Unfair.

I could go on for approximately 11 weeks (factoring in 8 hours of sleep in any 24-hour period, toilet breaks and darb runs) about the unfairness of some of the laws in this country - and not only that, but the legal outcomes of certain cases that go before a judge - but tonight I'm speaking specifically about how a 111-year-old is still in effect and treating women like second-class citizens.

Namely, I'm referring to one Tegan Leach and one Sergie Brennan, who were found not guilty today in a Cairns court of 'procuring an abortion'.
WHAT? Yeah, that's right. Hauled before a judge because they were not ready to start a family and took appropriate action when their birth control failed.
I'm extremely pleased to hear that it took a jury less than an hour to find them not guilty of the trumped-up charges, and they are now free to move on with their lives instead of being locked up for a simple human right - the right to govern one's own reproduction.

Feel free to comment all you like on this one, but I will GUARANTEE you I have an argument for every anti-choice point ever made, there is absolutely no way in hell I will ever change my mind about this particular belief. I have been 100% pro-choice since the day I was old enough to know what the word meant, and with the gaining of maturity and life experience, I only become more sure that it is my right, your right, the right of every woman on the face of this planet to be free to choose.

(I'm probably going to be throwing out a fair few four-letter words in this post... it's a subject that drives me to dropping f-bombs. I apologise in advance. I'm also going to apologise for the disjointedness of what's going to follow, I have a bit of trouble keeping a fluid line of thought going and will be jumping all over the place. Bear with me.)

Honestly, it pisses me off that so many people feel they have a right to pass judgement on a woman who has ended a pregnancy. I personally am not comfortable with the though of 'late-term' abortions and I myself have my hypothetical 'cut-off' point, but I recognise that there certainly is a need for some women to terminate a pregnancy after the socially-acceptable point of 12 weeks.
Obviously prevention is better than 'cure', but unless someone can come up with a way to sterilise females at birth and then somehow give them back their ability to conceive at an appropriate age, there is ALWAYS going to be the issue of unwanted, accidental and unintended pregnancies. Sorry, but that's the way it is. We are built to conceive, but just because most of us can, doesn't mean we want to, or that we should, or that we *can* continue a pregnancy to term. As a woman, and a feminist, it fucking offends me that ANYBODY would assume that because my reproductive organs are in good working order, I should be reduced to the status of incubator should my birth control fail.
Which it has. Twice. Neither of these accidental pregnancies resulted in children, not that it's any of your business. But I *know* what it's like to take every preventative measure available (including the morning-after pill) and then end up with a positive fucking piss test and no goddamn idea where I'm going to go from here.
Sure, I'm a grown woman in a very happy, stable marriage with a supportive partner who earns a good income - but the supply of money is not endless, nor is my physical or mental health infallible. I'm not Michelle Duggar, that's for damn sure - to be honest the woman drives me a bit crazy because she gives the rest of us non-supermums a bad name. I'm not capable of looking after fifteen kids in quick succession, nor would I ever wish my older children to take on the huge burden of caring for younger siblings because I'm always pregnant or tied up with a newborn. No, fuck that. I have no desire for any more children and that doesn't make me an awful person.
I'm getting my tubes tied as soon as I can find a doctor who will refer me for the procedure (two have already laughed me out of the room thanks to my age), but at least I can take care of that, knowing that I've already completed my family and just have no more use for my reproductive organs. I can destroy them without a second thought, they're useless to me now.

But what about the young men and women who are just embarking on their lives, studying, working, partying, capable of conceiving and just nowhere near ready to actually take the plunge into parenthood?
The birth control we have available to us in 2010 is sadly lacking. The pill, when taken correctly, has only a 98% success rate, condoms slightly worse off at 97%, and methods such as Implanon, Depo-Provera shots, IUDs etc ranging anywhere between 96% and 99.something%.
Did you notice something there? That's right, not ONE of those methods has a 100% success rate. I know, I know, only abstinence does. Well you wanna know something else? ABSTINENCE SUCKS. I'm a grown woman, in a stable relationship, who recognises sexual intimacy as one of the many valid forms of expressing love. Oh, and I don't mind an orgasm once in a while. If I hear one more anti-choice activist harp on about 'Don't want a baby? Then keep your legs shut,' chances are I'm going to track them down and smack them fair in the mouth. Except I won't, that would take a lot of effort, so I'm more likely to get pissed off and either cry or yell at my kids. So you can fuck right off with that argument straight up. It's stupid, it makes no sense, and you're free to go back to the Victorian era if you want, but I'm quite happy in the 21s century where sex is used for purposes other than creating babies.

