We're glad this day has rolled around again, and always glad to have the opportunity to keeping talking about the essential human right of reproductive choice. Perhaps obviously, we're less glad that any of us still have to work so hard to support reproductive choice and justice, or to need to explain that it should simply be self-evident.

This year we'd like to highlight some of the many articles, blog entries and advice answers we have at Scarleteen on abortion, other reproductive choices and reproductive justice. The Blog for Choice question this year is "What does Trust Women mean to you? The links below reflect that well.

But in a word, to us, it means exactly that: that as individuals who are members of a collective, and as an organization, we trust women.

Women aren't our only readership or userbase here at Scarleteen, but female-bodied and/or female-identified people make up a majority of our users. We give the sexuality information we do in the way we do, including information on all kinds of reproductive decision-making, because we trust that our readers will make their own best choices when provided sound information to do so with and support, respect and faith in their sexual and reproductive decision-making. One reason we work so hard to do our best to help our users make their own choices without just telling them what choices we feel they should be making is because we trust women. If we, or anyone else, are telling a person what we think is best for them, based solely on our own beliefs, rather than listening to them express their feelings and their reality and then helping them to identify, clarify and enact their own best choices based on their feelings and their reality, we aren't trusting them. Nor are we treating them with respect.

We trust that women know, as women always have known, what is best for themselves and their families at a given time. We trust that women know and understand themselves as best they can, and are the sole experts on themselves. We trust that women, the only ones who should be in the position to have any say about what happens to and inside of our own bodies, can and will make our own best choices when fully allowed to make and supported in making those choices; when provided the unquestioned right to do so by the people around us and the systems and communities we live within. We trust women with choices just as much as we trust women with children, and expect the same of anyone who states either women or children are worthy of respect and basic human rights.

We trust and value women's hearts and minds just as much as we trust and value women's bodies. We don't see how anyone who says they love, care for or respect women can possibly do anything else.

• My Stake in Abortion Access
• UK "Repeat" Abortion Rate for Teens Increases: What Does It Mean and What Can We Do?
• Why Childbirth Ed is Sex Ed
• Why I Escort
• How to (Un)pack for a Real Discussion About Abortion
• What We've Lost & Why We Stay
• Win-win
• I might be pregnant, and everyone wants me to do something different.
• I got her pregnant, and I just can't deal.
• To Jane & Sarah for Their 30th Birthday
• Full-Spectrum Choice
• Granny Panties
• All About Abortion
• The Reality of New Mommyhood
• Birthmotherhood
• Do You Have Any Children? A Birthmother Speaks to the Personal & the Political
• What is Feminist Sex Education?

Sex leads to pregnancy leads to childbirth.

This, of course, is a huge oversimplification. It is possible to have lots of satisfying sex that doesn’t lead to pregnancy because a penis never goes into a vagina. It is possible to have chemical or mechanical problems of the reproductive system that make it impossible or unlikely for penis-in-vagina sex to produce pregnancy. People can also have penis-in-vagina sex while using any of a number of chemical, mechanical or physiological methods to prevent pregnancy (contraception).

But, penis-in-vagina sex has been until very recently in human history the only way to make more humans, and it is only recently that it has been as simple (and difficult) as taking a medicine to prevent pregnancy.

When pregnancy occurs as a result of sex, it may not necessarily lead to childbirth. Genetically abnormal embryos often spontaneously abort, and one pregnancy out of five will end spontaneously before halfway through the pregnancy (20 weeks). Many women choose to end unwanted pregnancies through induced abortion, even in countries where abortion is illegal, clandestine, and dangerous because it is practiced outside the reach of evidence-based healthcare. Illegal abortion is a leading contributor to maternal mortality worldwide. In countries where abortion is legal, women have the choice to end an unwanted pregnancy with the help of a trusted healthcare professional and at little risk to their health or well-being. So, women can be pregnant without ever having given birth or having a child.

For most women who choose to get pregnant, sex gets them pregnant, though some use reproductive technology like insemination or in vitro fertilization to conceive. However, all unplanned pregnancies, which is about half of all pregnancies, occur because of penis-in-vagina sex. So, although it is a generalization, it is still generally true: sex leads to pregnancy leads to childbirth.

Knowledge is power. Sex ed helps us take charge of our sexual and reproductive health, and an important part of reproductive health is the part where you’re reproducing: conception, pregnancy and birth. Sexuality is affected by pregnancy, and childbirth is accomplished with the same hormones and muscular contractions as orgasm. Sex, pregnancy, and birth are biologically and physiologically linked. Childbirth ed is sex ed.

All animals are built to reproduce themselves, and we humans do it with sex, pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding. The pregnancy and birth of your child is your first act as a parent, and as parents you want to make the best choices you can for your children and family. By getting educated about the physiologic process of pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding, you set yourself up for a healthy reproductive life, and prepare yourself to be an informed consumer of the health-care you receive during pregnancy and childbirth.

I want to bring childbirth ed to Scarleteen because when women and families are educated about birth it can be an empowering, transformative and even sexual experience in the life of a family.