Do I Get a Choice?

Just after I first registered to vote and the boy of my misguided dreams said a condom would keep him from feeling connected to me, I eagerly spread my legs for love. When I was alone and still unloved and waiting for my late period, when hindsight was already laughing in my face, and it seemed I was facing becoming a single mother or handing my innards to strangers to raise (to think of part of me going on in life without me), I was thankful I had the choice.

“Girl, smarten up,” they said.

While in graduate school, I went camping with a “friend” of a friend and accepted the shots of Jägermeister he offered. Yes, I was training to be an aerobics instructor and an avid swimmer but he might as well have been captain of the wrestling team the way he held me down. To an onlooker (had we not been miles from anyone who could hear me scream), one probably couldn’t even tell I was struggling to get free, the way he flipped me like a hotcake, crossed my arms at my chest, and let the weight of his upper body pin me. In the moments that he tore through flesh, I raced through what I still had left in a drunken assemblage of a life raft. At least if I got pregnant, I thought, I’d have a choice about bringing his spawn into the world. At least my belly wouldn’t swell, like a giant boil, exposing my wounds. Dear God, do I still have that choice?

“Get over it,” they said.

When I was still in graduate school and old enough to know better but naive enough not to have seen it coming, I arrived at my thirty-four-year-old boyfriend’s house and found him in bed with a fourteen-year-old girl. In the moment that my upper lip stiffened, I thought of my date with him the night before and calculated my pregnancy risk despite the condom and pill. And though I resented the big-eyed girl in his bed in that jagged moment, I was glad she had a choice as well.

“Come on girl, let’s go,” I said.

When I was past old enough to know better and still too naive to expect the love of my life leaving me for an ex-girlfriend, I thought, what if I didn’t have a choice? What if birth control had failed at some point since my last period? Were the three of us going to raise a baby together? .

“No fucking way,” I’d say.

At the old age of twenty-nine, when my obstetrician suggested my husband and I terminate my first pregnancy, it took a second to decide to move forward with child bearing. I was glad I had the choice. During my second pregnancy, when the doc suggested the same because my life was again in danger from pre-eclampsia and my quality of life (and certainly those around me) was crippled by my antepartum depression, it may have taken three seconds to decide, but I was glad I had the choice.

“You were lucky,” they said.

Now, I’m probably too old for a position of choice for myself. And, except to birth my two children, I’m glad I never had to exercise my right to choose. But with children, nieces, and nephews (a couple of them old enough to make these choices on their own), I’m glad they have the right to their own bodies, at least to the extent that they can control.

I dedicate my votes to all women and girls. May we one day end misogyny and rape culture. May we all continue to have a hint of indemnity from our own poor decisions. May we maintain our right to choose.

“We stand together,” we say.

About the Author

Rachelle Ramirez helps writers develop their stories and believes stories are our most important catalyst for change. Grab a spot on her calendar for a consultation on your story.