I want a baby. I don't want to force someone to have it for me.

Every one of my choices about my body is wrong to someone.

Women’s reproductive choices are always up for judgment, especially when it comes to abortion. To the anti-abortion protesters who stand outside the clinic, or the state legislators who passed those recent bills, the patients seeking abortions aren’t people with their own needs, but vessels for future generations. The potential life they carry is worth more than their own. It is fine for them to suffer mentally, economically, physically, as long as that pregnancy comes to term.

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Now that my husband and I are hoping to adopt a child, the importance of reproductive choice has taken on more nuance for me. Anti-choice groups like to present adoption as an easy out for pregnant people, as though it guarantees a happy outcome for all involved. But adoption isn’t a choice about whether to give birth; it’s a choice about whether to parent. Neither choice should involve coercion.

When I meet a woman at the clinic who’s decided that an abortion is the right choice for her, I don’t second-guess her. I smile warmly, and open the clinic door.

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