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Can You Be a Feminist for Life?

Jill

Sure. I’m a feminist for life. I like life. I think mine is important enough to preserve, and I think yours is too. I think we should do all we can to sustain life and to make it as good (or at least as livable) as possible — I support life-affirming things like poverty relief programs, environmentalism, reasonable gun control laws, and universal healthcare. I don’t support things that result in the unnecessary taking of life, like the death penalty and preemptive wars based on untruths. Because I value women’s lives, I believe that everyone deserves access to medical care and family planning tools.

But the anti-choice group Feminists for Life is a different story. On the surface, they’re decent, as far as anti-choice groups can be decent. They promote education and childcare for women with children, and adequate campus housing for students with children. These are good things. But as Katha Pollitt discovers, they aren’t exactly a progressive’s dream (in more ways than being anti-abortion):

The problem is that FFL doesn’t just oppose abortion. FFL wants abortion to be illegal. All abortions, period, including those for rape, incest, health, major fetal defects and, although Foster resisted admitting this, even some abortions most doctors would say were necessary to save the woman’s life. (Although FFL is not a Catholic organization, its rejection of therapeutic abortion follows Catholic doctrine.) FFL wants doctors who perform abortions to be punished, possibly with prison terms.

They also subscribe to the theories that abortion causes breast cancer and birth control pills are “abortifacients” — despite all scientific evidence to the contrary. FFL claims that women choose abortion because of a lack of other options — if they had a better education, or access to childcare, or were making more money, they’d have that baby in a heartbeat and abortion would cease to exist. I agree that it’s tragic that some women do “choose” abortion simply for lack of other choices. I think it’s disgusting that right-wing legislators in states like New Jersey have created laws that limit poor women’s choice to have children — for example, penalizing welfare recipients if they give birth while on state assistance. Make the world a friendlier place for women by truly allowing us the fullest range of choices in all areas of our lives, and you can bet that the abortion rate will drop right along with the unintended pregnancy rate.

But if you don’t give women the opportunity to determine the number and spacing of their children, we aren’t going to be able to achieve things like fair pay, white-collar jobs and higher education on the mass levels that men have been able to. If you don’t believe that women are entitled to control what goes on within their own uteruses, if you don’t trust women to make their own decisions — indeed, if you think that the government should be allowed to legally force women to give birth — then you aren’t a feminist. “Feminists for Life,” aren’t. I’ll let the much more eloquent Katha Pollitt finish it out, but I’m curious if any feminists here think that you can be anti-choice (and I mean broadly anti-choice, in that you think abortion should be illegal, not just anti-abortion on a personal level) and still be a feminist.

Exposing the constraints on women’s choices, however, is only one side of feminism. The other is acknowledging women as moral agents, trusting women to decide what is best for themselves. For FFL there’s only one right decision: Have that baby. And since women’s moral judgment cannot be trusted, abortion must be outlawed, whatever the consequences for women’s lives and health–for rape victims and 12-year-olds and 50-year-olds, women carrying Tay-Sachs fetuses and women at risk of heart attack or stroke, women who have all the children they can handle and women who don’t want children at all. FFL argues that abortion harms women–that’s why it clings to the outdated cancer claims. But it would oppose abortion just as strongly if it prevented breast cancer, filled every woman’s heart with joy, lowered the national deficit and found Jimmy Hoffa. That’s because they aren’t really feminists–a feminist could not force another woman to bear a child, any more than she could turn a pregnant teenager out into a snowstorm. They are fetalists.

31 thoughts on Can You Be a Feminist for Life?

  1. Lauren had posed this question to me a few weeks ago over drinks, only in a slightly different context. My answer is still the same.

    It is extremely contrary to be anti-choice and label yourself a feminist. In fact, I see it as hypocritical.

    Feminism isn’t about denying rights, it’s about advocating to ensure everybody has their rights protected and can exercise them, which includes reproductive rights of all shades.

    I can see a sticky point when discussing if one is “pro-abortion”. I do not believe someone has to agree with abortion-the-procedure, as an option for themselves personally, but still, they cannot act to deny another person access to the procedure.

