My boyfriend is anti-choice.
He is a study in contradictions, however: he is adamantly liberal in practically every other way. He is a graduate student at one of the US’ most prestigious universities, and is without doubt a feminist. He is also an atheist. I say this because before I ask for your help/input, I want you to know that he really doesn’t subscribe to any of the rhetoric that anti-choicers regularly spout. He is incredibly discerning and admits that he hates being grouped in with other anti-choicers– he simply doesn’t share their beliefs. Being an atheist, he doesn’t believe that fetuses have ‘souls’; being a feminist, he doesn’t believe– in any way– that women should may made to feel ashamed of and controlled by their sexual and reproductive choices.
Given that: my boyfriend is anti-choice because he feels that that life has a right. Not an elevated right over the woman, but an equal right. I know, I know, it’s not ‘life’ yet; he means that cluster of cells that has the potential to become a human being (and will, if the pregnancy is typical).
I’ve presented him with the argument that no one would force an adult to give up a kidney for hir child (which is the best I can come up with [thanks, Jill Filipovic!*], akin to anti-choicers insisting that women be forced to donate their body to someone for almost ten months); he agrees, but makes the point that the fetus is not a leech (I say that it is if it is unwanted, but hear me him out). He recognizes that carrying a fetus is an unfair burden that men do not have to endure. However, I have to concede to his point that a uterus‘ purpose– please, not a woman’s– is to gestate. It is not the job of a kidney to be donated.
We’ve had so many conversations about it, and every book/blog/article on reproductive choice doesn’t answer my question: how do you talk to someone who is truly (I wouldn’t be dating him if he wasn’t) intelligent, tolerant, anti-patriarchy, and faithless about abortion (when most pro-choice arguments are built around the assumption that anti-choice people are not these things)?
17 Comments
Here is what I at least consider a strong argument:
Things are due moral consideration only to the extent that they have subjective experiences that are pleasurable or painful.
We don’t consider a rock due any moral consideration: if you kick it, throw it in the ocean, etc., it’s not an immoral act because the rock feels nothing. Likewise, if you cut your hair, trim your fingernails, or have an appendectomy, despite the fact that this may include discarding living cells, none of these are an immoral act because none of the discarded materials have subjective experiences.
Likewise, an embryo or fetus at the stage of development during which most abortions take place simply does not have a nervous system that has formed to the extent that our understanding of neurobiology tells us could support having a subjective experience. Therefore, it does not have an equal right to moral consideration, and the dilemma is resolved.
The usual counterargument that one must give moral consideration to the potential human being that could exist is incoherent: if one must give moral consideration to every being that could exist, then it is equally immoral to refrain from having procreative sex at every possible opportunity as it is to terminate a pregnancy, reductio ad absurdum.
Something which I think is often obscured in prochoice arguments is that it is possible to be prochoice but still believe abortion to be morally wrong. I make a distinction between those who whose conscience would be troubled by undertaking an abortion personally, and those who wish to force others to do what they believe is morally right. Personally I would hesitate to have an abortion on the basis of my morals, but would never judge another person by the standards with which I judge myself and believe that governments should implement prochoice regulations.
By the sound of it your bf sits on the saner side of this line, but still such divergent views in a couple could be difficult. My recommendation is for a lot of contraception.
This is a good point too; e.g., I am a vegetarian but I think it would be unwise to attempt to make slaughter animals or eating meat illegal.
I agree…I think there it is possible to be personally against abortion but politically pro choice.
Also, I take objection to the idea of an equal right to life…even if we did suppose that a fetus is a life, how is that life, which has not really existed of it’s own power, possibly equal to that of an adult woman?
I agree – I think this stance is much stronger than anything which talks about what constitutes “life” – as none of those can be proven, but attempt to be based in science. If someone believes that a group of cells constitutes a human life, how can you prove otherwise? You can’t.
What you can say though, is that it is terrible for someone to be forced into being a human incubator with all the risks and hassles that entails, and then being forced into giving birth. One human should never have jurisdiction over another human’s body. If a woman doesn’t want to use her body as a life-support system, she should not be legally forced to do so. regardless of the entity that she is life support for.
