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The Cost of “Pro-Life” Policies: 27 Nigerian Women Every Day; 10,000 Nigerian Women Every Year

Jill

This is what happens when “pro-life” policies dominate.

In Nigeria abortion is illegal unless the life of the woman would be at risk if she were to give birth.

But the Guttmacher Institute estimates that more than 456,000 unsafe abortions are done in Nigeria every year.

Some women go to traditional healers to terminate their pregnancies.

Methods include trying to break the amniotic sack inside the womb with a sharp stick. This causes infection and in extreme cases the tissue inside the body can start to die.

“They’re pulling out intestines,” says gynaecologist Dr Ejike Oji, of Ipas, an international organisation working to secure reproductive rights for women.

Another method is to pump a toxic mixture of fiercely hot Alligator chilli peppers and chemicals like alum into their bodies.

“The women go into toxic shock and die,” Dr Oji said.

27 women every day. 10,000 women every year. And that’s in Nigeria alone.

Thank a pro-lifer today.

Thanks to Susan for the link.

54 thoughts on The Cost of “Pro-Life” Policies: 27 Nigerian Women Every Day; 10,000 Nigerian Women Every Year

  1. Come on, Jill, you’re not being very fair. The pro-life policies are probably only responsible for something like 99% of those women’s deaths.

  4. Sorry, that was incomplete. The proper pro-lifer response to this post is that women who die in childbirth get to go to heaven for not killing womb babies, but women who die from back-alley abortions still go to hell. Simple, really! Hope that clears things up.

  5. But, but, what about the 27 BABIES every day??? It’s because of these pro-life laws that killed their mothers that the unborn children get to live, and saving babies’ lives is what it’s all about!

    Oh, on second thought, that makes absolutely no sense. Hmm. Since the “babies” aren’t being spared their lives either, it seems that maybe the people behind these laws don’t actually give a shit about “babies” at all. Sure didn’t see that one coming!

  6. The real knee-slapper in all of this is the self-same people who would trumpet this as being good and making sense would probably go on about what a bunch of backward, godless heathens the Nigerians really are, which is why we must continue to send colonizers missionaries over there to teach them the true path- after all only the south is really dominated by Christianity- so many souls to save!

  7. I will be the first one to admit that pro-life policies are generally counterproductive. If one really wishes to reduce abortion (and has a brain), the first step is comprehensive sex education and widely available contraception.

    I know I’m preaching to the choir. But it breaks my heart when people equate “pro-life” to fundamentalism and ignorance.

    Yes, women HAVE to be the masters of their own bodies. Yes, protecting ourselves and taking control is important.

    But this is not the debate. The debate lies in whether or not the fetus is a human life. If the unborn don’t meet whatever standards qualify any of us as human, than go for it. Get yourself out of that situation.

    But if it does… If that living “cell mass” of human DNA and physiology does qualify as a human life, it is not a choice. We do not have the choice to end another’s life for our convenience, no matter what the toll on our own person (short of death) may be. (I know… these women ARE dying, but there are ways to prevent this besides safer abortions.) Saving lives trumps preventing nine months of discomfort.

    I hear your pro-choice arguements and from the bottom of my heart I sympathize with women in unfortunate situations. But I am pro-life, which means anti-war, anti-death penalty, and anti-abortion.

    The issue of abortion is obviously one which will erupt sooner or later for one side or the other. A tip to possibly catalyze a resolution: For pro-lifers, the issue is the child. Address this. Perhaps we should focus more on doing everything in our power to reduce the “need” for abortion than glorifying it as another milestone for women’s rights. Women deserve better.

    P.S. I appologize that this isn’t quite a response to the situation in Nigeria. I’m sure we can both agree that drastic preventative measure must be taken immediately in such countries.

    It was the “thank a pro-lifer” comment that I wish you would reconsider. “Thank a fundamentalists” would have been more appropriate.

  8. Um… as a Nigerian, I’ve seen examples of women performing unsafe abortions, a couple of those even caused problems back when I was in school.
    But I have to agree with the first commenter, Dennis. To be honest, I never even KNEW abortions were illegal (go figure). Many people don’t. It’s not so much the law but the fear of being found in an unsavory situation of being young, in school and with a child. Having a child outside wedlock is frowned upon immensely here, old-fashioned men tend to avoid a girl with such baggage and few people are very sympathetic. Most times, girls do it with traditional doctors or quacks because its cheap, and they don’t want to ask anyone they know for a lot of money. They also do it there because their secrecy is guaranteed.

    Agreed, it’s stupid and it almost always ends in fatalities, but that’s how willing some people are to avoid the label of promiscuity/immoral. Many girls have been disowned/severely punished by their parents for such.

    We live in a society of moral high-handedness and hypocrisy, where everyone feels they have a right to judge someone that’s made a mistake, whereas they evil they get up to in their own homes is hidden from the public view. It’s a vicious cycle, and frankly, the battle to be fought here is not so much the issue of pro-life, but the simultaneous moral/heartless standards we impose on ourselves.

  9. Jessi – at its heart, the debate about abortion does not lie in whether or not a fetus is human life (based on the issue of species it is, but so is a brainless parasitic twin), although I can appreciate that for some individuals that is personally relevant. More relevant is the question of personhood of the fetus, but even that’s not enough to settle the matter.

    The question that’s really at the heart of the issue is: does the fetus’s right to life (to whatever extent it may have one) trump the mother’s right to her own body?

    If it does, as you assert, then fetuses have special rights beyond what any born individual has – unless you also believe in forced organ donation. Legally in the US, and morally in many people’s POVs, born individuals do not have the right to force someone else to submit their body to anything like as extreme as pregnancy, even if that’s their only hope of survival.

    Saving lives trumps preventing nine months of discomfort.

