Hope for choice for all

When I was first handed each of my girls in the hospital, wrapped up tightly in blankets, and smelling that glorious, new baby smell, I was in awe. And the first thing I recall thinking was that to make such an awesome being, it should be way more difficult of an act, than it actually is. It seemed to me that the moon should be at a particular phase, and it should be during a certain weather pattern. Maybe a time of day, or a series of days involved in the completion of making a baby. The simple act that it actually is, and let's face it, most anyone can do, just doesn't quite match the end product.

I was never one of those mother's who placed my hopes and dreams into my child. I was, and am relieved, that they are all healthy, and, I am shocked by how smart they are. My hopes for them are simple. Not for them to become what I want them to be, but who they choose to be. That their choices are never limited, and they will not be told no. I hope they will be able to go as far as their minds will allow them to.  I just want them all to reach the potential that they seemed to arrive here on Earth with.

That being said, I am fearful that my little girls futures seems so unclear. That their choices might be threatened, and that by simply being born female, options will be limited to them, and they will become victims of their own biology.

Society is sending them mixed messages. Already, I can see their confusion. I try and limit and monitor everything that I have the power to, while they are here with me. But my ability to do so ends when they board the bus. And then all I can do is hope other parents are doing the same thing we are trying to do.

But not all of them are. Olivia tells me how some of the girls she knows watch Jersey Shore. She tells me of boys calling girls "hot". The word "sexy" is thrown around daily. And she is in 3rd grade! My six year old has reported similar things! Everything seems so over-sexualized, and yet, our country, at least to me, has never seemed more sexually uptight. 

Look sexy, yet don't have sex. The message is so mixed. And the act of sex, the simple act, that seems so glorified, can lead to serious stuff for adults, and teenagers alike, who really are not ready for it.

And now, we have candidates that want to limit choices. Limit availability of tests, and birth control, pre-natal care, and even abortion. Still some of those very candidates want to limit social programs that would take care of those very babies that they want to make impossible to avoid.

Let's face it. The act of making the baby is not getting harder. And the number of people having sex isn't changing. Isn't it our own personal decision to determine our own fertility? Why do we seem to be going backwards in time? And the kind of sex I am referring to is consensual sex. I'll be damned if anyone is going to tell my girls, or any other girl, to accept the product of a rape, as a "gift". I won't even touch on that angle. It is barbaric.

I am not "pro-abortion".  And really, I don't believe anyone is. Nor am I "pro-birth control". What I am is no ones business but my own, just as everyone else is entitled to make those most personal decisions for themselves. 

But I will keep that hope, and dream for my girls that they can love who they want, without discrimination. And they can choose if and when motherhood is something they want to enter into. And they can go as far as they want, without someone else making the choice for them.

I hope for all of us, the sex we were born as, will never limit us, or determine the path we walk, despite our desires.