, I am fully aware that as a part of the No More Page 3 Campaign, it could be said that I too am telling women what they can and cannot do. I am not. The Campaign is to get boobs taken out of a newspaper (are naked boobs news? No.) The campaign is not trying to stop the girls who model on Page 3 from being in the Glamour industry, we are not stopping them from taking off their clothes for money, we aren't against porn, or strip clubs or pretty young women (hello, most of them are my age ffs, why would I try and STOP them being successful?!). Our campaign is about making sure the beauty and nakedness of the girls reaches those who are looking for it, those who understand it and know what it is. Not those who don't understand or don't want to see boobs with their cereal and kids around the breakfast table first thing in the morning. So if I could please be spared the chorus 'YOU HYPOCRITICAL SLAG', I would be most grateful.
Maybe if these extremist protest groups spent more time fighting for better sex education within UK Secondary Schools, so that young people grow up being better informed about sex, contraception, the way contraception works and the different options available there wouldn't be the need for such horrendous protests in the first place.
Because, in a nation that has the highest teen pregnancy and STI rate in Europe, our sex ed is a joke, and when you think that 13 years olds are becoming increasingly more sexually active it is irresponsible to keep sweeping the issue under the carpet. Perhaps when MPs vow to put more effort into educating Key Stage 3 and GCSE students, rather than just making sure they 'pass their exams', I'll be as excited about UK politics as I am about US politics.
So put your graphic banners away, get your heads out of your own hot air, wake up and smell the coffee. Sex is not the problem, it's the attitude towards it that holds us back.