    Personally, I feel it is belittling to the troubles many pregnant women face to dismiss pregnancy as merely “nine months of discomfort” – and that includes not just women with unwanted pregnancies they can’t terminate, but women with much-wished-for pregnancies that go tragically wrong. Some women choose to risk their health, jobs, or lives to bring a child into this world. To dismiss this as nine months of discomfort is frankly disrespectful of their choice.

    All that said, I’m glad that you seem to agree with the general pro-choice stance that we should be working to reduce the need for abortions – too many loud pro-life groups seem to be working hard to increase the need.

  10. The debate lies in whether or not the fetus is a human life.

    No, it doesn’t. It lies in whether or not the woman is a human life.

    If she’s property or just a walking womb, it doesn’t matter what she wants or thinks.

    I am fully on-board with the fetus being a human life. The problem is that the fetus needs extraordinary measures to come to term, and it relies on its mother for that.

    When a woman willingly sacrifices (and pregnancy is sacrifice, it’s not a simple 9 month inconvenience) it’s a wonderful thing. I don’t think women really get enough credit for bringing children to term.

    But to force someone to carry a pregnancy against her will is evil. No other human is allowed to force someone to donate their organs or even a pint of blood against his/her will. This really is a situation of special rights.

    I trust women to know what is best for themselves and their families (b/c many who have abortions already have children). You may be personally opposed to the practice, so don’t have an abortion. You may work toward limiting abortions–>and the only thing that works is real sex education, cheap or free contraception, cheap yet good daycare, and the sorts of things that make having a child workable. Simply making abortions illegal onlyincreases their number.

    People who want to limit abortion rights don’t trust women to know what is best. They don’t care to understand all the different and very individual reason why a woman may want to abort. They simply want to punish women for being sluts or for not wanting to be “inconvenienced” (!) by a pregnancy and child.

    It’s fine for someone to believe it’s a sin. It’s horrid when theology becomes law.

  12. The debate lies in whether or not the fetus is a human life.

    Geraldine Ferraro became pro-choice after prosecuting child abuse cases in New York. Why? Because she couldn’t be sure that a fetus feels pain, but she was absolutely sure that a two-year-old girl whose mother had doused her in boiling water did.

    It’s interesting that you spend a lot of time worrying about whether or not the fetus is a human life and no time at all worrying about the human life that already exists — that of the mother. The pregnant woman must be removed from the equation entirely so you can focus on the “human life” of the fetus, because otherwise you’d have to admit that there are competing interests when you have two entities sharing the same body, one of which can’t survive without the blood and food supply provided by the other body.

  13. As important as the legal right to abortion is, I think it’s also important to take into account the issues that these women face in addition to the legal obstacles to getting an abortion. Even if abortions were legal, they would still be expensive and can only be done by someone with medical knowledge – and who is to guarantee that a service like that will be available to these women? The article notably mentions that only 12 women were willing to speak to them about this topic, and of those 12 5 opposed the legalization of abortion because it would tear at the moral fabric of society. Some of the women said their boyfriends refused to use contraception with them.

    Just because abortion rights are the most contentious issue in American white feminist discourse doesn’t mean they are the principle obstacle faced by women in Nigeria who have trouble getting access to reproductive healthcare. The idea that culture wars have to take place over the territory of women’s bodies manifests itself in different ways and women in Nigeria appearing to be suffering on numerous, numerous fronts. Let’s be careful not to place too much faith in a legal system and a government – especially in a place like Nigeria where ‘rule of law’ doesn’t look the same as it does in the U.S.

    Not that I think pro-life policies aren’t hurting – clearly they arise from the same idea, that women are bound to act in a way that the patriarchy deems appropriate. I just don’t want us to be too quick to appropriate these women’s suffering into our own debate over Roe v. Wade without attempting to understand the complexity of the situation.

  14. If that living “cell mass” of human DNA and physiology does qualify as a human life, it is not a choice.

    Jessi: You seem like a nice, thoughtful person who is trying to do the right thing. However, I don’t think you’ve thought this through very well yet.

    First, an embryo (weeks 2-8 of gestation) does not have human physiology yet. It does not have all organs formed and is radically different from a baby in both the form and the function of those organs that are forming/present. Most (I think around 55%) abortions take place in the first 8 weeks. I would be happy to see that number go higher–say to 90% and 99.9% of purely elective abortions.

    The nidus of all the major organs are formed after the first 8 weeks, but most organs are still nonfunctional or semi-functional, including, most significantly, the brain. It isn’t until the third trimester that the nervous system is developed enough to control bodily functions and conscious thought may not even occur until after birth.

    Second, suppose that’s not what’s important. What if DNA is enough and therefore every fertilized egg is a living person. Then abortion should be the least of our concerns. Most (50-80%) conceptions end in spontaneous miscarriages before or shortly after implantation. That is a much larger public health problem than abortion. Analogously, suppose 10% of babies died by infanticide. Bad, huh? But suppose at the same time more than half died of natural causes. You’d be interested in ridding the world of the diseases that caused the “natural” deaths, wouldn’t you, no matter how appalled you might be by the infanticide cases? I have never seen a pro-life organization give even lip service to the need to find ways to reduce miscarriage rates. So I would suggest that you should be very careful about which pro-life groups you give money or time to, to make sure that they are not doing things that you might in fact strongly disapprove of.

    I hope this doesn’t sound snide, because I don’t mean it to be, but I think you might do well to study fetal development more. It might help you clarify your opinions on this issue further. Plus it’s actually very interesting once you get the vocabulary down and are no longer intimidated by words like “blastocyst.” (Speaking from experience…)

  15. Just to add my two cents about the “inconvenience” of pregnancy. I had an “easy” “normal” pregnancy. For the first three months, I could not drive because I had vertigo every day. My doctor assured me that that is a very common side effect of early pregnancy. Fortunately, I was writing a dissertation at the time, and could work from home and had a husband who could support me. What if I had to work at that time? What if I had younger children to care for? Even a wanted, normal pregnancy can be very invasive. There are some people who don’t have incapacitating side effects and love being pregnant (I felt that way in my second and third trimesters myself), but they are in the minority. Most people get really sick – nothing serious, perfectly normal – for at least three months. It’s not trivial.

