Thanks for sharing.

My mother came from a huuuuge Catholic family, and desperately wanted to have about six or eight children. Unfortunately for her, every pregnancy she had was a difficult time, with several ending in miscarriages, and her last being a breach birth (we are especially prone to them in my family). Consequently, she only had myself and my sister. This was not because she made a decision to stop having children, but because she was browbeaten into having an un-necessary hysterectomy just after my sister was born. Her choice to have more children was taken away from her by a medical establishment that was gung-ho to perscribe hysterectomies for any and all issues with the uterus. Now, one could say she didn’t have to say yes, but we remember from Biting Beaver that coerced “consent” happens all the time, and there are many women who will tell you that they have been coerced by the medical industry to do many things against their will.

I am pro-choice not only out of self interest, not only because I do not want children, but because I support those women who do. I cannot say if my life would have been better or worse as one of a half-dozen kids, but I can say that I think my mother would have been happier. That matters to me.