PunkAssBlog.com

I was a little suprised to find an “Abortion vs Adoption” story set on MSN in the same place they usually reserve for the hard-hitting “How to tell if he (she)’s into you” investigative reports. With MSN being what it is, I was suprised by how much they failed to disappoint me. While the selected stories are careful to use women who ‘deserve’ their choices (a woman violently raped by a stranger and a married woman whose fetus is diagnoised with a crippling spinal disorder) they actually show hints of balance.

I was especially impressed by the abortion story. In it, the author spends half the time describing her abortion in graphic detail and the other half discussing the ramifications of the Supreme Court partial birth abortion ruling and its impact on women like her. She also describes the story of the harsh judgement faced by another woman who had chosen to induce labor and let her doomed fetus die of natural causes when circumstances turned it into a de facto abortion. The message: like it or not, this could happen to you.

It’s no feminist evaluation of bodily autonomy by a long shot, but it was shockingly not horrible and certainly unexpected. I hope that it’s recieved well and we can start a real dialouge about reproductive rights with the teeming masses of people who find abortion squicky but would want the option if they needed it.