  16. Neko Onna – that is scarily 100% accurate.

    _____

    pro-lifers, the issue is the child. Address this.

    That is absolutely not true. As we have seen a million times over, they couldn’t care less about the child. Or women.

    As evidenced, by this:

    “Saving lives trumps preventing nine months of discomfort. ”

    To frame the issue in this manner is to imply that women seeking or considering abortions are doing so for their own convenience. That’s a pernicious meme, but a false one. It also belittles, diminishes and erases the very serious toil both pregnancy and this decision takes on the one making it.

    That’s not pro-life, that’s simply anti-woman with a pretty excuse.

    We do not have the choice to end another’s life for our convenience, no matter what the toll on our own person (short of death) may be.

    So, if someone needs an organ, and you are their only available match you have to give it on demand, right? Afterall, no matter what the toll on your body, you don’t have the choice to kill this person by denying them the organ they need to survive, right?

  17. Onyeka: So legalizing abortion in Nigeria, while a necessary first step, isn’t going to be enough. An active campaign encouraging women and girls who are pregnant and want an abortion to go to doctors instead of traditional healers or quacks, with guarantees of anonymity if they do, is needed as well to make a significant dent in the number of women who die from unsafe abortions. Some form of medical assistance, whether universal health care or something simpler like assistance for women in need of pregnancy care, whether that care is terminating the pregnancy or monitoring to make sure it comes to term healthily, is clearly also needed or women will avoid doctors because of the cost. Sigh. Not going to be easy, but it’s a good reality check for us spoiled “first worlders” that just legalizing abortion doesn’t make everything simple. (Not that that’s true in the US either…ask anyone in the midwest or south.)

  18. The debate lies in whether or not the fetus is a human life. If the unborn don’t meet whatever standards qualify any of us as human, than go for it. Get yourself out of that situation.

    A human fetus that has grown from fertilized human ovum (via human ova and sperm) is human. And if it hasn’t spontaneously died in utero it is alive.

    However it is irrelevant if it is human and living. Who cares if it has human DNA.

    Every cell in my body has human DNA, does that make each one a person?

    What you are confusing is human-ness with personhood. Personhood is conferred upon birth. Otherwise we would have certificates of conception and perhaps even debates of citizenship for zygotes – fertilized in the US or elsewhere????

    Saving lives trumps preventing nine months of discomfort.

    Thank you for flippantly disregarding the hell my body has been through these past seven months. Minor discomfort – pray tell, have you ever been pregnant – or even better yet, been pregnant and suffered many health issues because of it?

    For pro-lifers, the issue is the child. Address this.

    AKA: “pro-lifers” have decided that a fertilized egg/a zygote/a fetus is a child. A Person. All else who refuse to view the products of conception as equally such are not “addressing” the issue. For them it is all about the z/e/f – the woman be just an incubator. Ask them to see a z/e/f as anything OTHER than a child is inconceivable.

    Perhaps we should focus more on doing everything in our power to reduce the “need” for abortion than glorifying it as another milestone for women’s rights. Women deserve better.

    Even with all the sex-ed in the world, pledges of abstinance and good intentions abortions will STILL be demanded from women who find themselves pregnant when they DO NOT WANT TO BE.

    And it is a milestone for womens rights – to be able to have control over one’s own body and decide for herself if a pregnancy/motherhood is in her best interest or not. Spare me the “women deserve better” line of crap. Women deserve safe legal medical care upon demand – denying them that isn’t doing women any favors.

  19. I want to readdress the “pregnancy is simply an inconvenience” meme again, b/c it’s so evil.

    Talk about not caring about the child! Women who have abortions aren’t just trying to avoid being pregnant (although slut-shaming makes being pregnant in anything other than the perfect setup an ordeal). Women who have abortions are trying to avoid the child that comes after the pregnancy.

    Perhaps they can’t afford another. Perhaps they already have a sick child and choose to devote themselves to the one that is already living. There’s a gajillion reasons that pass the “inconvenience” test, and nearly all of them come from reflecting on what having a child with this specific partner in these particular circumstances means.

    If anyone is not thinking about the child, it’s the “pro-lifers” who do nothing to make it easier to have a child (that would be helping welfare moms! ZOMG!)

    And then there’s the adoption nonsense. Maybe, if you have a perfectly healthy white baby, you might place it with a loving couple that will give it a great life. But if you’re not melanin-challenged, that baby will probably sit in social services. And if that white baby is born handicapped? Too bad, so sad.

    Not to mention it’s kinda evil to force someone who didn’t want to be pregnant in the first place to give up her child for the benefit of others. It’s not anyone else’s right to force others to procreate for them. Make no mistake, a lot of the hand-wringing about abortion is to put more white babies in the system.

    If our society weren’t so intent on punishing women who become pregnant in the “wrong” conditions, we wouldn’t have as many abortions. If we were really concerned about teh baybeez, we’d make them a priority after they were born.

  20. Hi, I’m a mother with two biological children and two stepchildren that my husband and I raise, and for the sake of the children I have, I would *need* to have an abortion should I get pregnant.

    See, my two pregnancies did significant damage to my body. I just went in for surgery to have that damage repaired, but now I am a cyborg and my body literally cannot endure a pregnancy anymore. It would kill me or hospitalize me for months. I also got my tubes tied, which makes a pregnancy very, very unlikely, but should I get pregnant anyway ( a very tiny chance), I owe it to the four children and one adult who are depending on me to kill any child living in my body so that I can continue to survive in good health and take care of my existing family.

    People don’t have the right to live on other people and feed from them without permission. In fact in fantasy such characters are called vampires and we stake them in the heart. The fact that a baby is innocent and did not choose to live does not change the fact that if the mother does not choose to let it live in her body and feed from her for nine months, she has no alternative but to kill it.

