Anna Clark has a column up at RH Reality Check about an issue that’s central to maintaining and furthering reproductive justice in this country—converting anti-choicers to pro-choicers. She herself used to feel “pro-life”, but upon growing up and realizing that anti-choice positions were about hurting actual women instead of the airy feel-good politics of their baby-saving rhetoric, she shifted. Meeting women that had abortions and realizing they’re not the crazy, baby-hating sluts of the anti-choice imagination. Having sex herself and waking up to the fundamental misanthropy that posits that sex is a bad thing that requires “consequences”, i.e. punishment. Realizing that it’s fucked up to frame having a baby as punishment for sin.
What changed?
I don’t remember the day. But that day didn’t come until after I’d met people — surprise! — who’d chosen abortion. It came after my school friends became parents; after I began having sex and selecting birth control; after I experienced and witnessed sexual harassment.
In short, it happened after pro-choice rhetoric took a human shape. I saw those I loved. I saw myself.
Today, I have the passion of a convert for reproductive rights. I remain equally passionate in my resistance to the machine that bypasses all ambiguity about abortion.
I didn’t “switch sides;” I’m against the notion of “sides” in the first place.
I spent years in ambivalence, despite an inward belief in reproductive rights. While acknowledging my cowardice, I would’ve allied myself with the cause sooner had choice advocates talked with me, rather than dismiss me as an anti-choicer not worth the breath. I would’ve spoken sooner had I not felt that I must forsake anti-choice family and friends to do so.
And she continues on to make a passionate argument about helping more people see the light by getting past the idea of “sides”. I am, no surprise, skeptical of some of the claims that there’s a way to really reach out to anti-choicers. I think the ones that are like Anna—who are fundamentally humane, who see women as people, and are just naive—will probably come around when the misogyny of the anti-choice movement becomes too much to ignore. For a lot of people who come to sense, it’s realizing that the anti-choice movement is also against the best prevention for abortion, which is contraception, indicating that this is about punishing sexuality and not about saving babies. But I’m skeptical that most anti-choicers, hooked on sex-phobic rhetoric, are going to come around. Still, there’s a potential to reach out to the well-meaning, and Anna gives some hints about what angles to work.
Adoption, i.e. the “why not just have it and give it up” argument.
Growing up in Michigan, I advocated social systems as a response to unwanted pregnancies. Sure, there were plenty of reasons why someone wouldn’t have the ability or desire to parent. But don’t punish the future child, I argued.
Adoption seemed an ideal compromise. With some systematic improvements, then, I thought, abortion is rendered moot and the world will be just.
It’s tempting to treat adoption as an alternative with kid gloves, for fear of giving offense to people who have adopted or have managed to give up a child willingly for adoption. But the myth that it’s that easy for slatternly teenagers to just hand their babies over to “worthy” couples who obeyed the sexual mores (or at least gave the appearance of doing so), needs to be dealt with head-on. The “just give it up for adoption” argument is profoundly misogynist. It ignores the depth of grief that women go through. It ignores the sacrifice of your body to make the baby. It relegates a woman to a biological function, as if she’s just a baby factory whose feelings are irrelevant, especially since she’s a sinner. The lack of white babies on the market has been a major motivator for the anti-choice movement, and in order to get the adoption market back to the level it was in the 50s and 60s, they’d have to do more than ban abortion. They’d have to return us to a system where young women are forced against their wills to hand their babies over. Someone who says, “Oh, just give it up for adoption,” needs to be given memoirs and histories of the young women who were squirreled away to give birth in secret and had their babies taken from them, while they were screaming and tied down so they couldn’t snatch their very own babies and run. If you have an ounce of heart in you, you’ll realize how cruel it is to posit adoption as a realistic alternative for all women who turn up pregnant against their wills.
Sex is wicked, and of course deserves punishment.
What if I said that I once believed abortion was murder, or that I suspected women used the procedure to bypass the consequences of sex?
Emphasis mine. Anna lays out what it takes to get people away from using abortion as a barrier to distinguish between the evil sluts and the rest of us (who may have sex, but it’s not the slutty kind that leaves you pregnant by accident). For her, it was talking to women who had abortions and realizing Them is Us, the sluts of our nightmares are our friends, are ourselves.
