Fighting for Control

**I’m talking about sex and abortion. If that’s not your thing, I’ll see you tomorrow.**

The pictures out of Austin yesterday were breathtaking. The groups of blue standing and singing or with heads bowed in prayer, and those of orange holding signs, marching, or yelling in protest. The group distinctions could not be more stark. While the pro-choicers (orange) seem, in pictures at least, to be comfortable with confrontation, the pro-life protesters (blue) are obviously not.

The maelstrom in Austin has spilled over to social media clogging all my readers. I have tried to stay away from the confrontations that so many are fishing to find. These things don’t get resolved on Facebook, and just add to the noise. I was completely successful.

Until yesterday.

Yesterday, a very dear friend of mine, who happens to be pro-choice, “liked” a photograph in support of the orange shirted ones. It showed a woman holding a sign which read “Only I get to decide what comes out of my vagina.” I stared at the picture for a while before commenting on it. “Not really. If you’re pregnant, there’s going to be a baby coming out…nothing you can do to stop that.” The all caps comments yelling at me that I was “anti-woman”, a “traitor to my sex”, and (my favorite) a “forced birther” quickly followed.(I can’t find the picture now that I need it. It seems to have been removed. Sorry about that.)

I was briefly amused and then saddened at the lack of understanding my “opponents”, for lack of a better word, had of their own anatomies and of the way pregnancy works… so I thought I’d explain it to them ~

Hi, pro-choice people. 

I know that the sign that woman was carrying “Only I get to decide what comes out of my vagina” seemed clever and pretty to the point to you. That’s why it was liked and shared so many times. It’s also the reason that it had garnered over a hundred comments by the time I walked away from the conversation. (Screaming caps-lock people don’t listen…so why talk to them?)

The thing is…it’s pretty dumb.

If you’re pregnant…if there’s something (let’s call it a baby for ease of conversation here) growing in your uterus…it has to come out. There is no argument over whether or not that baby has to come out of your vagina, unless it’s coming out of your abdomen via a c-section. Those are your only options. No matter how much any of us may wish it to be true, there’s no magic way to get babies out of uteri…uteruses…uterex (that can’t be right)

I have a touch of personal knowledge in this area. You see, I’ve been pregnant nine times. Nine. It’s a lot, I know that. Seven times I gave birth to live babies – six from the vagina, one out the c-section escape hatch. Twice I did not. They still had to come out of the vagina. It’s the only exit route that didn’t require cutting me open. I don’t make the rules. It’s basic biology. The truth is that if you had a baby in your uterus and it never came out it would be bad. (Trust me on this. This woman was pregnant for 60 years!!!! You don’t want to do that.)

So in reality you’re not really arguing about whether or not you have the right to prevent the baby from exiting your body through your vagina. (I’m assuming that pregnant until you’re 92 is not your goal. Stop me if I’m wrong.) You’re arguing about how that baby gets to leave – whole and alive or dead and in pieces. It’s ugly to say it that way, but that’s the way it truly is. If you are pregnant, that baby is going to have to come out one way or another. Once that baby is in there, you have lost control over that decision for your vagina.

If that’s not okay with you, I really only have one suggestion ~ if you don’t want anything coming out of your vagina, don’t put a penis into it.