Your Teenager’s Right To Choose???
The recent closing of the Abortion Clinic is but one more travesty of civil rights that occurs routinely in this region because of the wealthy, conservative control of the area that often imposes itself on individual rights and liberties merely because of its influence and ability to do so.
What is saddest about the closing of this clinic is that I have personally known a handful of young girls who have become pregnant. Often lacking the confidence of anyone they can share such news with (including parents, educators, friends, and even the male responsible), these girls unburden their souls in the midst of a moral and ethical crisis that will surely have an impact on the rest of their lives no matter what the outcome.
More times than not, in fact in all of the cases I know, parents were never told of the girl’s decision to choose and abortion. In some cases, contrary to public opinion and literature on the issue, the males involved were opposed to the abortions but consented to permitting the female to make the decision. Some of these males supported the females; others did not. What stinks about the religious right’s constant attempt to quash freedom of choice for individuals in this region and across the nation is the untold harm they create whenever they successfully railroad valuable support services out of existence. I wonder how many of you parents that are the guardians of the girls I am talking about, no matter how you feel about abortion, would feel if you knew there had been nowhere safe or convenient for them to turn for assistance. Would they have traveled out of town? Would they have tried to use herbal remedies or worse to induce abortion on their own? Would they have attempted to take their life if they thought they had nowhere to turn and were faced with no alternatives? This is the price of such uneducated, outdated religious and political policies – indi...