The pro choice and proud of it campaign is well underway! After a stonking 2 years of running this as a priority, we are still in no position to let it lie. We are facing the biggest fight for our reproductive rights in decades and I simply cannot believe it.

The facts speak for themselves. The reasons that women need to access free, safe and legal abortion are endless, and the reasons that women need the upper time limit to stay at 24 weeks are also endless. I could go through some of them, but actually I kind of think ‘why should I’? Why should women have to justify it? Is it a case of women having to show ‘damages’ to warrant an abortion? Like rape or being beaten up? Or like being underage and massively pressured by an older boyfriend? Is it a case of some reasons are ok and others are not? This makes no sense at all from a moral, religious or political stance. Either you think that abortion is ok or not. And most people think it’s ok.

Sometimes arguments slip into the debate like ‘why didn’t she use a condom?’ or ‘she shouldn’t have slept with so many people’ or ‘to be fair, it is your own fault that you got pregnant’. SO WHAT? If you think that abortion is ok if a woman is raped, then it’s ok! Also, there are SO MANY reasons why women make mistakes or bad decisions in their sex lives. Peer pressure, not feeling as though they can ask for a condom, being too scared to ask for a condom to be used etc etc etc.

Anyway, aside from the more feminista rant stuff, we must also break this silence on abortion. I had one and it was fine! Millions of women have made the right choice for them and have had abortions in this country and are made to feel ashamed about it. If we are to win once and for all on the abortion debate, we need to make sure that women do not feel ashamed of the choices they have the right to make.

I think that some people who are pro-choice feel as though it’s such a contentious issue that they don’t want to speak out about it, but most people are pro-choice! We are the majority, it’s just that the anti-choice lobby are a loud and wealthy minority.

This is a student issue too, because too many women experience having children or getting pregnant as a barrier to their participation at College and Uni. Some schools still expel women students who get pregnant in the UK. UNBELIEVABLE.

So what are we doing about it?

Well, Abortion Rights and NUS Women’s Campaign are calling on Women’s Officers and Students’ Unions to mark the National Week of Pro-Choice Action running from 23-29 October 2006. Loads and loads of student focussed materials are available from the NUS and from Abortion Rights.

Pro-Choice Action Guide

Pro-choice materials order form

Order materials from Abortion Rights

Pro-Choice is also about the choice to continue with a pregnancy and to be supported in doing so. This is why we are backing a campaign to re-open the childcare facilities at Epping Forest College, after they were suddenly closed by the Principal over the summer without warning.

To add your name to support the attached letter please email kat.stark@nus.org.uk and title your email SIGN UP. Alternatively you could print out this letter yourself, sign it, and send it to:

David Butler,

Principal,

Epping Forest College,

Borders Lane,

Loughton,

Essex. IG10 3SA

Epping Forest College Childcare Facilities Letter

30 years ago women were marching and chanting ‘not the church, not the state, women must control their fate’. I literally cannot believe that we are having to spend our woman-hours chanting this still.

So be pro-choice, be proud of it, and be vocal about it!

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