That works in the short term. In the long term, conquering the fear and loathing around sex that is the primary motivator for the anti-choice movement is what’s necessary in order to secure reproductive rights to the point where they’re not really controversial anymore. It’s going to be a long haul, but it’s critical for the pro-choice movement to advocate not just for safe sex but for pleasurable sex as a good, wholesome, important part of life, and to cast suspicion on sex-phobes for being the misanthropes that they are.
59 Responses to “Converting anti-choice to the pro-choice side”
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I think a big part of the problem is the terminology. I had a Catholic friend who claimed she was pro-life, and identified with the pro-life movement, because she thought abortion was wrong. However, she was also smart enough to realize the need for it and didn’t really feel she had the right to tell another person that they couldn’t do it. I concluded that she was pro-choice, though she wasn’t comfortable admitting it.
There unfortunately haven’t been that many others that I’ve met. Most don’t seem to think about the problems inherent in pregnancy and why abortion is needed. I try to educate them about that (pre-eclampsia, placental abruption, ectopic pregnancies) which at least makes people realize that there is an absolute need for medically necessary abortion. Getting them to see abortion on demand as also necessary doesn’t really seem to work, at least by my experience.
Whenever I see the “give it up” trope, I’m reminded of this home in Wisconsin where young pregnant girls could live while they waited to give birth (and give away the baby). It was called—I shit you not—”The Seven Sorrows of Our Sorrowful Mother.” Must have been a really fun place.
I really disagree with your conclusion at the end.
I do not believe that the fear and loathing are original emotions/motivations. We are simply encouraged to fear/loathe certain things, and the patriarchy uses the multitudes of fear and loathing to generate higher-order effects benificial to its perpetuation. As I said in an earlier thread about gay issues, we *shouldn’t* understand that fear.
We should always be intolerant of fear that generates its own basis for it perpetuation. We do that when children are being inconvenient about cooties, we can do that in other, adult, situations as well.
Maybe this person isn’t like Amy Goodman, but I definitly share your skepticism in that this person was always decent at heart and would have changed regardless of what sex positive people said, so long as she became aware of the actual issues. She should simply be told that the fight is with people who do not act in good faith.
Ever read The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion? It’s stories from practitioners about anti-choice people who have abortions; really emphasises the end of this post - Them is Us, the sluts of our nightmares are our friends, are ourselves.
I concluded that she was pro-choice, though she wasn’t comfortable admitting it.
I have a good friend who is catholic and identifies as pro-life, but when you talk to her about her actual beliefs about abortion, is really pro-choice. I suspect there are actually a lot of people who are like that. They’re just not the sort who are involved enough in the debate to be visible.
I too was pro-life for a long time. (catholic family) There are more humane pro-lifers than you might realize. They mostly don’t belong to any of the political pro-life organizations; they just hold the belief and vote it without being confronted with much of the hate that they’re unwitting standing next too.
For me, the turning points were:
1. learning enough about medicine to realize how dangerous and complicated pregnancy still is. that didn’t happen until, like Anna, I had more experience with the world and met people whose experiences weren’t like mine
2. I went to law school and learned about how the law works. I learned about how lawmakers and judges have to consider all the possible situations a person might find herself in, because the law is going to apply to everyone. I learned about the chilling effect that outlawing something has on related activity, even if it remains legal. I learned about the dangers of over-inclusive laws. In other words, I learned about how abortion bans work in the real world.
I still be believe that life begins at conception, but that’s no longer the end of the argument for me. I also believe that safe and legal abortion causes less harm to less people than any other system. A fetus inside the womb may be a person, but it’s like a person (A) being kept alive by a life-support mechanism hooked up to another person (B). Is it moral to keep person A alive this way? Sure, BUT ONLY WITH THE CONSENT OF PERSON B.
I wonder how many have been pro-life until THEY needed an abortion. I wonder how many have had an abortion and really changed their minds; and how many have had an abortion, just called it a do-over in their heads and gone on with their pro-life thinking.
I absolutely agree that it’s not a pregnant teen’s job to provide “deserving” families with offspring. “Just give it up” is a smug, ridiculous phrase. I once read an essay by a woman who’d “chosen life” but was still shamed by the pro-lifers–the belly’s there, you’re a bad girl, even though you “chose life”. That woman said she became pro-choice after giving her baby up for adoption.
