When I was about twelve years old, I discovered the meaning of abortion. Ever since that moment, I have been adamantly pro-choice. Fortunately, going to college has made me question my old perspectives, and I’ve learned to respect and appreciate an argument sometimes found on the pro-life side: women shouldn’t need to get abortions. There should be better options for women.

Women should, of course, have a lot of better options in many other areas of life. The fact is that a woman’s life–or what is traditionally expected of it–is often in a lose-lose situation.

For example, we are supposed to have children. This is the womanly role; it is our ultimate expression of femininity and all of its “best” attributes: selflessness, maternity, love. At the same time, however, mothers are looked down upon, no matter how they mother their children. If they go to work and put their children in daycare, they are selfish. If they quit their jobs to stay at home with the children, they are domestic and lazy. And if a woman chooses not to have children at all, there is something very wrong with her.

It’s the same with abortion. It’s true: women shouldn’t need to get abortions. But in reality, we do–because of the systematic oppression against us throughout the world. We are supposed to be mothers and selflessly love all children that come to grow in our wombs, even when we cannot afford to mother them “properly,” even when our own lives are threatened, even when the fetus is guaranteed to be born dead. When we have abortions to spare our lives, or to spare unborn children a life of disease, pain and/or poverty, we are suddenly vile baby-killers and outright murderers.

Of course, when it comes to abortion, no one truly wins. Many women feel great relief after terminating unwanted pregnancies, but at the same time, no one wants to have to experience that dilemma in the first place. No one (who is at least sane and rational) wants to have to end a life, for any reason. The options, though, are pretty terrible. Birth control, especially hormonal contraceptives, can be unreliable (maybe you forgot to take your pill; maybe the pharmacy is half an hour away and you don’t have a car) and expensive (even with health insurance; though many, many women go without it). The foster care and adoption system in this country is in shambles. Rape and incest are not going to be eliminated altogether anytime soon. Abstinence-only sex ed still reigns, and so young women still have unprotected sex thinking that they can’t get pregnant “the first time.” The issue isn’t to outlaw abortion, because abortion is not the problem. It is all these deeper lose-lose situations, these often useless options, that make abortions necessary in the first place.