I'm okay. Really I am.

I did, however, miss a great photo opportunity yesterday, due to poor planning on my part.

The prompt was "stairs." (Here's where I get my daily prompts.)

I don't have stairs in my house. There is a small set of steps at one end of the patio. There's a flight of boring wooden stairs in the garage. When I first saw yesterday's prompt three weeks ago, I figured it would be one I'd have to skip.

So I promptly forgot the prompt. AND THEN WENT TO THE STATE CAPITOL. Which is, of course, a gorgeous architectural masterpiece full of staircases. Marble staircases. With gorgeous wooden bannisters. I guess you'll have to take my word for it, since I DIDN'T TAKE ANY PHOTOS.

Almost makes me want to go back and try again.

I did take this photo (among many others. Oh, and see all that marble? That's what the staircases were made of, too):

And here's what I have to say about it.

Our county Democratic women's club decided to have our monthly meeting yesterday at a noontime rally in the capitol building sponsored by WV Free, a non-profit dedicated to maintaining women's reproductive rights. Especially the one the U.S. Constitution upheld in Roe v. Wade.

West Virginia's newly elected Attorney General, a Republican from New Jersey who was admitted to the bar four days before he filed election papers, is attempting to shut down the two clinics in West Virginia which currently offer safe and legal abortions.

There have been NO complaints filed with the AG's office against either of these clinics.

The sign in the photo is being held by a child. That's of little consequence, really, except for the brainwashing he's receiving from ill-informed adults who actually think abortion can be abolished.

Abortions are going to happen, whether my state or your state provides a safe environment for the procedure or not. The child holding this sign is going to be frustrated for a lifetime in his quest.

One of WV's television stations used this headline to lead its readers into the story:

A screen shot from WOWK-TV's website, originally posted yesterday at about 5:30 p.m.

(To its credit, the station has changed the headline two hours later to read "Pro-choice advocates … .").

No one is PRO-abortion. All of us stark-raving liberals would agree that fewer abortions would be a good thing. The best way to reduce the number of abortions is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. (Not saying that all abortions are due to unwanted pregnancies. Abortion is still a medically necessary procedure for unviable pregnancies, and always will be.)

The way to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies is through education and access to birth control, which West Virginia's family planning clinics provide. Along with medically safe abortions.

If you identify yourself as pro-LIFE, you must also be:

• Pro-Welfare
• Pro-Medicaid
• Pro-Social Security
• Pro-Medicare
• Pro-Peace
• Pro-Gun Regulation
• Anti-Death Penalty

If you don't believe in the social support system and you do believe that war, guns and killing criminals are good things, then really? You're just pro-BIRTH. Because all those issues support LIFE. Babies who make it from the womb to the world need safe places to LIVE. Some of them will need lifetime medical care. Some of them will need protection from abuse.

Some of them will need breakfast.

My guess is that not everyone who reads this will agree with me 100 percent. As someone who has made a 180-degree turn in my politics and my social consciousness over the past 20 years, though, you're not going to get me to change my mind.

Women in West Virginia – and in North Carolina and in Texas and in every other state in these United States of America – need access to reproductive and family planning services. And they need access to safe, legal abortions.

The alternative is not acceptable. But it is inevitable.