One woman I know is pro-life for the simple reason that younger and younger premature babies are being saved via the NICU. In her mind, there’s just no cutoff, it’s all life, because if you can save a baby in it’s 19th week it should be done, and it should be that way for everyone.
In my experience, the anti-choicers like to portray women who have had abortions as dupes who have been psychologically destroyed by the experience until they accept jesus.
I think that the majority of anti-choicers are anti-choice for everyone but themselves. They would be the ones to target.
Fair enough, pablo. They work both stereotypes, and the latter is the one they find more politically convenient lately. It’s still one that denies women agency, still one that relegates women to baby factories without minds of their own, and still makes the whole “just give it up” thing seductive, because if women are just dumb bunnies, their feelings aren’t that important, are they? I’d still say they think women who have abortions are sluts, but it’s dumb sluts vs. evil sluts.
I passed a billboard today: ABORTION HURTS,with accompanying pious art and anti-choice rhetoric.
I wanted to immediately rent the billboard next to it, and cover it with the slogan: ILLEGAL ABORTION KILLS, with, of course, art to match.
Unwanted pregnancies are as old as human history, and women have found ways of terminating them for just as long. Outlawing abortion isn’t actually going to stop it; and either the anti-choicers haven’t quite figured that out, or they’ve decided that any woman who dies as the result of an illegal abortion “had it coming.”
well of course abortion hurts, so does getting my teeth drilled and getting them filled, should i just let them rot out of my head instead? i’m so effing tired of idiots framing arguments in the simplest terms possible. it’s part of the growing anti-intellectual streak in our culture and it’s so frustrating, part of being human, one of the best parts in my opinion, is learning, growing, and challenging yourself, but these people, they’re like valium for the soul.
Thanks for posting this. That’s my story too, and I’m glad to see that others can transition into woman-affirming, sex-affirming, pro-reproductive rights positions. All this abstinence-only stuff makes me SO ANGRY because it’s many of these attitudes that I have had to overcome to start loving myself and my body.
Two more arguments that need to be shot down:
1. “What if you were aborted…then you wouldn’t be here to argue about it?” What if my mom and dad never met? What if the car accident my grandparents had early in their marriage turned out to be fatal?
2. “Abortion is even bad with rape, because the son or daughter should not be punished for the sins of the father.” Of course, this is basically the ONLY situation in which the right believes that a son or daughter SHOULDN’T be punished for the sins of the father. If your father can’t hold a job through his own incompetence, then Repubs’ policies make it that much harder for you to rise above it; if your father becomes permanently unemployable through a drug bust and subsequent felony record, you’re that much likely to fall into the same cycle of poverty; etc.
The terminology is a problem, yes — not many people who think of themselves as pro-life are willing to identify instead with the other, apparently by definition “anti-life” side. I think the main problem of converting someone from one side to the other, however, lies in convincing them that a fetus is not a baby. There has been some very effective propaganda to the effect that abortion is killing a baby, and the pro-choice side often argues against the idea of forcing women to have children at the cost of their health, their finances, or their future (understandably, as that IS the major moral objection to making abortion illegal) rather than arguing that abortion is, in fact, NOT the same as killing a child.
This leads a lot of otherwise rational, progressive people who I’ve spoken to to insist that abortion is icky and should be avoided whenever possible, or to condemn women who “use abortions as birth control” or any number of other ridiculous stereotypes. I think that removing the primary good-faith argument against abortion — OMG baby-killers!! — by pointing out that a fetus is no more a human being than an egg is a chicken would probably convince fence-sitters more quickly than any other argument. Unfortunately, suggesting that a woman’s life, liberty and pursuit of happiness is worth equal consideration with her children’s violates enough cultural myths about virtuous self-sacrificing mothers to be controversial. The place to attack the argument is at the idea that a fetus is a child — it is not, and I think EVERYONE in our culture understands as much. Just bring up the specter of a mother murdering her five-year-old versus a woman having an abortion, and ask which should recieve a heavier sentence, if your audience contests the point.
(The egg-chicken analogy also might help. Other suggestions appreciated! I have a roommate who I am still attempting to convince of this particular point.)
Amanda, I want to thank you for posting this. I discussed my ambivalence with “taking sides” regarding abortion over at Hugo’s place this week, so I don’t feel like re-posting it again. I used to consider myself a staunch pro-lifer, and I still, at my core, consider myself against abortion. But reading posts like yours really makes me think about the implications behind my views, and I just wanted to thank you for it.
