DEBORAH
Thinking about tackling such a charged subject had me all over the place. Ultimately, I decided why do I care? My stance on this highly personal and public topic has evolved over time. And honestly, it’s my blog and I have every right (still) to talk about whatever I want.
One might think that my changing stance on this topic odd as “My Body My Choice” emanated from the Pro Choice Movement. This slogan first appeared in print in December 1969 during a pro-abortion demonstration in Massachusetts (big shocker). It became widely used in feminist protests and discussions about bodily autonomy in the early 1970’s. This era is when I was entering my teen years and thus had a great effect on my views. The so called “Women’s Lib” movement was ablaze when I was in high school. This along with my Catholic faith and my own situation – as the child of a teen mother, played heavily on how I came to view the “My Body My Choice debate.”
I have to admit that experiences and circumstances all shape one’s views on something so personal. My Catholic upbringing taught me that taking any life is murder. So, it stood to reason that if I had a life within me, and I ended it , then I was therefore committing murder. Sounds pretty straightforward doesn’t it? Not so much. Generation-ally, women pushed back strongly when others told them what to do and when to do it. Counterpoint: if this were a man’s choice, would we even be having this discussion? Consensus, NO!
I felt deeply conflicted, to say the least. In my head, I knew that if abortion had been an option for my mother, I might not be here to weigh in on this. There were times early in my life that I thought the latter may have been a better decision for my mother as I often felt I was the cause of many of our family’s problems. So circumstances do have a major impact on one’s life- altering decisions and I could absolutely understand that. The bigger issue in my mind was “How could anyone take a life?” Of course, for all the pro-choice propaganda, there was just as much on the pro life side. Being exposed to poster’s of babies in utero and watching movies showing abortions was enough to make anyone from our era feel guilt ridden.
And then, of course there is the eternal question that science introduces: “When does life begin”? This debate goes on and on, and most agree life begins at conception https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3973608. If life begins at conception, abortion at any point is not an alternative. It would, by all standards, be murder.
For the pro- choice defenders the question becomes “When is life viable”? If the fetus cannot survive on it’s own and is dependent upon the mother the answer then becomes “My body, my choice”. This decision, brought about through our actions, can be both a burden and a joy. Only women, and I do mean biological women, have this weight on them.
When I say “weight” I mean it as a heavy responsibility. Whether a woman chooses to keep the child or not, it is still a weight she carries. Even when a pregnancy is planned, it is a weight. The child’s entire well being rests mostly on the mother. I don’t know one woman who did not worry during pregnancy. The decision to bring forth life or end it is one of humanity’s most controversial topics, and it will remain so.
My headline states “selective circumstances”. You might be wondering what I mean by that. In my opinion if we truly want to run with “My body, my choice” as our belief, it should apply to everything, not just abortion. I can totally understand the pro-choice defense as I certainly would not want anyone to tell me what I can and cannot do with my own body. Nor should I tell anyone else what to do with theirs. As I previously stated, my position on abortion has changed throughout my life. This I attribute to actual situations, whether they be my own or someone close to me. Advances in science have also played a role in my views on whether and when abotion could be an option.
Even if you are firmly pro- choice, I find it hard to accept that we as human beings, think abortion is acceptable up to birth. If anything, the point at which the fetus is viable outside of the womb should be the determining factor. Ending a life is hard to advocate for unless continuing the pregnancy puts the mother’s life at risk. Society now a days seems to operate in extremes. Everything and anything is acceptable and we find numerous ways to justify our moral decay.
This piece is not only about abortion as I found the pro- choice supporters inconsistent when it comes to vaccination. I ask all of those who shamed and coerced people into taking a vaccine: Why does “my body, my choice” not apply in this situation? It’s ok to kill another human being, but not ok for me to chose to risk my own life? Oh wait, it wasn’t about my risk it was about how I risked everyone else’s life. I guess your vaccinations don’t do as they say then do they? The entire premise of “My body my choice” is that no one should be forced to do something with their body that they don’t want to do. So why aren’t these same supporters taking that stance on forced vaccination? This truly perplexes me, and I have not had anyone explain the not so glaring difference.
In my humble opinion, those trying to remove religious exemptions from school vaccination requirements are being hypocritical. Vaccines, especially since Covid, have also become most controversial. There is an abundance of studies and research that suggest that their value and efficacy are not as reported. When you stand on the soap box of “My body, my choice” I don’t know how you can support vaccine mandates. These decisions, whether to move forward with a pregnancy, or risk a disease or virus, are personal choices. I thought that was what living in America was about. Wherever you stand on these issues, the bottom line is that no one has the right to decide for someone else unless that person is incapacitated. These decisions are deeply personal, with so many factors at play. We all have to live with our decisions and choices. God will be our only judge and jury on them, and no other human being should have that right over your body, ever.