'Don't want a baby? Wear a condom!' Yes, because that's worked for me. Twice, even. I'm fucking terrified of having children when I'm not ready for them. Both my daughters were planned right down to the month their birthdays would be in, so as to fit around the rest of the family's birthdays, and the fact that I hate Queensland summers enough without being heavily pregnant (I chose to have winter babies to avoid being sweaty AND 30kg over my normal weight range).
I have taken countless different forms of the birth control pill, and hated them all. For some reason, I'm one of the very few unlucky ones who suffers horrible side effects and honestly, I'm shithouse at organisational skills and can never remember to take the bleeding things at the right time. Find me a pill I only have to take once a week and I'd be sorted, provided it didn't have to be at a specific time - that's what screws me. I'm a SAHM with no routine, I like to sleep in and fly by the seat of my pants... Pill's just not for me. I know I'm not alone.
Same goes for injections, Implanons and all the other 'set and forget' methods of contraception. They fuck with my cycle, I gain too much weight, and in the case of the wonderful Implanon (which I would not even recommend to my worst enemy), there were even SUICIDE ATTEMPTS! Awesome! That'll sure stop me having a baby I don't want, without the need for offending people's moral sensibilities. I'll be DEAD. Fantastic, sign me up.

So, enough about me for a minute - back to these youngins who are having enough trouble paying the rent or finding themselves and don't want babies - what are they to do? Obviously, use protection. I'd never recommend anything different. For most people, protection works just the way it's meant to, but somehow the Boss and I together are dynamite in the conception stakes and the only 'safe' option here is a fucking hysterectomy. So I'm not going to get mad at some pair of 20-somethings who have big dreams of a full life and kids somewhere down the track, later - if the worst thing possible happens, I would never begrudge them the ability to hold onto those dreams and provide for a child if and when THEY are ready.
In the case of Tegan Leach and Sergie Brennan, they stated in court that they were simply 'not ready' for a child. They are young. They might be dumb. But for all we know, they were using birth control appropriately and it fucking failed them. That doesn't make them evil. It just makes nature a really cruel bitch. Can't we all just go through puberty when we're 25 instead of 12? That'd make unwanted pregnancies in youngsters a LOT easier to avoid.

I shouldn't even really get into the 'option' of adoption. This is another unfair system in our 'fair' country. Let me put it out there - for the vast majority of women in 2010, adoption is NOT an 'option'. It is purely a fanciful notion put forward by romantics who haven't thought very long or hard about the cruel realities of the system. It takes years of sitting on waiting lists and paying out thousands of dollars for prospective parents, and if it was so 'easy' to give children up for adoption, Australian couples wouldn't be going overseas to adopt children - they would be getting them here.
Never mind the prospective parents involved - this isn't like the 'good old days' when an unwed, expectant mother would be shipped off to 'Aunt Carol's place in the country' before she started showing and would come back about seven months later with a hollow sadness in her eyes and a pudgier belly than before. No, in 2010, you'd be expected to stay at work (would you even be entitled to maternity leave?) until your due date and face endless questions, judgments and 'looks' from people who find out you're 'not keeping it'. No. Unfortunately, while giving a child up for adoption is touted as the 'noble', 'selfless' option, the reality would be somewhat different, I imagine. People would talk behind your back. Ostracise you because they cannot understand why you would do such a thing. Your friends, family, your children, would not be able to comprehend that you are having a child, and not bringing it home from hospital. Instead, you're going to carry it for nine months, give birth to it, hand it over to officials and sentence it to a life shunted from foster home to foster home until someone finally gets approved to adopt it. You're then meant to go back to work, go back to school, and try to brush off the awkward silences, the catty comments, the lack of support from those around you.
Well fuck that. I'd rather take myself off to the clinic before I start showing and never tell a soul that I was pregnant in the first place. Problem solved. I mean hey, if you can hack that, and then the years of longing and worry and wondering what became of that child, you deserve a goddamn medal. Most of us aren't that brave. And I think that's human.

