My grandmother told me this story during the March for Women's Lives in 2004, which I attended with all three living generations of women in my family (she, my mother, and I):

My grandmother married my grandfather in the mid-1950s, when she was nineteen years old. They moved a couple hours away from her family and she quickly became pregnant. During that pregnancy she developed a condition that, while not life-threatening to her or the fetus, made her extremely ill, unable to work, and on bed-rest for much of the pregnancy. My uncle was born premature, but luckily healthy and the young parents began to raise him in thier tiny apartment.

When my grandmother found out she was pregnant again not even two years later, she was terrified. She had a toddler to care for, and if she became sick again during this pregnancy there was no one to care for him. My grandfather was working long hours to save a little money and be able to provide for thier son as he grew up, and they lived far enough from her family that she could not look to them for help. After talking it over, they thought that they would look to one of his family's friends, a doctor, to admit her to the hospital as if for a Dilation and Curettage (a procedure done to treat abnormal uterine bleeding), and therefore elude the law against abortion. They had the date set and the money saved up, but as time went on my grandmother realized that she was not feeling any of the symptoms she had felt with my uncle. She ended up carrying to term, and my mother was born about six months later.

To hear anti-choicers tell it, I should not be pro-choice. I should focus on the fact that my mother wouldn't have been born if my grandmother had gone through with her plan, and for that matter, on the fact that I myself was a bit of a "surprise" and I'm sure the thought went through my mother's head to abort her pregnancy. But they would be asking me to focus on the wrong part of the story. I focus on another part: the choice my grandmother was making.

First, I thought about the fact that my grandmother was making a choice between having a friend perform an illegal abortion on her and carrying to term a fetus that she thought would endanger both her wellbeing and her son's. That is not a choice anyone should have to make- between health risks and health risks- and that is a choice that women still make everyday because the cost of getting to an abortion clinic and having a safe abortion procedure can be prohibitive (like, say, if they live in one of 87% counties in the U.S. without an abortion provider, are low-income, if thier insurance or medicaid does not cover the procedure, if they are uninsured, etc.).

Then, I thought about how even in a circumstance where abortion was illegal, my grandmother still had so much privilege. My grandmother had the privilege of being able use connections to seek an illegal abortion in relatively safe circumstances - false pretenses at a hospital- rather than the table of a con-artist or through attempts at self-inducing. She had the privilege of the support of her husband and the ability to scrounge together the money for the procedure. She had the privilege of being able to change her mind and afford to raise my mother and uncle without worrying about not being able to feed them. All of these things could not be said for many women before Roe, and they cannot be said for many women now.

Finally, I tried to weigh the fact that my mother would not be here today- nor would I- if she had not changed her mind. But I could not pull this from its context. While the other parts of the story showed me a glimpse at the experiences of women everyday, all this part taught me was that I wouldn't really be here to be offended or complain any way.

Tomorrow when I go to the Supreme Court in support of Roe, and on Saturday when I escort at a clinic in my city to protect patients from the large numbers of anti-choicers that bus in from around the country to yell as them, I will keep this story to remind me of the women that I fight for; to remind me of why I am Pro-choice.

Two new studies were published recently linking women’s sexual satisfaction and overall wellness. The first, “Sexual Satisfaction and Well-Being in Women”, published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, showed that women who identified as having low sexual satisfaction had lower sense of well-being, vitality and lower mood scores. Importantly, the study was careful to point out that sexual satisfaction and quantity of sex was not the same thing, and concluded:

This finding in non-depressed women reinforces the importance of addressing sexual satisfaction as an essential component of the overall wellbeing of women.

The second study, “The Development and Validation of a Scale to Measure Attitudes Toward Women's Genitals”, published in The Journal of Sexual Health, found that men had a higher opinion of women’s genitals that women. Due to feminine hygiene commercials and lack of education (and I would argue a general culture that enforces negative perceptions of women’s bodies), women saw their bodies as dirty. Further, the study said the perceptions of one’s genitals and bodies may have an effect on

a woman’s likelihood to use contraception, reach orgasm or visit the gynecologist

As I am also (late to the party) reading Yes Means Yes, these studies reinforced the book’s argument for a culture that views women’s sexuality as valuable and positive. I think part of the reason we are so far from a Yes Means Yes culture is the so many women stay silent about what their sexual lives look like now. So, here it goes:

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