I can’t really add or detract from what others have said here. What I will say is that sometimes it takes a personal epiphany that you might not be able to facilitate yourself to change someone’s mind. Perhaps just by your very example he might come to a different conclusion altogether. But in the meantime, he sounds like someone who fits well what you are looking for in a significant other.
I would question how far down the potentiality chain life goes? Is it okay for a woman to have her ovaries removed if she has a family history of ovarian cancer, knowing that she never wants children? Such an action destroys all potential future life in her. Similarly, can a man have an orchiectomy to remove the testes so as to alter the body to look more “female”, or to eliminate sexual desire? Such an action destroys the potential for future life in him.
Why is the fetus afford a protection that sperm and eggs are not?
I would also argue it is up to the women to whom those uteruses belong to decide what her uterus is for. Right now, mine is to keep my lovely IUD in place so that I don’t become pregnant. If I do become pregnant, then I can decide whether or not my uterus is for gestating an embryo or not.
This is a little unclear to me. You say he is anti-choice but also write:
“being a feminist, he doesn’t believe– in any way– that women should may made to feel ashamed of and controlled by their sexual and reproductive choices.”
Are you saying that he doesn’t believe reproduction should be controlled? If that’s the case, while he may be morally opposed to abortion, technically he’s not anti-choice. If, however, he thinks women should be restricted in what they do reproductively, he is.
That said, I don’t really know how to hold a civil conversation with any type of anti-choicer, even an atheist one or whatever, because I’ve never really bothered to try it, sorry. I just push them out of the path of the clinic door.
I’m politically pro-choice, while personally against abortion. To me, a fetus is not a person but it does have value, but less than the person carrying it. My being against abortion makes me hope for more comprehensive sex ed and access to contraceptives to prevent pregnancy in the first place. The thing is, abortion can be really complex, especially if you support a woman’s rights in many ways, but think a fetus is equally deserving of life.
I’ve dealt with that complexity a lot and the more I have thought about it the more understanding I became of why abortion should be legal. A few things I think you could tell him:
1. Many women who get abortions and support abortion being legal don’t want it to happen.
He’s probably considered that before but, it’s very important to remember a woman could be getting an abortion because other options just aren’t good enough. Like, if she can’t provide anything for the baby once it is born, and adoption isn’t an actual option because maybe she can’t afford food to feed herself or for it to grow inside of her healthy.
2. Healthcare isn’t guaranteed.
Pregnancy is extremely dangerous without healthcare for the woman and for the fetus as well. It just doesn’t make any sense if you support the right to life to the fetus and woman to oppose her getting an abortion to save her life and possibly prevent the suffering the fetus might have dying soon after being born. People still are without healthcare despite the healthcare bill, and I don’t think that would fall under the “life in danger” category to get an abortion like republicans sometimes say they would support as far as I know, especially considering that it’s not an actual policy, who knows how they would apply it?
I think you should present him a hypothetical situation: A sixteen year old gets pregnant, then is abandoned by the father, kicked out by her parents and has no relatives or anyone to go to, she’s a junior in high school, doesn’t have a car, or job or even a way to get to her school now. She has no home, has a hard time finding food and tries to carry the baby and she either miscarries, or somehow carries it to full term and possibly ends up delivering in a back alley with no one around to help and then lets say she passes out, the baby is born alone in the cold outdoors and suffers and then dies alone, when the mother wakes up, her baby is dead, and maybe she doesn’t wake up and they both die. Maybe instead of those possibilities, she gets enough money to have an abortion and does it, things would probably be for the best that way, right? Does she deserve to go to jail? She doesn’t fall into the categories republicans would give her to not get arrested. She wasn’t raped, a victim of incest, and didn’t have a life-threatening diagnosis.
He may say that that’s a hypothetical situation and there’s no way to know if that would happen, but I think that’s the time to point out to him that he can’t get pregnant, and he would never have to ask those questions pregnant women in desperate circumstances have to ask: Where they have to think of those hypothetical things that are really that terrifying.
