I committed to blogging for choice today, a worthwhile cause, which is why I’m sitting here blogging even though I don’t really have a lot of time to do so.

I want to write something for this, but I’ve been having a hard time settling on a topic. The things I’m coming up with are too dire or too affirming, neither acknowledging that the other exists. The general theme in all cases, though, is having autonomy over one’s own body, one’s own sexuality.

I’ve argued here before that I’ve come to realize that abortion is not only a part of feminism, but the fight for reproductive rights really is feminism. The issue is not about babies on either side. If the anti-choicers were really concerned about babies, we’d have a universal health-care system with prenatal and pediatric care available for poor mothers, we’d give women what they need to have and care for healthy babies. If the debate were really about life, stem cells would be used to help the living instead of destroyed on principal. The debate is really about women, their strength and intelligence and autonomy. Pro-choicers argue that women have autonomy over their bodies and their sexuality, are smart and strong enough to make their own choices. Anti-choicers deny that women have this autonomy and their rhetoric indicates they don’t think much of women’s intelligence either, that we’re too weak to make our own choices and decisions.

So I say, let’s celebrate women on this anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Let’s celebrate our strength and knowledge and women. Take back our sexuality. And I’m definitely not just talking about babies.

The theme for this year’s Blog for Choice Day is why you should vote pro-choice. It feels almost self-explanatory. For a long time, I tried to compartmentalize the moral arguments and the legal. You (or I) may be opposed to abortion on a personal level but the debate should be about whether or not to legislate it, whether the law should permit it or not. Probably you don’t have to spend a lot of time working out which side I fall on that debate. I think the moral and the legal arguments can’t be separated, though. I believe — I know — that the debate over abortion is the debate about whether women should have whole ownership over their bodies, and being a woman in possession of a uterus, I very much desire to own my body and not have the government tell me what I can or can’t do with it. And ownership over one’s person is a key ingredient to equality.

So, yes, you should vote pro-choice to keep laws off of my and off of your body. You should vote pro-choice to celebrate women.