AMANDA
“My body, my choice” sounds straightforward, until the conversation changes. COVID hit during my freshman year of high school. When vaccines became available, I was one of the few students who didn’t get vaccinated. I wasn’t embarrassed about it. I was annoyed that girls who embraced “my body, my choice” when discussing abortion suddenly had a different response when I said I wasn’t comfortable getting the shot. Even some of my extended family gave me a hard time.
I wasn’t asking everyone to agree with me. I was asking why personal choice seemed to deserve respect in one conversation but not the other. Vaccination was especially personal for my family because my mother has Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy, a serious neurological condition in which amyloid proteins build up in the brain’s blood vessels, weakening them and increasing the risk of microbleeds, hemorrhage, and stroke. Because those vessels were already fragile, her doctors were concerned that the strong immune and inflammatory response triggered by a COVID-19 vaccine could place additional stress on her condition and increase the risk of serious neurological complications. For her, this wasn’t about politics; it was about making the safest possible medical decision while already living with life-threatening complications.
What frustrated me was watching relatives and other people who knew almost nothing about her diagnosis feel entitled to judge that decision. They saw “unvaccinated” and assumed they understood the reason. They didn’t. Her health belonged in a conversation with her doctors, not in the opinions of people who had never seen her scans, spoken with her specialists, or lived with the risks she faced.
The contrast extended beyond those conversations. In 2021, President Joe Biden defended abortion rights while ordering COVID vaccination requirements for federal employees, subject to legally required exceptions. His administration argued that those requirements protected workers and the public. That same year, Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed abortion restrictions into law while prohibiting COVID vaccine requirements for people who objected on grounds including personal conscience.
During COVID, this debate went beyond disagreements with classmates or family. Some people lost their jobs for refusing vaccination. Now imagine a woman being fired because she had an abortion. Federal pregnancy-discrimination law generally protects employees from being fired for that decision. These situations are not medically or legally identical, but the comparison raises a question: When should a personal medical decision affect someone’s ability to earn a living? The distinction between protecting coworkers from an infectious disease and judging an employee’s reproductive decision matters. But that distinction needs to be explained, “my body, my choice” cannot explain it for us. That is why explaining the principle behind a position matters more than repeating a slogan.
For me, the distinction starts with my faith. I’m Catholic, and I believe life begins at conception. When I think about abortion, I believe another human life is directly involved. The argument behind Biden’s vaccination requirement concerned a different responsibility toward others: protecting people from an infectious disease. Abortion and vaccination are not the same thing. But both conversations require an explanation of where personal freedom ends and responsibility toward someone else begins. “My body, my choice” cannot do all that explaining for us.
And explaining a position is only part of the job. Campaigning on a problem and addressing it are two different things. That is the question I have for both parties: What happens after the campaign advertisement, the fundraising email, and the speech about how dangerous the other side is? A position on abortion tells me what someone believes the law should allow. It does not automatically explain how a woman facing an unintended pregnancy will find housing, afford childcare, or stay in school. It does not tell me who will help after her baby is born.
I don’t need to guess at a politician’s motives to ask what they propose, what they fund, and what they deliver. Neither party answers those questions simply by pointing at the other. A fundraising email is not prenatal care. An election victory is not childcare. I don’t want morality reduced to campaign material. When the conversation swings from one extreme to the other, from concerns about women being denied care in a medical emergency to concerns about abortions near delivery in otherwise healthy pregnancies, I still want answers. Who is going to help the woman if she wants to have her baby but does not know how she will afford rent, childcare, or time away from work? What support can she actually count on? Who will help her through the pregnancy, and who will still be there after her baby is born?
The legal questions deserve clear answers, too. Here in Massachusetts, Governor Maura Healey signed legislation on August 10, 2026, changing the law governing abortions at 24 weeks or later. The 24-week threshold remains, but what happens after that point changes significantly. Previously, an abortion after 24 weeks had to fall within specific circumstances, such as protecting the mother’s life or physical or mental health or responding to a lethal or grave fetal diagnosis. Beginning November 8, those specific legal limits are replaced with the professional judgment of the physician.
That is where I have a serious problem. The law no longer says the mother has to be in danger or that the baby has to have a devastating diagnosis. Instead, that decision is left to the physician, which opens the door to abortions being approved in circumstances that would not have met the previous requirements, including pregnancies where the mother and baby are otherwise healthy. I believe abortion at nine months, when both are healthy, is morally indefensible, and I would hope that concern would be shared across political differences. A healthy pregnancy near delivery is not the same as a medical emergency or a devastating diagnosis, and those situations should not be treated as interchangeable. At that stage of pregnancy, “professional judgment” alone is not enough. There should still be clear legal limits on when an abortion that late can occur.
