I'd like to also submit the reverse-cruelty and societal pressure on women who choose not to it can't have children. I'm currently in a place where my PCOS has made it so my best option is having a hysterectomy because I've been bleeding for 2 and a half months straight and that's the only guaranteed way to stop it, and many-especially women-can and do look upon with scorn and disgust for making the choice to give up my reproductive capabilities and responsibilities as a woman despite the pain and misery this is currently causing me, and has caused me over many years trying to get it under control with no real success.

I also have physical and mental health conditions that I believe would not make me a good mother and have long made the decision I wouldn't have kids. Yet women in particular have always always thrust their bundles of shrieking "joy" upon me demanding I "just hold them! You'll see! Oh, well it'll be different when you have one of your own. You'll change your mind! Your husband will want kids!" And I was good with kids when I was younger. I made a killing babysitting in high school and I had a knack for dealing with difficult children. Mother's took this as a sign i was destined to be a mom and espoused constantly how lucky my husband would be, how great a mom I was going to be. I heard this from the time I was 11 or so when I started babysitting. The pressure and the insistence I simply didn't know my own mind and I couldn't just not want a child as a woman grew more and more intense the older I got and it was a chorus of "you'll change your mind!" Alongside "that biological clock is ticking!" And no matter if I laid out my physical and mental reasons, and financial situation (I'm disabled and on disability) it was always "you'll find a way, mother's always do!"

But I shouldn't even have to have a debate about my life choices about my body with every single rando who thinks it's my duty to pop out kids. I'm not a rabid child hater, I really don't mind them and I'm still very good with them in short bursts, and I deeply respect women who have the ability to handle motherhood. I absolutely cannot. I helped raise my two youngest siblings from infanthood and I've had way more than enough. It's my choice and people need to fucking back off and give me some space. I'm honestly happy to get rid of my uterus because now I can just tell people I lost my uterus to a medical issue and leave it at that. I'm so... So tired of justifying a simple choice.