    For example, I know folks who say they would never terminate a pregnancy, but if another person/couple decides to, they see that choice as their right.

  2. We know that where abortion is illegal, women resort to terrible measures to terminate their pregnancies so the pro-life position is harmful to women. When you’re actively doing something to hurt women, that isn’t feminist.

    That isn’t to say that a person can’t be a feminist in all other senses of the word. Just not when they’re doing their pro-life thing.

    Just my two cents though.

  3. If feminism is the recognition that women are capable of thinking for themselves and making their own choices, then no!

    These people are re-defining feminism to mean looking out for their best interests, which it clearly is not – that’s paternalism.

    Obviously lying to women about the “harm” abortion can do is in itself unfeminist, but really, feminism is about allowing women the same autonomy as men, and that include the right to make bad decisions.

  5. You cannot be a feminist and support the criminalization or restriction of abortions. You cannot be a feminist without supporting contraception (which FFL appears not to do).

    The only way to be ‘anti-abortion” and feminist is to support programs and actiions that reduce the need for abortions (widespread availability of birth control and EC, sex education, single-payer health care, low-cost child care, etc.) and, of course, to not deny other women the option of having an abortion.

  6. I don’t know about FFL in particular, but it seems to me that at least in theory abortion-rights need not be about feminism at all. I realize that’s a strong claim but just hear me out.

    The important question, I think, is whether you believe a fetus to be a moral agent. If you believe that a fetus is a fully human life from conception, then the pro-life position follows logically. Even if one is simpathetic with the general thrust of feminist thinking regarding the place of women in a patriarchal society, you can’t help but come to that conclusion. In which case, you would be an anti-abortion feminist.

    What bothers me is the temptation to believe that a fetus is not a fully human life simply because you want to believe in the conclusion that abortion is okay. Logically, the two are separate and ought to be thought of that way.

  7. My gut instinct is that FFL is NOT a feminist organization.

    However, I have read compelling feminist arguments that oppose abortion on the grounds that it contributes to making a culture that sees children as burdens (i.e. that it plays into the presuppositions of “individualism” that has often worked against women, especially if we are talking about mothers). I think that feminists can reach different conclusions about whether or not one ought to have an abortion. And, I think that feminists can make compelling moral arguments against abortions, especially if they are chosen because our society punishes mothers (inflexible work schedules, lack of affordable day care, restrictive health care policies, etc).

    I don’t generally agree, at the end of the day, with feminists who are morally opposed to abortion. However, I can respect the arguments.

    What I absolutely cannot abide by is people, who call themselves feminists, who want to legally restrict or criminalize abortions! Or, worse, pro-life women who want to support women and offer counseling to women who had abortions and regret it, but do not realize that their agitations to ban abortion will result in prison sentences to women who seek out abortion and/or have abortions. Check out this video, for an example of what I mean: Libertyville Abortion Demonstration.

  8. If someone were to advocate for banning abortions, but also for forcing men to donate blood, marrow, and kidneys to their children if need be – then I wouldn’t mind ’em in the feminist tent. I disagree with both the propositions that 1. a fetus is as important as a born child and 2. we are obliged to sacrifice our bodily autonomy for the health of our children – but as long as people don’t think we should only be obliged to sacrifice bodily autonomy for our children during pregnancy and never again, it’s something I can square with my sense of feminism.

    Adding that 3. parents should be forced to sacrifice not just autonomy but life for their children, as FFL does, is rather less justifiable.

  9. I agree with David, that you can be a pro-life feminist. Feminism is defined in Merriam-Webster, 10th ed, as “the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes”. Theoretically, one could agree with that definition and also believe that human life begins at conception. If you had that belief, you would not consider abortion “reproductive rights” or “terminating a pregnancy” or “a woman’s choice” any more than you would think that a woman murdering her two year old child is any of the above. On a slightly unrelated note, some women (including feminists) are outraged about sex-selective abortions that discriminate against female fetuses.

