On this anniversary of Roe v. Wade , I have been thinking about the "pro-life" set. I think they are completely missing the point.
See, the so-called "abortion debate" isn't really about abortion at all in my eyes. It's about freedom, trust and responsibility. It's about women.
What I am fighting for isn't about what someone would do in response to an unwanted pregnancy. What I would do and what any of you would do are our own choices and our own business. And they may not be the same, which is OK.
I respect that some might think abortion is immoral or reprehensible. I have no desire to change someone's core belief in that matter. What I cannot respect is someone who wants to take away my legal right to feel differently.
What I am fighting for is the right to make decisions about my body and about my own life. It's about being allowed to autonomy to know what's right for me in a difficult situation.
And that's the point that the "pro-life" movement fails to understand.
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That's exactly it! It's about believing, really believing, that individuals have sovereignty over their own bodies. In the West, we don't question the right of the individual to control their body when it's a male body. But all that individualism goes out the window when the body in question is female.
Yes, I believe it is an issue of control. In patriarchy, men have to have complete control over everything, or their precious little world is threatened.
What gets me is that so-called pro-lifers often resort to tactics involving intimidation, coercion, and violence. Hardly a pro-life stance.
I feel the same way. Honestly, I don't know how I feel about abortion itself. I can't say that I think abortion is good or bad, or that it's okay in a certain situation or not okay in another, or that I think it's okay at any point. I've never really thought about whether or not abortion is "okay" because it doesn't really matter what I or anyone else thinks about it.
Furthermore, laws permitting or restricting abortion don't really do anything to the abortion rate. Abortion happens no matter what the law says. The function of abortion laws is to make a political message. The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, for example, tells me that sometimes, my rights and health don't matter in this "free" country. Roe v. Wade tells me that I can control my body and plan my family. So protesting legal abortion, like many anti-choice people are doing today, makes no sense.
I agree that the abortion debate isn't about abortion, or at least that it shouldn't be. The reality is that abortion rates haven't changed since Roe v. Wade. Since abortions will occur whether they are legal or not, the laws aren't about "saving babies." They are about safety, and we are left with two choices:
1. Abortions are legal and therefore the procedure will be undergone safely.
2. Abortions are illegal and the procedure will be done at great risk to the woman.
Now, I'm not naive enough to think that all women have access to safe abortion procedures because it's legal. People who think we have actual rather than relative reproductive freedom in this country are deluding themselves. However, the laws do protect some women, and I think that's better than nothing.
And as a sidenote: There are very few ideological issues that piss me off more than anti-choice men.
I'm probably the most radically pro-choice one here, but really, they think that you're missing the point just as much as you think that they are.
You probably wouldn't say "Yes, I'm killing a whole person who is just as valuable as I am, except that I value my bodily autonomy more than their life." That's almost self-contradictory. But that's what they think you're saying. And they'll say that you're missing the point that embryo's are just as valuable as you, or whatever their main issue is. But you'll say "that is stupid" just like they'll say about your issues.
I agree that the abortion debate isn't really about abortion. There are a whole other basic set of assumptions at play, having to deal with what makes humans valuable, and why, and how that value relates to personal bodily autonomy, and its value relative to a person's life. When you're not talking about those issues, odds are you're just banging your head on a wall. And most people aren't talking about those issues.
The fact that anti-choicers aren't really talking about abortion when they talk about their views on the subject means they don't have much of a point and we can call them out on it. It's not really about a misunderstanding of each other's views. It's about one group of people who don't care if women are forced to be pregnant and give birth and another group of people who do. Scratch a pro-lifer hard enough, and you'll find a misogynist.
I just think that's an oversimplification of a difficult issue.
Deep down I'm really a nihilist, so it's easy for me to say I don't believe at all in the sanctity of life, and I don't think there is moral truth to much of anything, so abortion certainly isn't any different.
But if you want to actually start talking about morality, which the pro-lifers obviously do, you have to see that there is more to it than just "you don't care about controlling women and I do". Abortion is so divisive because it is totally unique and brings to bear a multitude of different moral concerns. Trying to just say you care about freedom and they don't is like them saying that they care about life and you don't.
And I don't really think that most pro-life people hate women. They have largely just been indoctrinated by a lifetime of religious dogma. They think that they know the absolute truth and you are just a godless cretin. Now you can argue that religion is inherently misogynistic, but I doubt that that personal attitude is really held by most of those people. They're just brainwashed and ignorant, not evil.
Good point. A lot of pro-life people think that they are rescuing the "baby" and the mother, because they think they are saving the mother from guilt, commiting "murder," damnation, etc. Of course there are many pro-lifers who don't care about women at all, but others just don't understand the reasons and issues surrounding abortion and they don't know that a lot of their beliefs are based on misinformation. I'm not saying they're right, or that's it's ok for them to limit others' choices based on their own beliefs, but I do think in their own way, many of them are not necessarily anti-woman.