    You pro-lifers start working on Star Trek transporters and cryo-freeze for unborn children, so we can get the babies out of their mothers’ wombs without killing them, and artificial womb technology so they can be gestated without having to live off someone else, and we can start talking bout how the babies are people. Until then, YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO LIVE OFF SOMEONE ELSE WITHOUT PERMISSION. ANd no, having sex does not blanket grant permission any more than having a drink in mixed company blanket grants the men there the right to sex with you or getting in your car and driving blanket grants other people the right to hit your vehicle. CHoosing to be pregnant is what grants permission to be living in a pregnant woman’s body, nothing else.

  21. Hmm, Caren, I’m troubled by your logic because as soon as we say “it’s okay for women to have abortions because they don’t want the baby to exist”, it’s very, very easy to take that as “it’s okay for mothers or fathers to commit infanticide on born babies because they don’t want the babies to exist.” It gets back into whether a fetus has human rights or not. You don’t get to kill a human because you don’t want it to exist.

    But you do get to prevent a human from existing by controlling your own biology, which is where birth control comes in. And you do get to prevent a human from living inside your body. No human has the right to feed off another human against their will.

    If we did have Star Trek transporters and artificial wombs and it were possible to remove a baby from a mother’s womb more safely and painlessly than abortion is today, I would support getting rid of the right to abortion. Because to me, you really can’t make an argument based on who’s human; the slope is too slippery. You have to make an argument based on who has the right to feed on another human’s body. Once a baby is not feeding on a mother’s body, she does not have the right to kill it, and I think if you could take it out of her she probably wouldn’t have the right to kill it as long as the removing it was a viable option. (Obviously if it costs $20,000 to remove an embryo and $300 to abort it, abortion would still need to be legal; I am talking about a utopian thought experiment in which the gestation of a baby outside a mother’s womb is as easy and inexpensive as abortion is now.)

    If pregnancy is an inconvenience, then so is skin cancer, diabetes, and breaking your leg. How many people, male or female, would consent to have their leg broken (without anesthesia) so that another person they are related to but don’t know personally could live? It’s just not an inconvenience, it’s a potentially life-threatening health condition. A chosen sacrifice for the woman who wants to be pregnant, a horrific sentence of punishment far outweighing the crime for the woman who doesn’t want to be or cannot be pregnant. We don’t need to get into the birth control uses of abortion, because if a woman is allowed to kill a fetus because she doesn’t want it to exist, why is a man not allowed to kill a fetus because he doesn’t want it to exist? The difference is whose body it’s in, and that’s all of the difference, and that’s the only difference we need.

  22. Jessi, let’s say a child you don’t know, but who’s related to you, is dying and needs a bone marrow transplant. You’re compatible, and the only way to get the bone marrow out is to break your limbs.

    We can start with small transplants so they won’t be rejected. For the first three months, a fingerbone, maybe a bone in your hand, that’ll do. Then we’ll need more, so we’ve gotta break bigger bones to extract the marrow. We’ll do your arms, one a month for three months (you have only two arms but you have many bones in them), and then your big leg bones for three months. After we break a bone a month for nine months, the child will be fully healed. If you don’t do this for at *least* eight months, the child will surely die.

    But don’t worry! Your bones being broken is just an inconvenience. You’ll live through it, and probably most of those bones will heal back just as good as new! In the meantime you can get around on crutches or wear splints. People break bones all the time and they do just fine. Don’t you think you should do this to make sure that the poor child you don’t know lives?

    You agree? Great! We’ll start breaking your bones right away.

    You don’t? Well, I’m sorry, but it’s murder not to let a child live by allowing your bones to be broken, so we’ve passed a law forcing you to let us break your bones and take your bone marrow.

    You think this situation is different from abortion, because you didn’t choose for the child with the bone disorder to exist by having sex? Hmm. What could be different about these two situations… I know! One has sex in it and one doesn’t! Could an anti-abortion stance that is not pro-breaking-bones-for-strange-babies have more to do with punishing sex than saving babies?

  23. I did not mean to belittle pregnancy by the “nine months of discomfort” comment, and if that offended anyone, I sincerely appologize. Pregnancy can be grueling, torturous, and yes, very dangerous. “Forcing” pregnancy may seem evil, but not as evil as ending a human life.

    The legal limit for abortion is 24 weeks after conception. A child was born a while back at 21 weeks after conception. She survived.

    I am sorry for the trauma of the woman. And in all other instances of women’s rights, I am fervent and active; please don’t place me in a group based on your assumptions. BUT, LEGALLY, WE JUST SHOULDN’T KILL PEOPLE. It is NOT the same as forced organ donation, as one is passive neglect and the other is actively ending a life. If you honestly can’t tell the difference between not donating an organ and terminating a fetus, than I have no respect for any other arguement you might make.

  24. If you honestly can’t tell the difference between not donating an organ and terminating a fetus, than I have no respect for any other arguement you might make.

    Is leaving an infant on the side of the road, where it later perishes due to neglect, less of an offense than aborting a zygote? What if the embryo/zygote dies in a toilet or trash can rather than in utero?

  26. BUT, LEGALLY, WE JUST SHOULDN’T KILL PEOPLE

    And personhood is confirred upon birth. You may see a z/e/f as a person and you are 100% within your rights to view one as such. I disagree on your assessment of “z/e/f = child/person”

    But take this from a woman at 30 weeks, despite my feti’s DNA, human appearance and ability to feel it is not a person until it is born. And if for some god awful circumstance I feel my life and that of my family are threatened by my pregnancy – or that my feti is so malformed it will not live long upon birth, or will threaten our family’s existence post birth due to deformaty I WILL terminate. The lives of my family and I come FIRST before any potential child.

    And to address this:

    “Forcing” pregnancy may seem evil, but not as evil as ending a human life.

    Says who? You? Who are you to confir supreme status of a z/e/f and equate it with a person? So you think abortion is evil. The answer is simple for you then, don’t have one. However not all others view a z/e/f as the divine example of humanity or personhood. Some others think it is evil to deny a woman safe, legal medical care because a living z/e/f resides in her womb. You can count me as one among those.