    However, I don’t like FFL’s screwy breast cancer-abortion link (which has never made sense to me) and I would advise most pro-life feminists to choose their allies carefully, because many religious pro-life groups think feminists are witches and that women should be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. As for birth control, I don’t see how birth control=abortion, but I suppose it is within their rights to oppose it as “immoral”.

    Before you flame me, please note that I do not necessarily agree with pro-life feminist reasoning. When it comes to my own beliefs about abortion, I do not agree with Rick Santorum, but I do not agree with Barbara Boxer either.

  10. As for birth control, I don’t see how birth control=abortion, but I suppose it is within their rights to oppose it as “immoral”.

    They’re “within their rights,” but it’s hardly feminist, is it?

    FFL doesn’t have a position on contraception.

  11. Re: Kate and David-

    Even if one believes human life begins at conception, I have to wonder if anyone really, truly believes that a fertilized egg is literally the moral equivalent of a two-year-old child. I suspect that even the most radical anti-choicers realize that there is a difference. And how do we know? Well, the vast majority of anti-choice people who believe that abortion should be illegal think that an exception should be made for rape and incest survivors, and to protect the life of the pregnant woman. Now, if a fetus is the moral equivalent of a full human being, then it doesn’t matter how the woman got pregnant — that fetus is a person. What rape/incest exceptions demonstrate is that the abortion debate isn’t about fetal “life” and hasn’t really ever been: it’s about controlling women and our decisions. If you get pregnant because you did something (i.e., voluntarily had sex for any purpose other than procreation), then you deserve pregnancy as a punishment. If sex was done to you, then you don’t deserve to be punished for it.

    And if a fetus is the moral equivalent to a full human being, then even a life-threatening or health-threatening pregnancy cannot be terminated, because that would be murder. The two lives (pregnant woman and fetus) would be morally equal; you can’t purposely end one to preserve the other if they’re equal — you just have to cross your fingers and hope they both make it, or let nature take its course. If you have, for example, conjoined twins — two lives that are morally equal — is it moral to purposely kill one in order to save the other? How do you pick which life to end?

    Further, if life starts at conception then we’ve got a real problem with miscarriage rates, since about half of fertilized eggs naturally don’t implant and are flushed out of the body before pregnancy occurs (pregnancy, remember, is medically defined at the moment of implantation, not fertilization). Should we grieve at every period because there might be a fertilized egg in there? Is a fertilized egg that never implants equal in tragedy to the death of a two-year-old? Is it equal in tragedy to a miscarriage at 4 months?

    My point is that a fertilized egg isn’t the moral equivalent of a human being, not even to the most radical in the anti-choice camp (although they will certainly claim that it is). The abortion debate has never really been about life or when it begins. Read, for example, St. Augustine — abortion is a punishable offense only for the sexual nature of the sin. Women’s health and women’s rights, on the other hand, will always be tied to our ability to control the number and spacing of our children. That is one of many reasons why the pro-choice position can’t be separated from feminism — as Kate said, feminism is “the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes”. Political, economic and social equality cannot exist as long as women are forced into motherhood (noteably, it also can’t exist as long as women are punished for motherhood). Either way, being forced to serve as an incubator (or being prevented from reproducing) is inherently contrary to the notion of equality.

  12. And even if you do think that a fetus is the moral equivalent to, say, me, with all of the exact same rights that entails, outlawing abortion still wouldn’t wash. Even I do not have the right to utilize another person’s organs and biological processes to sustain my own life without their explicit consent, even if that person is related to me, even if I was going to die without it. To grant such powers to the fetus would elevate it above humans in legal status, not make it equal.

  13. mythago – in the original post it says that FFL opposes birth control pills. Opposing contraception could be “feminist” (in an unorthodox way) if one considered it equally wrong for men and women.

