Shocker: Women Know What They’re Doing

Remember a few months ago when I lost my shit over all the hoops legislators all over the country were making women jump through in order to get an abortion? And I went off on a major rant about the stupid fucking paternalistic attitudes that male politicians take towards women and their bodies? I wrote a long post about it at The Broad Side. Here’s a bit of it if you don’t remember:

When they talk about preventing new rules mandating contraception coverage by insurance, I hear,  “We won’t cover your birth control because you just don’t know that you really want babies.”

When I heard of lawmakers in Texas and Kansas mandating sonograms prior to abortions, I hear, “We’ll make you look at this ultrasound before an abortion because you just don’t know that babies are precious.”

When I hear them rehashing the argument of abstinence only sex education, I hear, “We won’t teach sex ed because if you know about sex you’ll think you want to have it and you just don’t know that sex is only for married, straight people.”

When Ron Paul says things about victims of “honest rape” when considering who should be allowed access to emergency contraception, I hear, “We say things like ‘honest rape’ because you just don’t know what rape really is and you don’t know how to consent to sex.”

Gentlemen. Let me assure you. WE KNOW.

Women know whether we want to have children today, tomorrow or never. Women know what the implications of ending a pregnancy after it has already begun are. Women want to know, and for their children to know, the biology and psychology of sex and they want that information available. And women know if they consented to sex.

It turns out I’M TOTALLY RIGHT ABOUT WOMEN KNOWING WHAT THEY WANT.  There’s now even a study to prove it. I wrote about it over at Babble just now:

According to a new study released by the Guttmacher Institute, women seeking abortions are already confident in their decision and probably don’t need a mandated waiting period to mull it over further.

The study, which surveyed over 5,000 women seeking abortions at one clinic, revealed that 87% of patients seeking an abortion had “high confidence” in their decision. Factors that strengthened conviction that the abortion was the right choice for them were a supportive partner or mother. Factors that reduced women’s confidence in their decision were “being younger than 20, being black, not having a high school diploma, having a history of depression, having a fetus with an anomaly, having general difficulty making decisions, having spiritual concerns, believing that abortion is killing and fearing not being forgiven by God”.

Uh-huh. 87% of women surveyed had high confidence in their choices before they walked through the doors of the clinic. They didn’t need to go think about it for 24 or 48 or 72 hours. They didn’t need a sonogram. They didn’t need to talk about an anti-abortion activist at a crisis pregnancy center. They knew full well what they were doing, why they were doing it and what the implications were. BECAUSE WOMEN ARE SMART.

Now if all the men making laws about women’s reproductive health care out there would kindly assume the position, I would like to kick a clue up their asses. Because it’s long past time they started to acknowledge that we, as a gender, have more going on between our ears than they’re willing to give us credit for.