  27. Yes. Says me. I think ending a human life is the ultimate evil. But have I once said that all abortion should be illegal? No. Have I once said that the WOMEN who have abortions are evil? No. I am pro-life but have not ONCE said that all abortion should be illegal. Thank you, again, for making assumptions.

    I think a fetus is a person. I don’t think we should kill people. I don’t think it is anyone’s CHOICE to kill their child. In an ideal world, there would be no abortion. But maybe legislation isn’t the best angle. That’s still something I’m trying to figure out. I will admit, that is my opinion, and I am certainly not perfect. But neither are any of you.

    I know I will never convince any of you, and you should know you will never convince me. Therefore, I have chosen to fight to reduce abortion by other means. There are things we can do TOGETHER to reduce abortion. And attacking pro-lifers with insults and condescention is NOT the way to come together to do something about it. Why not reach out and explain to your conservative aquaintances how sex-ed and contraception will ultimately reduce abortion rather than calling them names and only discussing the mother (as I said, compassionate pro-lifers are concerned with the child)? If you want to convince people, speak to their passions. Way to come together, guys.

    PLEASE just uderstand:
    Pro-life does NOT necessarily equal anti-woman.
    And also, nothing in this world will ever be solved by determination to find differences in opinions rather than similarities.

  28. Alara,
    You rock! I really need to quiote you when I am arguing with my older brother about this. At 35 (maybe earlier…we don’t talk much), he inexplicably became fervently anti-choice. He says it’s because EVERY woman he knows that has had an abortion was traumatized by it. Love that anecdotal evidence!

  29. As important as the legal right to abortion is, I think it’s also important to take into account the issues that these women face in addition to the legal obstacles to getting an abortion. Even if abortions were legal, they would still be expensive and can only be done by someone with medical knowledge – and who is to guarantee that a service like that will be available to these women? The article notably mentions that only 12 women were willing to speak to them about this topic, and of those 12 5 opposed the legalization of abortion because it would tear at the moral fabric of society. Some of the women said their boyfriends refused to use contraception with them.

    This is a really important point. To be clear, the American-based international “pro-life” movement is dead-set on taking away all reproductive options from women. They’re against female-based contraception efforts that would enable women to prevent pregnancy. They help to prop up sexist social structures that put women in positions where they can’t say no to sex. They promote marriage as a solution, without recognizing that marriage is actually a major risk factor for HIV/AIDS for a lot of women.

    This is much, much bigger than just abortion — but it is the pro-life movement that throws up roadblocks every step of the way.

  30. ” “Forcing” pregnancy may seem evil, but not as evil as ending a human life.”

    Baloney. The real evil would be in forcing the REAL person to suffer for your misplaced sympathies. I wonder if your misplaced sympathies could be corrected with a little real world experience. It would be interesting to see how long you care about imaginary children when sitting before a woman attempting to make this decision.

    ” It is NOT the same as forced organ donation, as one is passive neglect and the other is actively ending a life.”

    Ah, so it’s okay to kill someone passively, then?

    How convenient for you that your own words don’t apply to you. Is it fun deciding how other people’s lives will be lived?

    ” If you honestly can’t tell the difference between not donating an organ and terminating a fetus, than I have no respect for any other arguement you might make.”

    Since I have no respect for your “oh it’s only bad when OTHER people do it” baloney, that’s fine by me. If you actually do care about women, you’re on the wrong side.

    ” Pro-life does NOT necessarily equal anti-woman.”

    Please understand: Pro-life arguments are inherently misogynistic. Face it. There is nothing you can say that isn’t removing a real, live, working, tax-paying, wife/mother/child sister of her autonomy or placing her value below that of imaginary children.

  31. The legal limit for abortion is 24 weeks after conception.

    I’ve said before, I have no problem with a legal limit of 24 weeks IF (and only if):
    -abortion is safe, legal, and readily available in the first 23 weeks, especially the first 8-12 weeks, of pregnancy so that no one ends up at 24 weeks because they couldn’t raise the money or get the appointment sooner
    -exceptions are made for risk to the mothers’ life or health (yes, the health exception can be abused…I’d propose a risk to life or limb definition: if there is a risk of dying or losing major parts of the body then the exception goes)
    -exeptions are made for fetal non-viability: if a fetus has a lethal defect that was, for whatever reason, not discovered earlier, I see no reason to torture the mother by making her carry it to term, or risking her life by making her give birth (possibly by c-section) to a fetus that is going to die anyway. I think that this is a fairly mainstream pro-choice view.

  32. “Forcing” pregnancy may seem evil, but not as evil as ending a human life

    The scare quotes are unnecessary. If a woman wants to end her pregnancy and you prevent her from doing so then you are forcing her to be pregnant. It is the common use of the word, not any exotic or semi-slang usage and there is no reason to put quotes around it. If you feel that forcing a person to be pregnant is less evil than allowing her to have an abortion, so be it, but don’t deny what you are doing.

  33. please don’t place me in a group based on your assumptions.

    You’re in that group of your own choosing, based on the comments you posted here.

    BUT, LEGALLY, WE JUST SHOULDN’T KILL PEOPLE.

    ElleBeMe stated it clearly; here are her (?) words again, since you missed them:

    What you are confusing is human-ness with personhood. Personhood is conferred upon birth. Otherwise we would have certificates of conception and perhaps even debates of citizenship for zygotes – fertilized in the US or elsewhere????

    If you honestly can’t tell the difference between not donating an organ and terminating a fetus, than I have no respect for any other arguement you might make.

    You have no respect for women, period.

  34. This is much, much bigger than just abortion — but it is the pro-life movement that throws up roadblocks every step of the way.

    I couldn’t agree more – I would go one step further and say that the roadblock is the mentality driving the pro-life movement, which also drives the kind of thinking that leads to this:

    Other medical specialists say that the law is just a part of the picture.

