Trust Women: Blog for Choice

In honor of Dr. George Tiller, who often wore a button that simply read, "Trust Women," this year's Blog for Choice Day question is: What does Trust Women mean to you?

Trust Women.

It seems like such a simply statement, but it means so much.

Trusting women means allowing girls to be born in China.
Trusting women means not cutting young girls private parts.
Trusting women means providing age-appropriate sexual education to all children.
Trusting women is believing young girls when they say someone abused them.
Trusting women is providing women with access to contraceptives, regardless of wealth or race or location.
Trusting women is listening when a woman says no, and NEVER forcing her into any sort of unwanted physical contact.
Trusting women is providing women with the choice to abort.
Trusting women is providing them with health care regardless of which choice they make.
Trusting women is revoking Hyde, so that all women have access to reproductive choice.
Trusting women is providing women who choose to carry to term with education about pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum care, etc- and not just the OB's version of these events.
Trusting women is allowing women who want a natural childbirth to labor for as long as they need to, without having drugs pushed upon them.
Trusting women is preventing doctors from using scare tactics or lies on women in labor.
Trusting women is providing lactation consultants and helping women to create a breastfeeding bond.
Trusting women is not pushing formula onto new mothers.
Trusting women is allowing new mothers to be parents the way they see fit.
Trusting women is allowing this cycle of reproductive choices and accessibility to continue.


Of course, that's not all trusting women is about. Trusting women is realizing that not everyone who identifies as a woman has the physical body of a woman. Trusting women is providing transwomen with support and access to medical providers, as well as educating others about being respectful and understanding.



Trusting women means NOT standing outside abortion clinics to harass women for making a choice.
Trusting women is NOT fighting against equal access to reproductive choices.
Trusting women is NOT lying about how many people regret abortion.
Trusting women is NOT pretending that every woman who chooses parenting or adoption feels great about her choice.
Trusting women is NOT denying information about contraceptives and sexual health education to anyone, at any age.
Trusting women is NOT denying rape victims emergency contraceptive (Are you listening Scott Brown?)
Trusting women is NOT supporting Hyde.
Trusting women is NOT making abortion illegal.
Trusting women is NOT raping or assaulting a woman, trans or cis, in any way.
Trusting women is NOT calling women sluts or any other word when they become pregnant, in or out of wedlock.
Trusting women is NOT calling women names, or saying they are irresponsible, just because they make one reproductive choice over another.



Trusting women means I have respect from all people. It means I can walk a street at night without getting raped. It means I can walk into a Planned Parenthood without being harassed, no matter if I'm there for birth control or an abortion. It means I choose if, when, and how I have children.

Trusting women means no one should ever be murdered for saving womens' lives.
RIP Dr. Tiller and Happy Anniversary to Roe v Wade.