Massachusetts Citizens for Life objects to the removal of legal protections for viable unborn children. Reproductive Equity Now supports the change, arguing that greater physician discretion is needed for patients facing serious complications and diagnoses. The disagreement is about where legal boundaries belong and how medical decisions should be made.
Those disagreements do not change how I want to treat the woman in front of me. I don’t want to sit across from a woman struggling financially, frightened about her future, who believed abortion was her only option, and lecture her as though I understand everything she faced. I don’t know who abandoned her, what she feared, or what help she tried to find. I can believe abortion is morally wrong without believing that humiliating a woman accomplishes anything good. Compassion does not require me to abandon my convictions. My convictions do not require me to abandon compassion. Those convictions also ask something of me. If I care about a child’s life, I need to care about the circumstances that child and mother will face. My concern cannot stop at birth.
That is why my best friend Malayna’s work matters to me. She works at Rhode Island Right to Life in Providence, helping mothers find support when choosing to have their children. She has told me she has personally witnessed situations in which women were encouraged to have abortions at Planned Parenthood without being offered an ultrasound. She describes her team’s outreach outside Planned Parenthood as something different from the confrontation people might picture. They are not there picketing with signs or yelling at women. They are offering reassurance, practical help, and someone willing to listen. “My body, my choice” includes choosing to carry a pregnancy and raise a child, and that choice deserves to be recognized, respected, and supported too.
The message is simple: “You are not alone. We’re here for you.” She also describes offering women access to an ultrasound van outside the clinic, giving those who have not seen an ultrasound the opportunity to do so. Rhode Island Right to Life connects women with Ancora Options, which operates a mobile medical unit offering free pregnancy testing and ultrasounds.
Malayna and her team believe seeing an ultrasound can make a real difference in a woman’s decision about abortion. They say their work in the van helped save 14 babies so far in 2026. They believe access to an ultrasound, alongside reassurance and practical support, played an important role. For them, this is not an abstract argument. Their belief comes from their experience supporting women who were considering abortion and ultimately chose to continue their pregnancies. That is why they feel so strongly about giving women the opportunity to see an ultrasound before making that decision.
The support goes beyond that appointment. Rhode Island Right to Life’s programs include diapers and clothing through its Maternity Hope Chest, along with housing assistance through Esperanza Home for women having their first child. That makes the conversation concrete: a place to stay, supplies for a baby, someone to call. It is the difference between telling a woman she has options and helping her see how one of those options could actually work. To me, offering help also means listening to what she needs and respecting her willingness, or unwillingness, to have that conversation. Support should not become another kind of pressure.
There is work to do before an unintended pregnancy, too: education, pregnancy prevention, healthy relationships, and personal responsibility for both men and women. Afterward, the conversation needs to include prenatal care, childcare, housing, and the ability to keep working or attending school. Adoption deserves practical attention as well, making the process more understandable and accessible while protecting children and supporting birth parents. “Just choose adoption” is not a complete answer to someone facing pregnancy and childbirth. It should be an informed, voluntary decision, not a substitute for helping a woman who wants to have her child.
That is what bothered me about “my body, my choice” during COVID. Some of the same people who used it to defend a decision they supported dismissed it when I made one they didn’t. I wasn’t asking everyone to agree with me. I was asking why the principle seemed to change with the conversation. That question cuts both ways. Someone who supports abortion rights but accepts vaccine requirements has a distinction to explain. So does someone who opposes abortion but rejects vaccine requirements. My belief that life begins at conception is central to my explanation. But none of us should expect a slogan to replace an actual argument.
Abortion and vaccination involve different considerations. Acknowledging those differences means explaining where we draw the line, not simply insisting that our choices deserve freedom while other people deserve judgment. “My body, my choice” cannot be the whole argument when we agree with someone and suddenly become irrelevant when we don’t. Without an honest explanation of that distinction, we are defending a consistent principle of choice; we are defendding only the choices we happen to agree with. If bodily autonomy is truly a principle, then it has to mean something even when someone else’s choice is not the one we would make ourselves.
Very interesting piece ladies. I know that we have choices in this life, but we should be able to make our own choices regarding these important issues.I totally do not agree with people having to get a vaccine and being fired for not doing so. No a lot of this abortion issues conflict with one another. I know what I would do definitely with my own body and please don’t tell me what to do with mine!