In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

This is what Anti-Choice Looks Like

Jill

The anti-choice mentality is about more than just restricting abortion — it’s about a broader mentality that does not believe women should have a right to make their own reproductive decisions. It’s about thinking that the state should be permitted to exercise control over whether or not women give birth. And as that mentality continues to rear its ugly head here through the latest Supreme Court decision and strings of anti-abortion-rights and anti-contraception measures proposed in individual states, it’s in full force in China, where women are forcibly sterilized, put on long-term birth control, and forced or coerced into terminating pregnancies:

A 2003 document from the Guangdong Province reveals that officials there were told their salaries would be cut in half within about a month if they did not sterilize 1,369 women, fit an additional 818 with IUDs and ensure that 163 abortions were carried out. Like some U.S. politicians, the Chinese have made taking choice away from women a career objective.

What’s too often left out of the abortion debate is that choice goes both ways. A government that has the right to force you to give birth also has the right to force you to terminate your pregnancy, or to forcibly ensure that you never get pregnant in the first place. When anti-choicers promote forced pregnancy, they stand in solidarity with the anti-choice regime in China. All of them believe in restricting women’s most basic rights, and allowing the state to decide what women to with their wombs.

Forcing a woman who doesn’t want to have an abortion for whatever reason — be it that she really wants to have a child or that she doesn’t believe that doing so would be right based on religious reasons — is just another way to subvert her autonomy and rob her of her dignity.

All those who would stand against China’s cruel policy while supporting the U.S. Supreme Court’s upholding of an abortion ban should realize the inherent contradiction in their thinking.

Word.

13 thoughts on This is what Anti-Choice Looks Like

  1. Don’t forget about the policies of the Nazis – forced abortions for the undesirables, and forced pregnancy for the master race. Both are results of the desire to control.

  2. micheyd, I usually say that in response to “The Nazis tried exterminate the Jewish race, just like abortion/the pro-choice movement is out to eradicate all unwanted unborn! GENOCIDE!” nonsense. And, of course, they ignore it.

  3. Thanks for this. Someone posted about the NPR segment on forced abortion in China on a feminist list, and the immediate response was that the timing of the segment was unfortunate considering the recent supreme court decision on partial birth abortion (ugh, how I hate that misleading phrase!). No attempts to move beyond the issue of abortion in the US to broader issues of reproductive justice. Or to think about the issues faced by Chinese women outside of their relationship to women in the US.

  5. Yeah, the default response to “What do you think is going to happen a few decades (if that) down the line when the government decides to revisit the Eugenics Policies of Christmas Past, only now with lots and lots of legal precedent explicitly stating that they have the right to dictate the whens and wheres of reproduction?” is “Nuh-uh! This only applies to voluntary abortion!”

  6. Well, yeah, Laser Potato…they have to portray *us* as the authoritarians (all this “you’re ‘pro-abortion'” nonsense) or else people will realize that’s what they are themselves.

  7. well teh USSR also had womb police, as a sort of mildly advanced form of how the nazis would lock up women who used contraceptives, pretty much because the distinction betwee stalinism and national socialism is very very thin – everyone is owned by the state, and we’ll look after you as long as you do what the state expects you to do.

    nationalism to that extreme end always takes up teh cause of wombs being owned in common by the entirety of the state. Whether communist or corporatist, if you’re a nationalist then the universal ownership of personal uteruses kinda goes with the whole guacomole.

  8. This is my question. Kennedy said that abortions had to be restricted to protect the women who would regret them. I’ve had an abortion, with no regret and know women who’ve given children up for adoption, with a lot of regret. So when is the government going to outlaw adoptions, since they seem to cause more regret than abortions?

  9. Or, indeed, when are we going to be banned from making any kind of important decision about our own lives, just in case we regret it?

  10. It is an interesting question, is there a time when public action must take precedence over personal convictions with regards to reproduction. If there was serious threat of humanity dying out, as impossible as it seems, would legal bans on abortions be morally justified? If we were so numerous that the Earth was overburdened and dying, much more possible, would restrictions on reproductive rights be morally justified? If the fetus were actually a human being, what rights would it possess?

    Maybe I am idealistic, but I truly believe that some Pro-Lifers are honestly just that. I also believe that the rhetoric on both sides of the issue has become so vehement that rational discourse on the subject becomes impossible. Each issue, from partial birth abortions to Terri Schiavo, becomes a penultimate struggle against the perfidy and immorality of the opposing side. In this atmosphere considering the opposing point of view is treachery and compromise becomes capitulation. On behalf of those Pro-Lifers wondering about fetuses, sure about what Pro-Life means about health care, child support and militarism, and trying to understand that Pro-Life sometimes means death with dignity, I ask for rational and considered discussion, and for time to decide.

  11. When anti-choicers promote forced pregnancy, they stand in solidarity with the anti-choice regime in China. All of them believe in restricting women’s most basic rights, and allowing the state to decide what women to with their wombs.

    That is far too subtle for a great many antis to figure out.

  12. The Right to Lifers do not view this as a restriction of women’s rights. They plainly would dismiss this argument because to them it’s all about the life of the unborn. They don’t for a minute think beyond the life of the unborn. The rights of women, the bodies of women, the lives of women [in fact] have little meaning. One could just as surely argue that the Right to Lifers care more for the unborn than the born…but that’s a different argument.

  13. Not all of them care about the unborn either. A few years ago, in the UK (I followed it through print and TV media, so I don’t have links; sorry) a woman ended up with a massively multiple pregnancy – octuplets – after fertility treatment. All the doctors said that if she tried to carry all eight to term then all eight would die, whereas if she aborted some of them, the rest would have a chance.

    The “pro-life” crowd (I don’t know if this is the case in the US, but over here, “Pro-Life” is also the name of a specific organisation) got involved, saying that she’d be a slutbitchwhore for aborting any of them. And doing their best to whip up a big media frenzy about it. Thing is, not all of them doubted the doctors’ prognosis – they just thought it would start a “slippery slope” to abort any of them (I don’t know why they thought this since abortions are legal here, but…) – and essentially that it was best to let all eight die rather than abort any.

    In the end, she tried to carry all eight. All eight died. The “pro-lifers” thought that was sad, but still considered a victory.

    This was the point where I decided that the term “pro-life” was an active lie.

Comments are currently closed.