Clean, legal clinic beats alternatives
I am writing in response to the uproar over the Aurora Planned Parenthood clinic.
As Americans, we have the right to believe what we choose to believe or feel is right within ourselves. What we shouldn't do as Americans is force our beliefs on others.
Planned Parenthood is a clinic operating within the law to help woman make a choice, hopefully the right choice for them.
Planned Parenthood is there for women who need assistance in many areas such as sexual and reproductive health care, birth control, family planning, gynecological care, STD testing and treatment, and pregnancy testing.
If a woman chooses abortion as the choice best for her, there has to be a safe, clean and legal environment to do it in. It's never an easy choice.
I am not a proponent of abortion. In fact, quite the contrary. I do not believe in it -- for myself.
What I do believe in is that an individual has a right to make a legal decision that is best for them under what could be some very tough circumstances.
I come from an era when abortion was not legal. It was an era where women, and especially teens, had nowhere to turn but to back-alley "clinics" or go to horrible lengths in order to obtain an abortion.
Thank God, I was never faced with such a decision, but some girls I knew weren't so fortunate.
One of my good friends almost died because she was forced to a choice of going to someone who had no credentials and she had no-post op care. She almost bled to death.
I watched her make the most heart-wrenching decision of her life and then almost die over it.
It wasn't an easy choice and it still haunts her today, but she feels it was the right choice for her at that time, whether I agreed with it or not.
The fact is, abortions are legal and will continue to happen -- legal or not, like it or not. Protestors aren't going to change that.
Protesting to keep clinics out or closed is not the answer. Forcing ones belief's on someone else is not the answer.
The answer lies within those who are faced with many choices.
The answer is educating people better.
The answer is to have a clean, safe and legal place for people to turn.
Cheryl Bast
South Elgin
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