*This article contains potentially graphic topics and images. This article contains potentially triggering topics: abortion, suicide, self-harm, etc. Please be aware of your mental state before reading.

What ever happened to “my body—my choice?”

Fair say over what life I want? Being able to make a choice for myself without a higher arch to say what I can and can’t do. Over 60 years ago, we were fighting for the right to vote, freedom of speech, freedom to work, freedom to own property, freedom to work in the medical field, etc. As a young female in this generation, many feel like the world is against them. We are taught from a very young age on how to be, how to act, what to say and what not to say, how to sit properly, how to dress modestly, to use proper language.

We are trained to live in a “man’s world” basically. We are taught to not wear revealing clothing, to not curse for it is unladylike, to cover ourselves up so we aren’t distracting, to make a man happy… We as a society have taken so many strides to rewrite history and form new laws to make it livable as a women in today’s accustoms. We have been shunned, we have been silenced, we have been put away for trying to make a difference. A man will never understand how it truly feels to be a female. The constant judgement and backlash we receive truly undermines our strength and capabilities. We are cat-called, we are harrassed sexually, verbally, physically, mentally and emotionally. We are paid less, we are not given the same positions as our peers, we are constantly belittled. Here is a statistic from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics from 2019 about the indiscrepency of the work force and labor in the U.S.: “Women’s labor force participation was 57.4 percent in 2019, up from 57.1 percent in 2018. Men’s labor force participation, which always has been much higher than that for women, was 69.2 percent in 2019, little changed from the previous year (69.1 percent).” This just shows the unfairness in the work force for women as opposed to men.

According to the current events taking place in the news, our government is trying to abolish and overturn safe abortions—everywhere. There are no exceptions—not even rape, incest, inhabitable pregnancy, harm to the mother, etc. The laws they are trying to enforce limit to 15 weeks minimum to have an abortion, the sad and cruel thing about this is that most women aren’t aware they are with child until four-six weeks after conception. The National Library of Medicine only justifies the inconsistency of women finding out their pregnant: “On average, women become aware of their pregnancies between five and six weeks gestation.”  Most women are in complete shock when they do come to terms in learning they are with child. For some it can be a absolute blessing—a result that could be depressing if the fetus was conceived in a forced manor or if for some women they have many complications. Hopkins Medicine provided a percentage of women who were shown to have complications during pregnancy and here’s what they had to say, “Most pregnancies progress without incident. But approximately eight percent of all pregnancies involve complications that, if left untreated, may harm the mother or the baby.”