    “Even if it was possible to get a legal abortion, many women would not be able to get a safe one,” said Dr Francis Ohanyido, the president of the International Public Health Forum.

    “Medical facilities vary widely and it is almost impossible to guarantee quality.”

    Cultural taboos mean even if there was a clinic in their town, it would be impossible for most women to go there, he said.

    The “pro-life” movement has the genius to partner with the existing patriarchal structures to compound the shaming of women that is already a part of life in Nigeria – and these two forces work together in the name of “development” and “international collaboration” to make life better for a small group of people (themselves) while making it harder for women to maintain some semblance of control over their own bodies. The ubiquitous question in these conversations is “whose life?” and it clearly isn’t women’s lives.

    Articles like this reinforce for me how important feminism is. Nigerian women are literally under siege – forgive me if you think that term melodramatic but I really feel that it’s appropriate in this situation. They have a sufficiently difficult time without the American-based “pro-life” movement providing incentives to healthcare providers and other NGOs to withhold contraceptives and access to abortion from them, but of course in the name of unborn babies and slut-shaming and “morality” the so-called “pro-lifers” have to step in and “help” by compounding the problem with shit like promoting abstinence/the global gag rule. When there is really so much working against Nigerian women, the power of thinking like a feminist and critically examining how all of the factors are closely related and derived from the idea that women have to uphold a certain standard of morality OR ELSE really becomes clear to me. If everyone could get over that harmful idea, then lives would be saved. And that, to me, is much more pro-life than anything I have heard come from someone arguing against a woman’s right to choose.

  35. Yes. Says me. I think ending a human life is the ultimate evil.

    Okay. So riddle me this – why then should your belief be made to apply to all women?

    I can respect your POV and have no intention of convincing you otherwise. You’re free to choose as you wish. Why then though must others who do not believe as you “address the child” when others do not see a child in the equation? You can call a z/e/f anything you like – pumpkin, child, butterfly, miracle, etc. Doesn’t make it so for anyone else however.

    I think a fetus is a person. I don’t think we should kill people. I don’t think it is anyone’s CHOICE to kill their child.

    Okay then. But would you deny an abortion to someone? do you advocate making it illegal? what do you mean when you say this:

    “No. I am pro-life but have not ONCE said that all abortion should be illegal. Thank you, again, for making assumptions.”

    What abortions are “acceptable” – afterall, in your view, abortion kills a child. When would it be alright to do that?

    And attacking pro-lifers with insults and condescention is NOT the way to come together to do something about it.

    Well, we aren’t the ones who bomb clinics to “come together” on this issue. Thankfully you’re one of the ones who recognizes that BC is a necessity to reduce the abortion/unplanned pregnancy rate. But even with BC – accidents happen and things don’t always work out, and abortion will still be a sought-after option.

    Why not reach out and explain to your conservative aquaintances how sex-ed and contraception will ultimately reduce abortion rather than calling them names and only discussing the mother (as I said, compassionate pro-lifers are concerned with the child)?

    I know pro-choice conservatives as well as anti-choice ones. And how do you know how anyone here discusses these things with anti-choicers with whom they are familiar?

    Some can be rational. Others are downright sh*t stupid. Many, like you, have no intention of changing their minds. So what is the point?

    Pro-life does NOT necessarily equal anti-woman.

    But it does – especially when you surgically remove women from the equation and equivocate a z/e/f with a “child”. YOu even said yourself you know women are dying from illegal abortions, but giving them a safe, legal option to terminate an unwanted pregnancy isn’t on the agenda. You’re compassionate, “pro-life” and sympathetic to the point of you still think women should not be allowed to have safe, legal medical care in terminating pregnancies – even if they die. Hardly “pro-life”

  36. Yes. You’re right. You caught me. I have no respect for women. The only reason I’m pro-life is to oppress women (of which I am one). It has absolutely nothing to do with saving lives. I am completely evilly motivated.

    Thank you, all, for shattering my faith in the compassionate and understanding side of activists.

  37. have no respect for women.

    Strawman. No one said that. The faux-life opinion you hold doesn’t respect women, true. however, in my experience there are plenty of people who call themselves “pro-life” who have been duped by the “save the baybays!!” baloney from that movement’s leaders. Think it through a bit and its clear they have no respect for women.

    The only reason I’m pro-life is to oppress women (of which I am one).

    Are you seriously suggesting that women don’t participate in their own oppression? Ever heard of Phyllis Shafley?

    It has absolutely nothing to do with saving lives. I am completely evilly motivated.

    the pro-life position has nothing to do with saving lives. If it did, it would support BC, sex ed, etc. You might think you’re “saving the baybays”, but the reality is the opposite.

    it is possible to be pro-choice and personally against abortion. It’s not possible to be pro-life and be a feminist.

  38. {The reason I’m pro-life} has absolutely nothing to do with saving lives.

    It has nothing to do with saving women’s lives. It’s all about the “babies”.

    Seriously, Jessi, you can be personally opposed to abortion, but the second you start saying things like it shouldn’t be legal to kill a child, you’ve shown your hand. You cannot be a feminist while you deny other women bodily autonomy.

    You don’t like the organ donation analogy? I think it’s great b/c it could apply to men, too.

    I hate the “it’s a human life” and “pregnancy is just an inconvenience” arguments b/c the pregnant woman is invisible. “All about the babies” completely ignores the already independently breathing woman.

  39. I think that this is a fairly mainstream pro-choice view.

    I’m curious about this. Do you mean that the mainstream view includes advocating a ban on late term abortions (subject to the exceptions you mentioned), or just being willing to tolerate such a ban? I’ve always been a little unclear on whether there was a pro-choice consensus on this.

  40. Do you mean that the mainstream view includes advocating a ban on late term abortions (subject to the exceptions you mentioned), or just being willing to tolerate such a ban?

