Healing Does Not Happen Without Autonomy. Absence of Choice is Violation.

I am a person who experienced sexual abuse as a child. 
Now I hear stories every week due to my work as a teacher of therapeutic yoga who works extensively with trauma and specifically with sexual and domestic violence.
I think Maya Angelou said it best: 
“Then there was the pain. A breaking and entering when even the senses are torn apart. The act of rape on an eight-year-old body is a matter of the needle giving because the camel can't. The child gives, because the body can, and the mind of the violator cannot.”
Whether the experience of a child or an adult, the fact of the loss of one’s autonomy, the selfhood that allows the body choice, in addition to the violence itself—creates a frozen nightmare where choice becomes impossible.
What many do not understand about reproductive rights is that they are ultimately this: all choice revoked is an act of violence. These are acts of not just violation but the justification of violation. 
9 times out of 10, if a client tells me a bit of their story, they will laugh as they speak. Not because it is funny, but because they are so used to not being believed or not being valued. The fact of their pain has been used against them and all too often they have learned: don’t ask for too much. Take what you can get. Do as you are told.
These abortion laws are this. They are a leveraging against the validity of the people who bear the consequences of having childbearing bodies, and who also bear the residual scars of this legacy, whether they have been violated or not. The consequences are shared among us because the acts of violence are not isolated, they imbue every part of our culture. 
Healing does not happen without autonomy. Absence of choice is violation.

Photo Credit: John Ulman http://www.johnulmanphoto.com