Choices: You're Too Young

We all like having choices, even me, who has a lot of trouble making decisions. I am that "typical" woman who cannot decide where she wants to eat when her husband asks her, "What do you want for dinner?" Isn't that the worst question ever?! Trying to choose a movie to watch on Netflix or on an airplane is agonizing. I probably spend more time choosing a movie then I do actually watching the movie.

But, I have the choice, and having or not having a choice is the reason I'm writing this. With the recent developments in Alabama, Georgia, Ohio, Kentucky, and Mississippi, I started thinking about the choices I have in my life. And while I've been very fortunate to have many choices in my life, one of the most important choices I tried to make for myself, as a woman, was denied time and time again.

I was older than 18 years old and married. As a husband and wife, we, together, made the decision to not have children. However, when I asked medical professionals in the United States to perform a tubal ligation, I was denied. DENIED?! I was an adult. I was married (which shouldn't matter one way or another). Yet, when I wanted to make an informed decision about my body, I was told that I was a little young and that I might change my mind, and therefore I could not have the procedure. But when my husband, who was the same age, asked to have a vasectomy, the only question he was asked was what date suited him to do the procedure.

I was very fortunate to finally find a doctor who listened to what I had to say, and agreed to perform the procedure. You can read all about it here. Five years later, and I - no, WE - have not changed our minds.

While I am very much pro-choice when it comes to abortions, I am also very much pro-choice when it comes to preventing an unwanted pregnancy to begin with. And for a doctor to say that a woman cannot choose to permanently prevent a pregnancy, and the law to say that the same woman cannot terminate an unwanted pregnancy, just blows my mind. So, I can't choose to have an abortion, but I also can't choose to prevent a pregnancy in the first place? You're damned if you do; you're damned if you don't.