    Jill – I assume you’re the one who wrote the original post, so thank you for posing such a provocative and fascinating question.
    “I have to wonder if anyone really, truly believes that a fertilized egg is literally the moral equivalent of a two-year-old child.”
    The National Association for the Advancement of Preborn Children filed a lawsuit against California’s stem cell research policy because embryos should fall under the 14th amend. equal protection clause. So yes. Pro-life people believe that it is not ok to draw a line and say, you can take someone’s life because they are at x stage in development (hence the Terri Schiavo controversy). A fertilized egg/fetus does have unique genetic material from its parents, so they consider it a separate life. In wikipedia’s section on abortion law, early 19th century Americans believed that fetal life began at quickening (first trimester). Today, others draw the line at viability (third trimester).
    “What rape/incest exceptions demonstrate is that the abortion debate isn’t about fetal “life” and hasn’t really ever been: it’s about controlling women and our decisions.”
    Well, I will no doubt get a lot of crap for this, but I do believe in rape/incest/maternal health exceptions and not because I’m judgmental and moralistic. In my opinion, the reason and intention behind getting an abortion matter. An abortion to relieve the mother of physical/mental distress is different than an abortion because the mother wants a boy, not a girl. Just like going to war with a country because they attacked you is not equivalent to going to war with a country because you want their natural resources. The action may be the same, but if the intention is more “noble”, if you will, then my opinion changes. That is why I am opposed to war, abortion and capital punishment (all life-taking phenonema) except in extreme circumstances. Because no matter how morally odious I believe taking life to be – I am not an absolutist. And thank goodness I am not the policymaker who has to decide when circumstances are extreme.
    “How do you pick which life to end?”
    It is a terrible question to ponder, but that is why I support a woman’s right to have an abortion at any stage in her pregnancy if she was at risk for disability/death.
    “Further, if life starts at conception then we’ve got a real problem with miscarriage rates.”
    Actually, I have known women who have had early trimester miscarriages that have been taxing on their mental/emotional health. And I think that psychologically, losing a two year old child is more tragic than a miscarriage because it is likely the mother would have an emotional bond with the child, unlike a fetus she might not have even been aware of.
    “Read, for example, St. Augustine — abortion is a punishable offense only for the sexual nature of the sin.”
    Personally, I formed my own opinion on abortion (and suspect other people have done the same) independent of the teachings of early church founders, and my opinions have nothing to do with punishing a “bad” woman.
    “Political, economic and social equality cannot exist as long as women are forced into motherhood”
    I guess that is why FFL supports making motherhood as comfortable as possible, and most pro-lifers say “adoption not abortion”, although I’m willing to guess that plenty of them have never adopted kids.
    I will conclude this by saying that I find it virtually impossible to argue precedents when it comes to abortion because pregnancy is truly a unique circumstance. There is no other situation where a person exists within another person. In my opinion, abortion is not comparable to murder for the intention is not normally a violent one, but it is not comparable to simple surgery, because another life is involved. That is why I am neither pro-choice nor pro-life.

  14. I have to wonder if anyone really, truly believes that a fertilized egg is literally the moral equivalent of a two-year-old child.

    Jill, you’re oversimplifying a bit. I said “moral agent”, not “the moral equivalent of a two year old”. Many vegetarians believe that animals possess moral agency but still maintain that they are not morally equivalent to human beings. Do you also reject the vegetarian claim as being incoherent?

    I wasn’t trying to argue for “pro-life feminism”. My point was that it’s reasonable enough to be included in the debate.

  15. Kate: Like Dan says, equal protection does not entail forcing a woman to carry a child to term. As long as the fetus is inside a woman’s body, it has no right to life. Just like i don’t have a right to someone else’s organs, no matter how much I may need them.

    David: I think you’ll find that Jill was responding to Kate there. It ain’t all about you…

    I think you may be the one oversimplifying things.

    Abortion is not the same as any other issue that the pro-lifers try to compare it to. It’s not the same as euthanasia. Not the same as vegetarianism. Not the same as killing children.

  16. Amanda – The pro-choice and pro-life viewpoints are basically incompatible. Because the pro-life one reads something like this: that from the moment of conception, a fetus is alive. To them, a fetus is a person, a person that falls under the equal protection clause and therefore deserves the same protection from death/murder as an adult. The location of the fetus is irrelevant, the fact that it is alive is. And I think I have stated repeatedly that I don’t necessarily agree with pro-lifers, I am not defending their viewpoint I am trying to explain it. I don’t think that abortion is murder. But I do not think it is surgery either.

