What "Trust Women" Means To Me

This is a (delayed) response to NARAL's prompt for Blog for Choice day.

To me, to trust women means..

to believe them when they say "I do not regret my abortion" instead of saying "you will eventually!"
to support their choice to have a natural birth.
to offer a rape victim compassion and understanding instead of telling him/her that s/he "shouldn't have been walking alone", that s/he "shouldn't have gone to that person's house", or that s/he "shouldn't have gotten so drunk".
knowing that you don't know what's best for a woman. She does.
not forcing sterilization upon them.
to believe them if they are hurt after their abortions, and to offer them love and support.
not forcing abortion upon them.
refraining from telling a woman that she's "too young to decide if she doesn't want children" and denying her a tubal ligation.
to support their right to feed their children in public, and to do so without judgment and criticism.
not forcing adoption upon them.
to support their right to have a c-section, and to do so without judgment and criticism.
to support their choice to give birth at home.
supporting the choice to work outside of the home.
not forcing pregnancy upon them.
to support their choice to have an epidural when giving birth.
refraining from calling women and the doctors that help them "baby killers", "murderers", or "nazis".
to support their right not to breastfeed, and to do so without judgment and criticism.
refraining from harassing women who are just trying to see the doctor.
not working tirelessly to take away their basic human rights.
being an advocate for their access to health care.
supporting the choice to stay at home.
to support their choice to give birth in a hospital.
not expecting them to live up to the beauty standard that society has set.
to recognize the fact that women are full persons with full human rights, including the right to liberty.

To sum it all up; to me, trusting women means being pro-choice. Without being pro-choice you can not and do not trust women. If you are anti-choice, you don't trust women with their own bodies, with their own lives, and with their own families. You're pretending that you know each individual woman better than she knows herself. You're devaluing women. You're treating them like objects, much like rapists do. To be anti-choice is to deny women of their humanity.

I choose to trust women because of my mom, my cousins, my best friends, my aunts, and my grandmothers. I choose to remember all of the amazing things that they might do, and have done, for this world. I choose to recognize their personhood.

I trust women because I know that Dr. Slepian, Dr. Gunn, Dr. Britton, James Barret, Shannon Lowney, Lee Ann Nichols, Robert Sanderson, and Dr. Tiller did not give their lives for nothing. God bless them.

I trust women because, without trusting half of the population, you do not trust humanity. I have faith in humanity.