Via stormbear @ Flickr.
Their priority is providing better economic support for pregnant women and girls, rather than outlawing abortion outright. I can definitely get behind that goal, but not just because I’d like to reduce the abortion rate. I want to lift women out of poverty for the sake of the women, not just their fetuses. They also want to make the adoption process friendlier, which sort of misses the point. Adoption is an alternative to parenthood, not pregnancy. Some women simply do not want to be pregnant.
This is what the new pro-lifers cannot seem to grasp. As Frances Kissling points out, they use a rosy view of pregnancy to advance their policy positions. It’s not grounded in reality – the reality that pregnancy is dangerous and babies are not always blessings and women are autonomous moral and physical agents. Both the new and the old pro-lifers treat women as incubators. The former group just uses more flowery language.
The new pro-lifers minimize the risks of pregnancy, claiming there is never a “need” for abortion. You can only believe this if you reject the idea that women are independent beings with a right to determine the paths of their own lives. To the new pro-lifers, women don’t choose their destinies; their biology does. And as you may have guessed, our biology wants us to carry every pregnancy to term. What really baffles is the new pro-lifers’ rejection of contraception. Pregnancy prevention does not play a central role in their platform. Support for contraception even gets some new pro-lifers kicked out of the club.
The realities of women’s lives are ignored by the new pro-lifers. Pregnancy is treated as a mere “inconvenience” and women are thought to be empty vessels who’ll always “choose life” if the price is right. And a lot of the new pro-lifers’ beliefs are religious in nature, natch. Self-determinism isn’t given consideration because we do not own ourselves; god does. The new pro-lifers may be kinder and gentler than the old ones, but their simplistic worldview is not only a fantasy; it’s insulting to women.
The anti-contraception bias IS totally illogical. The whole thing just makes me ask myself, why do these perfect strangers seem to want me to reproduce?
And also, psst Republicans? Population boom means higher taxes, just fyi.
Argh, this whole issue makes me frustrated. You’re pro-choice or you’re anti-choice, period. Anything less than pro-choice, I have nothing but contempt for. Even if you are anti-war, anti-torture, anti-death-penalty, pro-contraception, and pro-support-for-pregnant-women… if you “draw the line” at abortion, you are anti-choice, and that is NOT okay. I have no patience for kinder, gentler anti-choicers, because they’re still trying to force their choices onto MY body.
@bluebears – That’s because it’s not a coherent worldview in the way that they state it. Their stated goal is to reduce the number of abortions, but their actions are entirely inconsistent with that goal. If they stated plainly that what they’re interested in doing is classifying sex as a privilege reserved for the few instead of a basic human need, then their position would make sense. However, they’re not willing to do so — probably not even to themselves, in fact.
Well said, Kari. If you seek to deny a woman the right to choose what happens to her own body, I am not going to “work with you.”
Kari and Maritsa I totally agree. All I need to know is if they think a woman should be able to choose to have an abortion if she so wishes. Yes or no.
God Sarah you are so right on. This sentence “Adoption is an alternative to parenthood, not pregnancy” I wish I had in my back pocket many years ago. I shamefully once dated one of these “nice guy” pro lifers. He used to talk about not pathologizing pregnancy, not acting like it is a medical condition when it was a “natural” part of life that women have always been able to handle “by themselves.” UMMMMM except for all that maternal mortality! Asshole.
The term ‘pro-life’ irks me. It’s a term designed to sound so nice and supportive. As far as I’m concerned you are either pro-choice and anti-choice. You either believe that women are autonomous beings who have the intrinsic right to make decisions about their bodies, or you don’t. There’s no middle ground. There’s no need to “find common ground,” as Obama urges us to do, because the common ground exists solely in the understanding that women are not incubators, and will not relinquish their control over their bodies.
At the end of the day it’s not about reducing the number of abortions, or access to contraception, or adoption; it’s about control. If it weren’t about control, there would be no arguments about any of these things. Free contraception for all men and women, emotional and financial support for women who choose to become mothers, or who choose to pursue adoption, and absolute access for women who choose abortion.
But then the women would be in control, and ya’ll know, we can’t have that!
TVille, you are spot on. Control is the bottom line with the abortion fight-not bebez, not life, not teh family. Women who control their bodies are free. Women who don’t, aren’t. Right-wingers believe that complete freedom belongs to white men and everyone else on the planet was put here to serve them.
There is no difference between new and old antis. They all want to stop women from controlling our bodies. A little perfumed language can’t cover the reek of sexism.
Baraqiel, I don’t agree that they want to restrict sex. Where would the maids and pool boys come from if we didn’t allow the peons to reproduce? Not only that, they need soldiers for their culture war. The people who vote against their own interests so that rights can be denied to women and gays, so that gun laws can be attacked, so that Christianity can be made the state religion-they need to procreate and produce more good little robots for the cause.
@mischiefmanager – You’re giving them too much credit for logic. These people, like most of everyone else, work with a commodity model of sex. Sex is something that women guard so that men can compete with each other to be the most powerful, and therefore most worthy of exchanging their protection for it. What they want to do is make sure that sex is seen as a privilege restricted to people such as themselves — relatively powerful, white, straight, etc. But it might be useful to draw a distinction here between procreative sex (allowed for, as you say, “peons”) and recreational sex (reserved for the powerful). This is one reason that politicians who are socially conservative tend to be so hypocritical about kink, prostitutes, etc.; these things are indicators that one views sex as at least partially recreational and that shouldn’t be allowed for people who aren’t entitled to it like they are (so the “reasoning” goes).
@Kari-
“You’re pro-choice or you’re anti-choice, period. Anything less than pro-choice, I have nothing but contempt for.”