  17. I honestly don’t think you can be pro-life (in the anti-choice mode) and be feminist.

    You can be morally opposed to abortion and still be feminist, but the moment you step over the line into banning or making abortion illegal is the moment you step over the line of not being a feminist, because you are constraining the rights of women to make reproductive choices, and that right is pretty much one the central tenant of feminism, regardless of the type of feminism you subscribe to.

    As to birth control, again, if you are morally opposed to birth control yet wouldn’t deny access or subsidising to it, then you’re definitely feminist. But, again, the moment you step over the line of banning it or restricting access, then you aren’t feminist.

    I also don’t think you can be for banning birth control for BOTH men and women and call yourself a feminist. That’s because one has to notice that the consequences for unprotected heterosexual sex in our culture are considerably larger for women than they are for men. This isn’t saying that men shouldn’t step up to the plate and be equal parents and be something we should be working towards, but rather acknowledging the realities of the culture we live in. Advocating the banning of something that lessens the inequities in that regard for women isn’t a feminist thing either.

  18. The location of the fetus is irrelevant

    I’ve got a huge problem with that. Not only is it insulting (the woman is essentially nothing), it’s nonsensical. The location of the fetus is practically the most important factor in the situation! The fact that they try to dismiss it outright shows how out of touch with reality so many anti-choicers are.

  19. The action may be the same, but if the intention is more “noble”, if you will, then my opinion changes. That is why I am opposed to war, abortion and capital punishment (all life-taking phenonema) except in extreme circumstances. Because no matter how morally odious I believe taking life to be – I am not an absolutist. And thank goodness I am not the policymaker who has to decide when circumstances are extreme.

    Kate–I highly, highly, highly recommend going to BitchPhD’s website and reading her essay “Do You Trust Women?”. It’s addressing exactly what you wrote about above. It might expand your view of this a little–I know it did for me. Basically, she argues that being pro-life is to say that your judgement is better about any woman’s situation than her own judgement is about her own life. Okay, I can accept that your opinion changes; that you think some abortions are justified and some are not. None of that is, in and of itself, anti-feminist. But the moment that you start to argue that abortion should be illegal, then you are moving into an anti-feminist stance: saying that someone else is the better judge of whether a woman is “justified” in getting an abortion.

    Who draws the line? How do they draw it? If you think you aren’t qualified enough to decide that line, why would anybody else be qualified? That, for me, is the heart of the pro-choice position: regardless of how I personally feel about abortion, I don’t believe that anyone else’s judgement about whether an abortion is justified can be substituted in for the person whose body, and life, are most affected by it.

    You say that you are neither pro-life or pro-choice. But to some degree, it’s not really an issue that you can sit on the fence about. You either believe that abortion should be criminalized, or you don’t. Being pro-choice doesn’t necessarily mean marching in the streets or being a clinic escort. It simply means believing abortion should not be criminalized.

    Anyway, not trying to flame you. I just think you would find the link above really, really interesting, as it speaks to some of the things that you’re talking about.

  22. Sarah – Pro-life people don’t see abortion as a reproductive choice.

    Anne – I’m nowhere near defending the fringe right-wingers who are suing California.

    AB – to a certain extent, what are any laws, except enforcements of moral judgment? I don’t think it’s ok to kill people except in cases of self-defense or a war situation; therefore, am I “not trusting” people to make their own moral decisions about murder, when many of them would obviously come to different conclusions than I have? Or should I instead say “well, that’s their decision not mine” and let them go on doing what they’re doing? (Btw, I chose murder as an example and not because I am comparing abortion to murder.) And no, I don’t always trust people – all people, men as well as women – to make sound moral decisions.
    I’m not pro-choice or pro-life because I don’t sit at either extreme and therefore those labels don’t apply to me. I don’t agree all abortions should be legal, but I don’t agree that all abortions should be illegal. NARAL would consider me somewhat “anti-choice” and NRLC would consider me rather “anti-life.”
    I’ll bite the bullet and recommend learning about the “other side”. I used to be 100% pro-choice but I listened to abortion debates, thought carefully and I’ve reconsidered my position since then. Here’s a link to a comprehensive summary of the abortion debate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_debate; and an ongoing debate between hardcore believers in both causes http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/discussion_list.asp?boardID=452. Take your time to look at them with an open mind. You might not change your mind, but you might be surprised.

