This day always makes me thankful in some ways. I am grateful for my education, my ability to vote, and my freedom to choose the profession I want for myself. I am blessed with many gifts that many women, as close to me as my great-grandmother, could not enjoy. Though there are still improvements that need to be made in Western countries, the real battle for equality of opportunity is in the underdeveloped world.

I sincerely believe that women and men should have the same opportunities and have the same liberties. Though women and men are different in many ways, we should embrace that difference while respecting their complementarity.

Today, this battle for equality has shifted from being focused on equality to asking for rights that should never be given: the right to kill.

The mission now is greatly focused on emancipating women from their bodies. When we hear about women's rights in our present circles, most people are yelling about not having the right to have an abortion.

Our femininity and our ability to be mothers are seen more and more as a burden rather than a gift. We are no longer happy to be women because we find our fertility constricting, humiliating, and degrading. It saddens me deeply that our present time is so focused on destroying something so inherent to our being women.

My last year of graduate school was very challenging for me. I became pregnant, and I was very excited about this new little life inside of me. That said, nothing could have prepared me for those tumultuous next three months. I developed very early on hyperemesis gravidarum, and for those months, all I did was vomit. I was vomiting about ten times a day; nothing, not even a little water, would stay down. I was still waking up every morning and pushing myself to classes, sitting close to the class rubbish bin, just in case.

My pregnancy did not ruin my life plans

Many told me that I would not be able to get through that semester; others encouraged me to keep working. I did push on, and though my grades suffered, and I finished a bit later than scheduled, I did finish. My pregnancy did not ruin my life plans; my hopes were not smashed. My daughter was on my lap while I wrote my thesis; she was my biggest encouragement.

What if someone would have convinced me to abort my child? My beautiful daughter would not be beside me had they succeeded. Was my daughter's life not worth my sacrificing grades and comfort? Is not human life worth fighting for? In our day, it seems like more and more people are ready to say that it is not.

My daughter taught me how to love unconditionally

Yes, a pregnancy can be challenging; a child can bring extra weight, stress, and responsibilities. You may have to change some of your plans. I know I changed some, but they were not ruined; if anything, they became better.

My daughter taught me how to love unconditionally, to give my all, always. She has always been a joy in my life. Many women decide to abort who have been diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum. My sweet child could have been one of those statistics.

We need to encourage women; surprise pregnancies do happen, but how do we work through them is the question. An innocent little child is growing inside that person; is that woman's convenience worth the life of a child? I have spoken to so many young women who firmly believe that getting pregnant would end their lives. That all of their dreams would shatter, that the only way of freeing themselves from this unimaginable burden is to have an abortion. It always baffles me that people who are not even in a crisis can already imagine themselves killing their child because of convenience's sake. For let us be honest; this is a convenience issue in most cases.

Why are we advocating for something so evil

I ask us, as women on this day, to remember our feminist heroes, who fought for equality. They did not fight to kill their innocent children.

It is limiting and insulting to push this pro-abortion agenda on women. Why are we advocating for something so evil? Why not empower women to know how their cycle actually works? Why not empower women in developing countries with training schools to help them achieve sustainability.

Let us support our daughters and our friends who find themselves in crisis pregnancies with actual HELP, not by holding their hand to the abortion clinic. That is not help; that is merely cooperating in the killing of an innocent human being, a helpless, vulnerable being.

I do not want to be a man

Killing our children will not benefit us; it will only limit us again to now being slaves of our own "agenda." We have been fed a lie, and we have naively eaten it up.

I do not want to be a man; I embrace my womanly differences, I want equal opportunity, but I will not stand for killing our children. That is not true freedom; that is us enslaving ourselves. To embrace this as the most prominent issue in the fight for equal opportunity is to insult the movement's foundation.

Let us be strong women, strong mothers, strong professionals. Human beings who will stand for truth, equality, goodness. If we do not embrace ourselves and our possibilities, who will?