Me, My body, My choice. Period.

Reading time: 2 min.
Translation: Régine Paradis

A woman dies every 9 minutes from an unsafe abortion. About 25 million unsafe abortions take place worldwide each year. September 28^th is International Abortion Rights Day. You understand its purpose?

In Canada, abortion was decriminalized in 1988. However, in 1981, I had an abortion in a medical clinic without any difficulty or judgment. This voluntary interruption of pregnancy did not give me any feeling of shame and even less of guilt.

At the time, I naively believed that this act was freely available to all women, at least in the so-called developed countries.

Forty years later, this right is undermined. Far from being universal, the right to abortion varies according to the regions of the world. If in February 2022 Colombia legalized it, other countries are in retreat.

In the United States, the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed abortion rights across the country. From now on, each state is free to authorize or not the interruption of pregnancy. Immediately 9 states banned it. Europeans allow abortion, but Poland restricts it and Malta bans it completely.

In Africa, Benin is one of the few countries to legalize the medical act.

Even China calls for reduction.

In our country, Canada, abortion is not as accessible as one might think, partly because of difficulties in funding and access to clinics, as well as different provincial laws.

All these restrictions force women to continue an unwanted pregnancy. It is a violence inflicted in silence and total indifference.

The intimate reasons each of us has for having an abortion are private and do not have to be disclosed or subjected to the judgment of others. If I have to have a tooth extracted, I don’t explain to my dentist, let alone a court of law, why I want it extracted. Why should a woman have to justify her refusal to give life in this case?

A few weeks ago, an American court in Florida ruled:

“A teenager is considered ‘not mature enough’ to abort.“

In what world is a 16 year old too immature to have an abortion, but mature enough to carry and raise a child alone?

Will the people who arbitrarily decided the future of this young woman, and the development of cells currently without conscience, form a “village” to help them develop in harmony and love? Will they be there to support her? 

Of course not, they just don’t care, because that is not their debate. However, “raising” a child, i.e. bringing him/her to develop to his/her full potential, is a difficult task.

“If I help women to have children at the time in their lives when they can give love and affection, these children will not become rapists or murderers. And they won’t build concentration camps.” — Henry Morgentaler*, interview at the Globe and Mail, 2003

There are already too many people on earth. This rapid population growth, driven by sustained high fertility, is associated with higher poverty rates, low primary education rates, and persistently high infant and maternal mortality rates.

As it says in the Message, “We should have only one child per person, then humanity would begin to be less and less populated and science would make it possible to produce more electricity, clean energy, renewable energy, without nuclear plants.” – Rael, Contact 375

“It’s important to bring a child into the world; it’s a huge responsibility to think about his/her education, because it will determine what he/she will become. We will make a rose out of it or a gun out of it.”
– Rael, Apocalypse 138

Choosing to conceive must therefore be done with full awareness in order to be able to offer all our love to this child and educate him/her in the best possible conditions of harmony. To do this, we, women, must be able to freely dispose of our body; it is the first necessity to become the leader of our life.

For the sake of humanity, abortion becomes a fundamental right and the woman the only person in a position to determine this choice.

Me, My body, My choice. Period.

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*Docteur Henry Morgentaler
https://nouvelles.umontreal.ca/en/article/2021/10/29/henry-morgentaler-feminist-doctor/

**Simone Veil
History shows that abortion rights are fragile: https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/sexual-and-reproductive-rights/abortion-facts/