This fall, the talented and successful entertainer, Britney Spears, released her autobiography entitled, The Woman In Me. Few have managed to reach the degree of success Ms. Spears has attained in her lifetime. Her music and concerts have been very popular, making her a financial success as well.
Yet despite this, the part of her life that has been the most tragic and sad has been her womanhood. Being able to have control of her life as a woman and a mother was taken away from her. Legally her very publicized conservatership limited her ability to make life choices. But her downward spiral started years before that, when she was just entering adulthood and in a relationship with another entertainer, Justin Timberlake. The biggest revelation from her book is that while she was in that relationship, she became pregnant and had an abortion.
In her book she writes, “I loved Justin so much. I always expected us to have a family together one day. This would just be much earlier than I’d anticipated. But Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young. If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it. And yet Justin was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father. To this day, it’s one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life.”
Britney Spears, The Woman in Me.
Britney didn’t have her abortion because she wanted to exercise her right to choose, or because there was a threat to her health or because her baby was sick. She had an abortion because it was legal and her boyfriend wanted her to.
It wasn’t a quick and easy process either:
“On the appointed day, with only Felicia and Justin there, I took the little pills. Soon I started having excruciating cramps. I went into the bathroom and stayed there for hours, lying on the floor, sobbing and screaming.”
The couple broke up shortly after. Britney has been trying to pull her life together ever since.
This traumatic thing happened to her and it still haunts her because it goes against the nature of what being a woman naturally is – being able to grow new life, birth and nurture it. Being able to do that for that child at that time was denied to her because laws didn’t protect her from the whims of an inexperienced and immature man.
What does this have to do with Issue 1 in Ohio?
I applaud Ms. Spears for sharing this traumatic event in her book, and also for using the almost verboten word, “Woman” in the title.
This fall, Ohioans are being asked to vote on Issue 1, a proposed amendment to the Ohio Constitution that would make abortion legal in the state up until birth. The full text of the amendment reads here.
It is very telling that the word “Woman” does not appear anywhere in the text of the amendment. Neither does “mother”. What is in the text is cart blanche for any man, boyfriend, fiance, of husband who wishes the woman and sexual partner in his life to get rid of her unborn child. He can coerce, humiliate, and brow beat her into an abortion, and women have no protection in the law to cling to. This is not really a choice for women and it doesn’t protect them. Is this a law that is really good for women?
No.
So when you go into the voting booth on Tuesday, think about Britney, and all of the other young women like her who will have no choice but to end their pregnancies at any time because the state doesn’t give her any protection to say no.