    Tolerating it is what I meant. Some pro-choice advocates are against any bans in principle, because it really is granting fetuses a privilege (living parasitically off of another person against their will) that no living breathing born person is given, but as a matter of practicality, virtually no one seeks a purely elective abortion in the third trimester. Certainly not if they could have gotten one earlier.

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  42. it really is granting fetuses a privilege (living parasitically off of another person against their will) that no living breathing born person is given

    Well it depends on how late in the pregnancy we are talking about, right, since at some point viability is more or less assured.

  43. Why not reach out and explain to your conservative aquaintances how sex-ed and contraception will ultimately reduce abortion rather than calling them names and only discussing the mother (as I said, compassionate pro-lifers are concerned with the child)?

    Since most of the major “pro-life” organizations are also opposed to comprehensive sex education and birth control, the argument that their actions are actually increasing the abortion rate doesn’t seem to be making much of a dent. You’d almost think their guiding principle wasn’t protection of the fetus or something.

    If you can find a pro-birth-control, pro-life organization, have at it. But you’re going to have to do some serious searching to find one.

    The only reason I’m pro-life is to oppress women (of which I am one). It has absolutely nothing to do with saving lives. I am completely evilly motivated.

    It’s fascinating to me in this whole thread that you seem to have not given one thought — a single one — to the pregnant woman in your construction of “pro-life.” You have decided that the pregnant woman’s life is automatically less important than that of any fetus she’s carrying.

    Please justify your position: why is a born human being automatically less important than an unborn one?

  44. Well it depends on how late in the pregnancy we are talking about, right, since at some point viability is more or less assured.

    Actually, you’d be surprised. I remember seeing somewhere that giving birth one month pre-term is actually more likely to lead to complications in the resulting infant than giving birth two months pre-term. It has something to do with the phase of development the fetus is in during that particular time period.

  45. I am at a loss why noone has addressed the fact that Jessi thinks life, human life, is special and is worth protecting above all else.

    While most advocates for choice i know of prefer to have quality of life over quantity, the “pro-life” adovcates have some strange delusion that human life is something extraordinary. What about the animals you eat or the bacteria you kill when you bathe? Why aren’t these forms of life special in your books? Because they aren’t human? Humans are animals too.

    Then there is the issue of well, if humans are so special why do you prefer the unborn over the born? Is it because they are innocent? How can they be innocent if they are incapable of guilt? Is a kid innocent if it finds a gun and uses it on someone else? How do you define innosence and why does it apply to the unborn?

    Childbirth isn’t a miracle since it happens every day. Life isn’t special because it has been around for eons (sperm and ovums are alive before they join).

    So I will agree with everyone who said that Jessi needs to rethink her position although it sounds to me like she is a fence sitter and not truly “pro-life”.

    — ——————————————-
    Pro-Family, Pro-Woman, Pro-Child, Pro-Choice. It’s a fact.

  46. Thank you, all, for shattering my faith in the compassionate and understanding side of activists.

    Dude, seriously, try and keep the melodrama down to a dull roar. You expressed your opinion, other people expressed theirs, and some of them had the audacity to disagree with you. Such is life. If that “shatters” your faith in the compassion of activists, so be it.

  47. You know what, I’ve been doing some thinking about this, and I believe that I have an idea as to exactly *why* anti-abortion logic is misogynist. I mean, aside from the simple fact that it seeks to punish women for being women, anti-abortion logic takes a process that only women can perform and hands it over to an invisible agency in the sky.

    In real life, you are not given a life by being conceived. You are given a life by your mother. She endures discomfort, pain, weakness, possibly permanent health complications, possibly death, in order to make you live. When you are conceived you are a human potential in the process of becoming an autonomous being. Your mother *grows* you. She feeds and waters and shelters you with her own body and her own flesh. There is a cost to existing in this world, and until you are old enough to start paying the price for yourself, your mother pays the price. She is why you are alive.

    Your father didn’t sacrifice anything to make you live. He had an orgasm. Hardly a sacrifice. Maybe he will sacrifice for you once you are born, and if he is a good man he may sacrifice for your mother to help her endure the incredible task of making a human being out of parts she found lying around the house, but he didn’t sacrifice for you. He didn’t make you. He contributed half the blueprint, that’s all, but your mother not only contributed the other half, she was the entire construction crew as well.

    But your mother is flawed. She’s human. Maybe she didn’t really want you. Maybe she treated you badly once you were born. Her body wasn’t the perfect environment for you, because perfection doesn’t exist, so maybe something went wrong. If you recognized that she is human you might feel guilty over the price she paid for your life. And, she’s a woman. We can’t imagine that we exist because of the work of a *woman*, that men sacrificed nothing to make us live and did next to no work. That breaks our sexist brains.

    So we take the mother’s role in creation out of the equation. God made you! God, unlike your mother, is omnipotent! God is all-loving! God, being all powerful, wasn’t hurt in creating you, so don’t feel guilty about existing. God is perfect! God wanted you! God never neglected you or told you you couldn’t have a toy because we couldn’t afford it. God is all-giving. God is the perfect idealized image of a mother. And best of all., God is male! So no icky woman-thing was responsible for making you; it was God, and the role of that thing with the vagina that actually did all the work was just her punishment because women suck.

    When we say that life begins at conception and that God causes humans to exist so it is a sin for a woman-vessel-thing to abort the life God put in her, we are denying the biological fact that pregnancy is a *process* that women *perform.* Saying that a zygote is a child is like saying a blueprint is a house. If no one does the work to build it, no, that zygote is not a child at all. Yes, it does literally do all its growing and dividing on its own, but it requires a supportive host environment with a constant supply of nutrients and it is *hard work* to provide all that shit. No, the woman doesn’t consciously do the work, but so what? She still does it. She *makes* that zygote into a baby.