3. Adopting is a flawed system.
Let’s say that a woman gets pregnant, but she knows she doesn’t have the means to take care of a child, she should give it up for adoption, right? But what if she doesn’t find a parent to take the baby once it’s born, and knowing her possible child may get abused or grossly neglected at an orphanage it’s too hard to give the child to the state’s system. There are problems in foster care, adoption, and orphanages, and they are big problems. It could then seem the best option to get an abortion.
That in my opinion, is a good argument for why women who get abortions aren’t guilty of murder.
There is absolutely nothing “equal” about the mother-fetus relationship. The fetus is dependent on the mother until it can live outside the womb. End of story. There is nothing equal about it.
There is also nothing equal about the fetus killing the mother and possibly killing itself as well. There is nothing “equal” about miscarriages.
There is also nothing “equal” about wanting to have sex and potentially getting pregnant. You can have sex and not get pregnant and be morally absolved or you can have sex and suddenly not have any rights. You can’t morally have your cake and eat it too.
A woman is person with full rights or not. There are no halfsies on this.
I’d be curious to what your boyfriend thinks about pills like RU-486 or birth control that works by preventing implantation. One third of all successful conceptions end when the embryo fails to implant into the placenta. If these embryos are really human lives, there’s a silent holocaust going on, so shouldn’t we be investing billions of dollars to make sure this never happens? Further, fertility clinics discard thousands of human embryos all the time. Are they committing murder? If your boyfriend is as level-headed as you describe him, he’ll see that “equal life at conception” at least is really silly.
Also, it’s silly to posit that a potential person has rights. If mere potential is enough to grant moral rights, then why don’t people have unprotected sex all the time just so that as many potential babies as possible are born? The point about potential is just that. It is potential, not real.
I think if you can at least get him to admit that potential human beings shouldn’t get the same rights as actual human beings, and that killing an embryo isn’t on par with murder, the next step is to move along the path upward in gestation. A lot of pro life sources use misleading claims about when a fetus can feel pain or has consciousness. The best medical journals out there don’t think there is such a thing as fetal consciousness until the 20 to 24th week, whereas 90% of abortions happen by the 12th week. The 2-3% that happen after the 20th week are likely due to health or life of the mother, rape or incest. Ironically, anti choice attempts to restrict womens’ access to abortion can result in more abortions at a later term, resulting in greater moral harms.
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I think the answer is simple – you CANNOT convince someone like this. You have to either accept his position or end the relationship in my book.
People fundamentally, don’t change. Not on a deep level or for things they believe this strongly. It takes a massive personal experience to even hope to see change. His beliefs here are clearly strong enough that you will never be able to convince him to change his opinion.
What bullshit. ” because he feels that that life has a right” How does this man live without eating,? After all, plants and animals are life. If he got lice, would he keep them forever because they are life? Life alone grants no rights to anything, let alone the right to use a person’s body. To live is to kill (at minimum, plants and bacteria) and to die is to kill (lots of bacteria and yourself). The notion that mere life has massive rights is flat out absurd. Tell that to the thousands of bacteria you killed last time you swallowed, you genocidal maniac. Is is human cells? If so, then what about tumors? What about laser hair removal? Life has no rights per se, PERSONS have rights. It is clear that embryos are not persons and women are. It is also clear that even if fetuses (feti?) were persons, granting them a right to use another’s body is a right that no other person is granted. I recommend Judith Jarvis Thomson’s landmark philosophical paper on this topic http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm
” I have to concede to his point that a uterus‘ purpose– please, not a woman’s– is to gestate. ” Also an absolute non-argument. It is not a tumor’s ‘purpose’ to be removed, or a donated organ’s ‘purpose’ to be used by the recipient, or a hand’s ‘purpose’ to use a computer, etc. Besides, what do we mean by purpose? Evolutionary purpose? Because evolution isn’t some sort of conscious, caring force. It does not give a rats ass what you do with your uterus or when. This seems to me like an indirect invocation of the ‘appeal to nature’ fallacy. Congratulations are in order to him for invoking such terrible arguments that they are actual named logical fallacies.