  23. PS. By moral decisions, I mean big things – So don’t accuse me of anything just yet.
    Laws are a form of moral judgment. The existing ones imply that murder, theft and rape, to name a few, are wrong. That is why they are illegal. If they were all legal and people were left to come to their own conclusions, I wouldn’t trust people to always come to the right ones (not to murder, rape or steal). So someone has to decide where to draw the line, but the line should be drawn.

  24. Kate –

    I’ve listened to the other side, quite a bit, and honestly, while I certainly respect their beliefs, the moment it stops being about their bodies and starts being about mine, then they are going too far. I’ve sat down and read their arguments, and looked at their evidence, but not much stood up to rational inquiry. But then I actually think abortion is a good thing, so I’m probably not their target audience

    And honestly, I don’t care if they believe or don’t believe it’s reproductive choice; it is constraining and banning what a woman can or can’t do with her reproduction and body, hence: not feminist.

  25. Kate: The pro-choice and pro-life viewpoints are basically incompatible. Because the pro-life one reads something like this: that from the moment of conception, a fetus is alive.

    They are not incompatible at all. I recommend that you refrain from telling anyone reading this blog that they should “examine” the issue in more depth. I think you are the one who is not really grasping what pro-choice means.

    I believe that the fetus is alive from the moment of conception, and that it is human. I also believe that it has no right to be free from interference from others, because by definition it can’t be. The embryo becomes the fetus becomes the baby only because the woman nourishes and grows it within her body.

    If she chooses not to do that then yes, the fetus dies, but people die all the time because they can’t get organ transplants etc. They have no right to take organs from an unwilling person, just as the fetus has no right to take its life-giving nourishment from an unwilling person.

    A woman gives an enormous amount of herself to bring a baby into the world, and no government, no self-righteous majority, has the right to make her do it against her will.

  26. Kate–I think the thing that struck me about your original post (the one I was quoting) was that you explicitly said “thank goodness I am not the policymaker who has to decide when circumstances are extreme.” Which I took to mean that you, personally, recognize the difficulty in judging whether women are “justified” or not in having abortions, given complex situations.

    So, what I’m confused about, is if you don’t see yourself as being able to “decide when circumstances are extreme”–that is, when women would be justified–who is? What makes legislators any more qualified to decide when circumstances are “extreme” enough?

    That’s a major difference between abortion and, say, murder (as you brought up). I don’t have any problem defining when killing another person is OK and when it isn’t–and you probably don’t either. Our definitions don’t even have to match: I might say self-defense and assisted suicide. You might think assisted suicide is never justifiable. But we both would agree that there is a line, and it can be found, though we might disagree where it is. Same with pretty much every other law you mention.

    To not like abortion, or to feel that it is used in situations that are not justified and that is a tragedy–I wouldn’t call any of that anti-feminist. But to recognize that judging is difficult–too difficult to even try to do ourself–and to say that despite that, someone has to decide for pregnant women, is infantilizing women. It just can’t be feminist. (You and I could probably go back-and-forth all day about whether it is “moral” or “right” or whatever. But I honestly don’t think you can argue that it is feminist.)

    Reading back over what I wrote yesterday, I realized that it came off as kind of condescending. I’m sorry about that–I just wanted to link to that article because it was probably the first really original piece I had read on abortion in many years, that completely reframed the way I thought about it, and touched on the heart of what my response to you was trying to get at.