Another thing that really grinds my gears (and I don't even drive a manual!), is that 'pro-lifers' (pro-whose life, exactly? Certainly not the living, breathing, thinking woman who has already walked this earth for well over a decade, no, she doesn't matter at all, she's just a blood supply for a more important life, right?) have so much concern for an unborn child, but that concern seems to evaporate the minute the unwanted child is born.
They claim that they are looking out for the rights of the unborn child, but it doesn't ever seem to cross their minds that a CHILD should NEVER be used as a form of punishment. 'Take responsibility for your actions!' they screech. Like undergoing risky surgery to prevent someone else suffering is somehow avoiding consequences. Abortion is definitely a consequence. It is indeed 'facing the music' and 'taking responsibility'. It is often a way for an expecting woman to prevent the unnecessary suffering of an innocent child, and carries quite a number of risks to her physical and emotional wellbeing. For anybody to sit there and say that making the decision to terminate a pregnancy is somehow 'avoiding responsibility' is ludicrous.
Would these anti-choice activists be pleased to know that children are indeed suffering for being born to parents that are not prepared to raise them? It astounds me that there can be so much concern for the unborn, but so little thought put into the realities of what that child, and its parents, endure after abortion is taken off the table. They dedicate so much time and effort into preserving fetuses to punish women for having sex, and just expect women to become 'mothers' the instant that child comes into the world. Sorry, doesn't happen like that. There are far too many sad tales on the news about mistreated, neglected, abused and dead children who suffered at the hands of parents or carers who were ill-equipped or simply did not care to raise them. If 'pro-lifers' cared so much for the rights of children, and the rights of humans, they would recognise that sometimes it is truly in the best interests of some children to never be born.

And now, the nitty-gritty. Not just the 'what ifs'. Details.
Let me first get this out of the way. It's very important. ABORTION STATISTICS IN AUSTRALIA ARE GROSSLY FLAWED. Wanna know how? Because 1 in 3 pregnancies ends in miscarriage, and quite a large number of these miscarriages are not 'complete miscarriages'. That is, women who have lost their babies then need to seek medical attention to remove 'retained products of conception', hopefully before infection sets in and potentially has an adverse effect on their fertility. Unfortunately, though, most hospitals are ill-equipped to carry out the surgery, known as a D&C, so these poor women, most of whom are grieving their lost babies, are referred instead to the nearest abortion clinic to sit amongst girls and women who are grieving different circumstances. Then the women who have had a D&C to remove 'retained products' are lumped into the same category of these other women, so the statistics show that 'abortions' have occurred when they simply have not.
Of course, the numbers are shocking if you take them on face value - but they're simply not a true representation of how many women choose to end a pregnancy for whatever reason. Genetic abnormalities, unviable pregnancies, 'lifestyle' reasons... the list goes on. And so do the lies.

I certainly wouldn't call abortion the 'easy' option, considering the jumping through hoops and the deliberate obstacles placed in our way. There are only three or four abortion clinics in the whole of Queensland outside the state's capital. For those of you unfamiliar with Queensland's size, that means women have to travel hundreds of miles just to reach a clinic. Then there's the costs involved - in excess of $600, upfront, nothing claimed back on Medicare, just for a termination before 10 weeks. It then goes up by $100 a week, so it's a huge financial blow. I mean, hey, I can't afford to have a baby, but I have $800 just sitting in my bank waiting to be spent in a day. Duh. Doctors will refer you to the relevant services because it's their job, but the snide comments and disapproving looks they give you say it all. That's just unfair. Like women who are struggling to make this difficult choice are immune to the feelings of guilt, shame, of being stigmatised.

The laws in this supposedly fair country make me absolutely sick sometimes. You can commit murder, call it manslaughter, and get out on parole in three years, but face the consequences of your actions with a heavy heart and end a pregnancy and you can be looking at seven years behind bars. Get real. If you can't trust women with choice, how the fuck can you trust us with a baby? Why are we still subjected to 110-year-old laws in a first-world country with citizens who are educated and have access to appropriate medical services when required? Why is our government sitting on its hands and claiming there's 'not enough public support' to change laws to protect women, their partners, and their right to CHOOSE? It's a complete farce.

I feel like I've rambled enough for tonight. It's nearly 2am. There's so much more to say, so feel free to ask for clarification and I'll update or write another post some other time.
But in short, I'm 100% pro-choice and anybody who doesn't like it can leave me and my uterus the fuck alone, thanks. If you don't like abortion, DON'T HAVE ONE. Pretty simple, really. I don't tell you what to do with your private business, so stay the hell out of mine.