    To say that it is already a baby when it is a zygote is to say that the work a woman does to transform it is nothing. To say that God made you when in fact your mother made you is to say your mother is nothing, her work is nothing, her sacrifice was nothing. To say that a woman has no right to abort a child is to say that her choice to undertake nine months of increasingly harder work is nothing. We force people into nine months of hard labor when they are prisoners who committed crimes or slaves, no one else. Not against their will. Normally when people do work they agree to do the work and they agree that the compensation is worth it. Forcing someone to do the work of making a baby says that it isn’t work at all.

    I am, in fact, in agreement with most laws about viability and abortion after 24 weeks except in the case of the mother’s life or health or if the fetus isn’t going to survive. I also would tend, as a person who works on big IT projects, to support forcing companies who have put eight months of work into a big project to *not* be allowed to cancel the project right then because someone got cold feet, because of the horrific emotional backlash on the people who’ve been working so hard, so I think I’m being consistent. If your baby can survive outside your body, by all means, get it out of your body if you can’t tolerate it being there. After 24 weeks there isn’t much difference between abortion and giving birth anyway, in terms of the strain on the body, so if a woman truly can’t bear being pregnant anymore for whatever reason and her fetus is viable and her health can support labor or c-section, get the baby out. Fine. Better to wind the project up prematurely without all the features you wanted then to never see the project come to fruition at all. But before viability, there is no way to avoid doing the work of making a baby inside you except to get it out, which will kill it. Fine. No human has the right to compel the labor of another human except as a punishment for a crime, and sex is not a crime. Your mother makes you. It must be her choice whether you are made or not.

  49. Alara – 100%. Dead. On. Balls. Accurate.

    a patriarchical society with its misogynstic gods cannot stand that this is something entirely within womens’ control. So, it co-opts it. It pretends that women are naught but an expendable flower pot to plant male seeds in, a flower pot to weak and silly to make its own decisions.

    And its dresses this misogynstic premise in attractive “save the baybays!!” language to fool people into towing its line.

    And who cares if its the expendable flower pots that suffer for it.

  50. Jessi – having done the pregnancy/childbirth thing twice now, if I were given a choice tomorrow between doing it again, and donating a kidney (neither of which do I actually *want* to do), I would choose donating a kidney without hesitation. You see, donating a kidney involves anesthesia.

    Whereas the last time I gave birth, it involved surgery without any.

    So I’m not feeling the whole “you have a right to refuse donation, but not a right to refuse pregnancy” thing. Really.

  51. Jessi – having done the pregnancy/childbirth thing twice now, if I were given a choice tomorrow between doing it again, and donating a kidney (neither of which do I actually *want* to do), I would choose donating a kidney without hesitation. You see, donating a kidney involves anesthesia.

    LOL….my mother had a coffee mug when I was growing up that had a phrase on it I now understand fully.

    It said, “I’d rather be 40 than pregnant” I can fully understand the genius of that now :>)

  52. I definitely agree with what several people have posted already, (Alara, Diane, Caren, etc) and I’d like to add my two cents.

    I think that a large part of the reason that pro-lifers value the “lives” (“on-going mitosis”? “parasitism”?) of fetuses over the lives of the pregnant mothers is absolutely misogynistic, and very much based on punishing women for having sex. I will explain:

    By *presuming* that the fetus is a “person” (which, I believe, it is not) pro-lifers try to reduce the debate about abortion to an issue of “which *person’s* rights outweigh the other’s, a baby’s or a woman’s?” This means that pro-choicers are automatically and unconsciously forced into arguing *against* some theoretical proto-baby’s rights, instead of focusing on the real issue of arguing *for* women’s rights. Obviously, it’s hard to win an argument that asks you to judge the relative value of two human beings, especially when you pride yourself on promoting equality and justice. It’s morally hypocritical and emotionally uncomfortable, particularly for pro-choicers and others who fight for minority rights. We aren’t generally willing to try sacrificing some group’s rights, even to help another group.

    But it’s *not* uncomfortable for pro-lifers to argue in this situation, because they *are* willing to sacrifice a group’s rights. They have no problem picking a side in the polarized debate *they* define, leaving pro-choicers to try and argue a side purposefully weakened by the language of its framing. Pro-lifers ask “sacrifice a baby or a woman?” and answer “woman!”

    So, even operating in the *false* frame of “women’s versus ‘babies” rights,” why do pro-lifers always decide that the women’s rights must lose? Are women not cuddly and soft enough? Does the loss of “cute factor” weigh in? Is it because “oh, the baby hasn’t had a chance to live yet! or “we must protect God’s children”?

    Nope. The real problem is that women are *female* and have *had sex*. The “baby” never had sex so it’s still pure and virtuous and morally superior. The pregnant woman clearly *did* have sex, so she’s a dirty slut (yes, the married ones too) and so deserves to have her rights taken away. Also, the pregnant mother is clearly *female* while the fetus (assuming she goes through the pain and trouble of bringing it to term, and it manages to survive into adulthood) has a ~50% of being male! That means, by seeking an abortion, some irresponsible, female slut is trying to kill a future *man*! That’s terrible! (And really, he might be *white* too, which makes it a “murder” that other white people actually care about!)

    Looking at it this way, with the dual forces of “slut-punishing” and male superiority acting to prevent legal abortions, is not obvious that a pro-life stance is/can be extremely misogynistic?

    In summary, the issue of a woman (who should be recognized as having all the rights, dignity, intelligence and responsibility of a man) aborting a dividing and differentiating bubble of cells that is feeding off of nutrients provided through her uterus, is turned by pro-lifers into an issue of a slut trying to murder a man (who is actually *accorded* rights, dignity, intelligence and responsibility). This is not an accident. This is a strategy.

    Pro-choicers and feminists (I won’t *force* you to equate the two) need to reject operating in the frame constructed by pro-lifers, misogynists and religious extremists (I won’t *entirely* equate these) of “don’t let sluts kill man-babies!” Half of winning is forcing the other side to argue on your terms, so *don’t* argue on these terms. Remember the issue is protecting women’s rights, and keep it about *that*.

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