@Mischiefmanager-
“Right-wingers believe that complete freedom belongs to white men and everyone else on the planet was put here to serve them.”
I am shocked that Kari, Mischiefmanager, and other commenters are so comfortable polarizing opposing sides of the abortion debate, and casting all pro-lifers as misogynistic white men. I know politics are easier and more satisfying when issues are black and white. But, you’re blinding yourself to the moral complexity inherent in abortion.
Yes, controlling women is a major element of the abortion debate. But (call me crazy) I think there are genuinely compassionate right-wingers (race and gender aside) who empathize with pregnant women, and STILL argue that human life is sacred, and are therefore against abortion. Being pro-life is not synonymous with being anti-feminist. No matter how passionately feminist you may be, abortion remains philosophically problematic because two lives, not one, are involved. There are feminists who will debate abortion and reach the conclusion that morally, it is wrong. Or at least, we cannot say definitely that it is morally right or morally inconsequential.
And I do think a “common ground” is possible. I hope to one day live in a culture that respects women and their autonomy, and I hope that in such a society extramarital pregnancy (and by extension, the free expression of female sexuality), will lose its stigma. In this mythical future society, the abortion rate may very well fall significantly, which serves the agenda of pro-lifers and feminists alike.
I maintain that there are many woman who terminate their pregnancies out of shame for their situation. Eliminate the shame, provide genuine sustainable social support for these woman, and they may very well make a free and independent choice to continue their pregnancies. Also, if your personal moral code includes the belief that human life is inherently sacred, than isn’t it logical to make an effort to lower abortion rates? Isn’t it truly “pro-choice” to craft a society where women who are heartbroken by abortion can choose another alternative?
I’m not pro-life. I think it is vital for abortion to remain legal. Outlawing the procedure will only force countless women into physically, emotionally, and financially dangerous circumstances. But I’m frustrated by the simplistic, self-congratulating comments that followed this entry.
Betalicht, it’s fine to talk about reducing the need for abortion by reducing stigma, but even in a utopia there will ALWAYS be a need for abortion in some circumstances. Obviously the physical and emotional stress of unwanted or unsafe pregnancies and terminations is something anyone would want to avoid. But right now it seems like the most pressing problem is lack of secure access to reproductive health services from contraception to pre natal care to access to safe abortion and births (access including information, availability, and affordability of services). When support for safe abortion services is undermined, I think it is pretty hard to find common ground. That has to be the baseline of the conversation.
Betalicht, not everyone sees abortion as inherently morally complex. I don’t. I don’t think human life is sacred, and I don’t think two lives are involved when it comes to abortion (unless you count the adult male, and while he can voice his opinion, it’s not his decision). I don’t think it has to be of great moral consequence, although sometimes it is. I want fewer abortions, sure, but that’s because it’s a rather nasty medical procedure that should be avoided when it can be.
I appreciate your polite and reasoned reply, but to assert that the abortion issue is necessary, inherently, and always a huge moral quandary? That isn’t so. And I don’t say that because I’ve “blinded” myself to its realities, but because I base my reasoning on people’s lived experiences and concern for their well-being. Fetuses are not people. Women are.
@Betalicht – We all understand that not every person who identifies as “pro-life” is male, white, and misogynistic. But those are the people in charge of the movement. They set the tone, and the tone is misogynistic.
Furthermore, why exactly do you think that people define a fetus as a human life with moral weight? Because I really doubt that most people who believe that derived it from first principles, and it’s certainly not a settled question from a philosophical point of view. “Personhood” isn’t a philosophically well-defined term, and depending on how an individual defines it, abortion might not be philosophically difficult. I would argue, in fact, that people who believe that fetuses are human lives with moral weight start out with the thought that abortion is morally problematic and then proceed from there, rather than the other way around, to come to what seems like a very counterintuitive conclusion: that an entity without homeostasis and without consciousness or self-awareness constitutes a person of at least equal value to an adult, and whose needs trump the needs of that adult. That doesn’t mean that people who reach that conclusion are all misogynists per se, but rather that the environment in which they’re operating is a misogynistic one.
Two smaller points:
-In framing your utopia, you say that the abortion rate would fall significantly — you don’t say that it would fall to zero. That doesn’t serve the agenda of people who are anti-choice. People who are anti-choice, by definition, want a world in which no one has the choice to have an abortion.
-We would all like for there to be less shame associated with single motherhood, premarital sex, etc., and more support available for single mothers, and better education about and availability of contraception. In fact, all those things are major goals of feminism, and many of us consider them to be part of striving for true reproductive freedom. It’s the social conservatives (which encompasses the anti-choice movement) that don’t agree with that, not us.
Betalicht, as long as the fetus grows in a woman’s body, there is no moral complexity for me. It’s her body, it’s her life and health that are at risk. End of discussion. If a pregnant woman feels that her situation is morally complex, that’s her right. By no means does everyone feel that way, and the decision about how to think of an unwanted pregnancy is part of the very essence of reproductive freedom.
If there were a group of people talking about limiting the physical freedom of African-Americans, I’m sure you’d say they were racist. Antis want to limit the physical freedom of women. Hence, they are misogynistic.
Don’t be fooled by their rhetoric. It’s all very nice that they claim to want to help pregnant women, blah blah blah, but they want to do it under their own strict conditions, not to serve the needs of the women. Fighting against availability of birth control gives the game away. By trying to remove access to the one thing that can reduce abortion rates most effectively, they show that their real desire is to punish women for having sex. Forcing them to go through with an unwanted pregnancy is a continuation of the punishment. Shame, guilt, and control over women-those are the goals of the anti-choice movement. And all you have to do is look and listen to understand this. They don’t hide it.