I was thirteen years old when I became a feminist. Ten years ago in fact, and funny enough I still remember what lead up to this. My eighth-grade teacher was having us write about an issue we were passionate about, and at first I picked same sex marriage because it was easy to argue for that.
However, many people were already doing that topic and I wanted a challenge. I was always seen as the dumb kid in school, and somehow that label followed me to the new school I moved to that year. I wanted to prove that I could do hard topics like this. I decided to write about abortion and why it was and is a necessary medical procedure. However, when I chose this topic, I did not expect to see where it would lead me ten years later.
At first, I was a little conservative about abortion. I mean, who isn’t. The media makes it seem like it is some big tragedy, and the conservative media spends millions on pro-life propaganda. I was misinformed about many things about this issue. When I first started researching this topic, I had a hard time finding what was factual and what was false.
However, I found many good sources on the Planned Parenthood website. I made sure by looking up other sources that what they were saying was true. I hate to admit, but I had mixed feelings about Planned Parenthood during this time.
I thought all they provided was abortion, but I was wrong, I was surprised to see that they also provided birth control and had campaigns to put sex ed in schools.
A couple of my peers also helped me during this. They gave me their perspective and helped me with this essay. However, one statement stood out to me. One of my friends told me that nobody likes abortion, but women have died in the past due to being denied medical care. Many women in the sixties had died to back-alley abortion. Back-alley abortions took place when women had no access no medical care to help them, and they took matters into their own hands. Women would either try to induce an abortion themselves or they went to a sketchy person to do it for them. When abortion was legalized in 1973 there was a decrease in women dying from trying to self- induce an abortion.
I looked up this information and was shocked to see it was true. Many public and charter schools do not teach this information. It outraged me that we were not teaching this part of American history, and that many of my peers were saying they were pro-life when they meant pro-birth. The reason why I saw that is because they didn’t care what happened after the woman after she gave birth, they just wanted to control what women did with their bodies.
My topic, and strong arguments were not met with good grace. I was called baby killer and told that women should not be allowed to have abortions unless they were raped because it allows woman to be “whores”. I was shocked with the last one because I thought we were too young to understand what a whore truly was, and someone openly saying that made me angry.
During that time of my life, I was struggling a lot. In fact, that’s an understatement. I was in a lot of pain, which I will get to in another blog. Hearing that I was a baby killer, and women who have abortions are whores, made me incredibly angry. Long story short, I got into a couple of verbal fights. I came home crying, and decided that on January 27th, 2014, I was going to be a feminist.
Of course, over the last ten years I have grown in my feminist ideology. I never stopped advocating and I went up against many people. Being a feminist in today’s world is not for the faint of heart. Many men believe that women are truly equal, but we are not. Women are denied reproductive care, denied education, and denied being believed when they are assaulted. Schools are not teaching comprehensive sex education, and many teens are entering the adult world not knowing how to be responsible.
I am celebrating ten years advocating for women. It’s been an interesting ten years, and I have grown so much. I know that my work is not done, and I have a lot of fight left in me. I will never stop advocating for women’s rights and I will never stop advocating for women.
Here’s to ten more years of growing as woman, feminist, and activist.
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The Fed Up Feminist 
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