    I will take a look at those places you linked to, however. I’ve never been one to turn down more reading–it’s kind of a sickness. 🙂

  27. Sarah – that’s fair. You’ve come to your own conclusions and your own moral decision and I respect you for that.

    Amanda – “I recommend that you refrain from telling anyone reading this blog that they should “examine” the issue in more depth. I think you are the one who is not really grasping what pro-choice means.”
    I was raised in a family that is solidly pro-choice and thus their moral beliefs about abortion were ingrained in me from the start. So I do understand the pro-choice viewpoint – I held it for many years. Perhaps I’m not arguing the pro-life position with enough passion, because I don’t believe in it and I strongly disagree with it. However, it’s made me reconsider my views and my somewhat pro-choice views (I believe abortion is a moral decision under some extreme circumstances) are much stronger because of it.
    “I believe that the fetus is alive from the moment of conception, and that it is human. I also believe that it has no right to be free from interference from others, because by definition it can’t be.”
    That’s the difference there, actually. Pro-lifers believe the fetus is alive and has an inalienable right to life. Pro-choicers have varying degrees of opinions on the “alive” issue but tend not to believe that the fetus has a right to life.
    Out of curiosity, what do you think about post-viability abortions? When the fetus is no longer dependent on the mother for life support?
    According to the Pew Forum survey (http://pewforum.org/publications/surveys/green-full.pdf), 15% of people believe abortion should always be illegal and 35% believe it should always be legal. I am with the 50% that does not take an absolutist position.

  28. My opinion on post-viability abortions is similar. I respect women enough to trust them to make the decision.

    I’ve never met a woman who stays pregnant just to have a late-term abortion. If she’s considering one at that stage then it’s going to be for serious reasons. If she’d wanted an abortion because she didn’t want to be pregnant, she’d have had it earlier when it was cheaper, easier to access, and

    Since we’re comparing childhoods, I grew up in an anti-choice family. So I too am aware of both sides. This makes my arguments no more valid, and it makes no difference to yours either. I think everyone here knows a great deal about both sides.

    Feminism is about respecting women’s autonomy. Pro-lifers think the government is better at making decisions for women. The two are incompatible.

    None of the arguments you’ve put forward show that being pro-life = being feminist. You’re saying that women are incapable of understanding these concepts and that someone else should make the decision on their behalf.

    The abortion debate is philosophically interesting and both sides make good points. Feminism says that women should be allowed to decide for themselves which arguments are most convincing.

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  30. AB – “But to recognize that judging is difficult–too difficult to even try to do ourself–and to say that despite that, someone has to decide for pregnant women, is infantilizing women.”
    That syllogism isn’t working for me. Do I infantilize all people if I do not trust them to come to their own moral conclusions about murder? (I suppose you could argue that all laws infantilize people to a certain degree, but that’s a whole other debate.) Btw, I made that comment about being the policymaker because I am relatively uneducated and I don’t have a background in law, medicine, bioethics or criminal justice.
    “To not like abortion, or to feel that it is used in situations that are not justified and that is a tragedy–I wouldn’t call any of that anti-feminist.”
    For people who strongly believe that unborn children deserve human rights, saying “I oppose abortion but I don’t care if other people do it” is the same as “I oppose bombing abortion clinics but I don’t care if other people do it.” (Paraphrased from James Hunter’s “Culture Wars”)
    Amanda – “None of the arguments you’ve put forward show that being pro-life = being feminist. You’re saying that women are incapable of understanding these concepts and that someone else should make the decision on their behalf.”
    Please don’t accuse me of being a misogynist. What I said was that in cases of criminal law, the government doesn’t trust PEOPLE (sorry, I can’t get the italics to work) – men AND women – to make their own decisions about murder/rape/theft/arson, etc. Some people believe that abortion is a violent felony and should be criminalized.
    I didn’t say that pro-life=feminist. One can be feminist and not pro-life; one can be pro-life and not feminist. I’ve just said that under some conditions, a feminist can be pro-life. Since feminism means a belief in the social, political, economic equality of men and women, theoretically a pro-life feminist would extend those rights to unborn men/women. She would probably be vehemently opposed to sex-selective abortions that mostly affect female fetuses. And as for the birth control debate, she would also have to support measures that would make men equally responsible for unplanned pregnancies and children.
    I don’t think we’ll convince each other any time soon. I’ve never been one to presume that my point of view is the only right point of view. Maybe we should “agree to disagree” for now.

  31. Some people believe that abortion is a violent felony and should be criminalized.

    And this makes them feminists how?

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