” he doesn’t believe– in any way– that women should may made to feel ashamed of and controlled by their sexual and reproductive choices.” You are wrong about this, he clearly does. A person who thinks women should be forced to carry unwanted pregnancies with all of the physical, social, and emotional risks that entails because a lump of cells with less neurological function than a cockroach has equal rights to her thinks women should be controlled on the basis of having a uterus, because, after all, that’s its function (barf).
When back into a corner, this type of anti-choicer really just thinks women should be punished for sex, that women’s sex partners have rights over their bodies, and that pregnant women should not have full autonomy. You boyfriend is like someone who claims not to be a racist but hides the valuables only when black people visit. In short, a big liar.
You know, some things are simply things that two people will never agree on. My boyfriend is pro-choice and has more or less feminist views on many things. But there are things he and I disagree on politically. And that’s because he and I are not the same person, and we shouldn’t strive to be. You’re asking for advice on how to talk to him about this, but if I may be so bold, I’m going to take it a step further and infer that really, you’re asking how (and if) you can reconcile his anti-choice beliefs with your feminism.
I think there’s something that us feminists don’t always remember, and that’s that intelligent, thoughtful, liberal-minded people don’t always come to the same conclusions as us about certain issues. Sometimes it seems like we’re buried in a “this is the right feminism” rhetoric and that’s why we come to assume that most anti-choice or otherwise anti-feminist beliefs come from a place of misogyny, slut-shaming, or heavily conservative ideas. But we’re wrong about that. I would wager to bet that your boyfriend’s opinions are actually quite common among anti-choicers. Anti-choicers are not all the religious zealots we tend to associate with the movement; I’ve known some myself who are, I think, like your boyfriend. I have nonreligious and even non-conservative family members and friends who think abortion is an immoral act. The fact is that morality is a subjective thing, and it’s not up to us feminists to tell the world how to think; we have to simply educate people where we can and hope that we’re doing the right thing.
So anyway what I’m trying to say is that I don’t think there’s anything you can do except for what you’ve already been doing. If the two of you are the type who enjoy a friendly philosophical debate, then continue debating it, but there’s not necessarily some magic button thing you can say that will change his mind. If, however, this is a deeper issue for you – if you’ve had fights over it – then you need to decide if this is a dealbreaker for you. And, even more importantly, I don’t know if the two of you are sleeping together and if you want kids at this time or not, but if you are indeed sleeping together and have no desire for a family yet (or ever), you need to have the “what would we do if I get pregnant” conversation. Perhaps you wouldn’t want an abortion anyway, perhaps he would want you to get one (a surprising number of anti-choicers get abortions), perhaps you’re actively trying to get pregnant and my point is moot. But if it isn’t, and if you are having sex, you both need to discuss what’s going to happen if you become pregnant accidentally because no birth control is foolproof. Maybe you already know that you would get an abortion, and you need to communicate that to him – he needs to know that sleeping with you very well could result in something he doesn’t agree with. Maybe you’ve already had an abortion, either from him getting you pregnant or from another guy, but if the two of you are in a serious relationship you might want to consider whether keeping something like this from him is worth it, because lies have a way of coming out eventually. Full disclosure is incredibly important.
It sounds like he is a reasonable person and you’ve done all you can to try and change his mind. But it is his mind, not yours – it’s up to him to interpret the way he sees the world. And you now have to decide how big a deal his belief is for you.
Thank you all very much for your input. @nicolechat, you are absolutely right, and to the others who said similar things– thank you. I can assure you that we have talked about the things you all mentioned (the hypotheticals, etc., and the “what if” conversation). We use both the pill and condoms consistently, and if I were to get pregnant, whatever I did would be my choice (although, for your information, he has said that he will support me whatever I choose to do).
@Cathy Brown, wow. I think you missed the point a bit. Though we disagree on this one issue, this is someone I love. Your harsh language isn’t conducive to convincing me of your point, and further, you have undermined my own intelligence by indicating that I’m clueless. Hopefully it won’t become an issue that is divisive, but if it is then so be it– I’ll know what I need to do when it comes down to it.