I learned last summer how very seriously health care professionals take this.

In the final stages of my dad’s final COPD exacerbation, he had finally had enough. He had been all about, “do everything you can,” until he just couldn’t anymore.

But even as the hospice nurses were setting him up with comfort care, they made certain he knew he could change his mind at any time. The nurse practitioner who enrolled him in the program even specified that he could sign out of home hospice, go to the hospital for life-extending treatment, then come back home and sign back into hospice.

She clearly didn’t think that would be a good idea, but she wanted him to know the decision was entirely his.

It’s astonishing that people think women should not have that same degree of autonomy with respect to reproduction and pregnancy.

It’s astonishing any third party believes they should have any say at all in contraception or abortion for another person.

But it’s telling that in the United States, many people really believe they should and do have the right to not only have an opinion about a stranger’s reproductive functions, but should be able actively to enforce that opinion.

People simply cannot wrap their minds around women having the same degree of autonomy and freedom as men.