My Body. My Choice. A student perspective on the cliche.

As a teenage girl, I wonder. I wonder all the time. I wonder, why do people keep making choices for my body? Will my opinion about my body ever matter? Or will they always skip over it like if it didn’t? Like if it wasn’t up to me to decide how to live my life? Will people just keep deciding for me? My Body, My Choice is not just a slogan or a catchphrase. At least, not to me. It is the way I think about the topic. The way I wish one day everyone thought about the topic. I wish they could understand that we should each have control over our lives. But for a reason, we don´t. At least, women don´t. And I don’t mean to become an over obsessed feminist who goes full out about the subject. But I won´t stay quiet about it either.

My opinions matter. I will just put that out there before anything else. Especially when we´re talking about my body, my life, and how I decide to live it. My body is part of myself. If you wish to objectify my body, you are objectifying me too. If you wish to control my body, then you are controlling me too. And that is the reason of why women in America have had enough. Because we are individuals, not an object who can be pushed around. And we will push back.

Women´s rights have been tossed around throughout the years, and it´s something it hurts to acknowledge. I have not yet gained all those rights and have already started to lose some of them- like to have full control over myself. I will admit that the saying My Body, My Choice has been mainly focused on the abortion rights for the women across America, but the subject can go on so much deeper than that. Women have been objectified so much, that people think that they can just take away their autonomy like if it was nothing. If it was nothing, then why would young women across the country be fighting so hard for it?

The end of Roe V. Wade altered the lives of millions across the country, mostly in a not positive, controversial way. But it also sparked a brand new start of young people fighting for their rights and to be able to be in control of themselves. Me being one of them. Who knew 5 people could single handedly alter everybody’s lives. Because this affected more than we think.

I am young. I still have so much more ahead of me. But am I really ready to grow up in a country like this? It’s not just the people with power, it’s the people who support their opinion as well. I am not ready to be forced into things I disapprove of. I am not ready to have to lose my rights and my controls of my own life and body to people who decided that that’s how they wanted it. I am not ready to accept the fact that I am not in charge of my own self anymore. Our bodies mean something to us. They matter to us. Women will fight and speak up for them. And even though it might seem unbelievable to say that we have to fight for our bodies, it´s just as unbelievable that there are people who want to control someone else’s. You know what´s also unbelievable? That people have taken my autonomy from me before I could learn what it really meant. This is no longer something I will be quiet about.

Author: Amanda Moore