31 :: mama by choice

Last night, on the eve of my 31st birthday, Margot and I were on a red carpeted catwalk in front of hundreds of people. The event was Off the Rack--a pro choice/sexual health (can I get a woop woop!?) fashion show, exhibiting locally-designed clothing made out of condoms and the like, to benefit the Blue Mountain Clinic. So, Savage and I and our girls strutted our stuff down that runway demonstrating our support of family and life and choice.



Savage carried a sign: mama by choice. Simple. True. Important. Nobody is pro-abortion, however without abortion, women and unwanted babes suffer. I think that people who don't support abortion should embrace their choice. They have a choice. And, my high school friend who got pregnant with her asshole boyfriend, who had asshole parents needed a choice.



And why are the people who harass young women about their choice because it is murder the very same people who support the death penalty? And bomb clinics? Why is conservatism synonymous with hierarchical power systems that make decisions for us (from war to taxes to abortion) and yet they claim they want less government?

I want my government to set up systems that allow me, my family, my friends and people I don't have anything in common with to live the best life they can live. I want my government to be a fair system that educates and supports its wide variety of people, their beliefs and their choices.



And that's why Margot and I, decked out in my condom masterpiece, sashayed down the runway in the Wilma last night. Margot and Lucille were sound asleep back stage as we didn't go on until nearly 9pm but with a little chigga chigga dancing and a yank of the pacifier bug woke and we entered stage left into bright spotlights and a giant, cheering crowd. My community. Goodness I just love my town of accepting, progressive, creative folk. Gillian danced her heart out and other participants included twenty-something, scantily-clad co-eds and sixty-something, scantily-clad grandmas. We were nervous but that audience and all of those models just full of supportive, conscientious people...I swear, I absorbed the love in that room.



In heels with our girls on or hips, we locked smiling eyes for a moment before beginning our little hip-shaking routine on the catwalk to the sweet tune of Ace of Base's All That She Wants. And let me just say that I shook my condom-clad junk in the trunk at the end of that catwalk with every little last bit of my thirtieth year. It was a great way to end a great year.