I’m delurking here to offer a quick comment.
Although I was never anti-choice per se, it was this very blog that helped me move from “I’m pro-choice but I don’t think abortion should be used as birth control” to actually being pro-choice. So thank you for that.
“Evil sluts” should definitely be having children. That’s why abortion is bad.
Huh?
In her mind, there’s just no cutoff, it’s all life, because if you can save a baby in it’s 19th week it should be done, and it should be that way for everyone.
Does she have any conception of the idea of “quality of life,” or is quantity the only important factor? A lot of us extremely low birthweight premature babies have lifelong health problems, and the earlier the preemie is, the worse the problems are, in general. I’m not sure that saving someone at 19 weeks’ gestation so they can, say, go through life blind, deaf, sickly, and profoundly developmentally disabled is actually that much of a virtuous act. (On the other hand, what do I know — I just have cerebral palsy and I hate it.)
I, like many previous commenters, was raised Catholic and therefore “pro-life.” The thing that turned me was, of all things, a Michael Crichton book.
I was in eighth grade and reading any Crichton I could get my hands on, and I came across a book called A Case Of Need. It’s a medical mystery set before Roe v. Wade involving a woman who dies from a back-alley abortion. I think part of the mystery involved finding the father, and I remember my Injustice Meter being set off by the fact that the woman had to die while the man was totally anonymous. And then there was a whole appendix filled with arguments for legal abortion, and one of them was that the “babies” whose tiny feet I wore represented on a pin (anyone else wear the pin?) were really an amorphous, unfeeling clump of cells … and, well, that was it for me.
Looking back, this book marked the first time I had been presented with any real argument whatsoever regarding abortion. (My Catholic upbringing only taught me, “Abortion is wrong because it kills innocent babies.”) My “pro-life” stance was built on such shaky ground, it took only a popular novelist to topple it.
I was 13 then. In the 13 years since, my pro-choice stance has only become stronger. I have to believe there are many others out there like me - who call themselves “pro-life” only because that is all, and I mean literally all, they have ever known. Most of them are probably in junior high or early high school, before personal experience can begin to challenge their beliefs. I think the question is: How do we reach them? (Especially now that Michael Crichton is out of vogue.)
Kelly: I have to believe there are many others out there like me - who call themselves “pro-life” only because that is all, and I mean literally all, they have ever known. Most of them are probably in junior high or early high school, before personal experience can begin to challenge their beliefs. I think the question is: How do we reach them?
Story o’ my life. I feel like I am in the same boat as you on this. I consider myself pro-life, primarily because that was the worldview I was raised with in my tradtional, Italian Catholic home. I also, at my core, could never get an abortion myself, which is why I label myself as pro-life. But, again, this is a complicated issue. To answer your question, I think pro-choicers and pr-lifers alike need to reach people with speech, speech and more speech. Anna Quindlen wrote that exact phrase in one of her Newsweek columns awhile back regarding abortion. She discussed how many people ask pro-choicers questions like, “Why is it called a fetus when it is unplanned, and why to people call it a baby when it is planned?” She says that the answer to those questions lies in “speech, speech and more speech.” I never really understood what she meant by that until now. For me personally, that means, growing up, humbling myself and my stauch views, exploring new views, and, above all, listening to the stories of women who have gone through abortions and seeking to understand the reasons behind their choice to abort. As I grow up, experience sex for myself and watch some of my friends go through surprise pregnancies, my views on the topic continue to shape and evolve. You can reach pro-lifers by offering personal stories behind choices re: abortion and talking about real-life situations. I think that’s how we can reach them.
Both this post, and the one at RH Reality Check were really interesting. I went through a similar evolution in my opinions on abortion. Although now I would identify totally as pro-choice, there was a time when, although I never described myself as ‘pro-life’, I felt uncomfortable with the idea of abortion being used unless it was in the case of rape or for medical reasons. I don’t really know what changed. I suppose I grew up and had sex, and realised that life is not as black-and-white as I had previously thought. When I look back, I can’t believe that I ever thought it was just or fair to pit a fully-formed adult woman with an independent existence, thoughts and feelings, with a fetus.
Iwanted to immediately rent the billboard next to it, and cover it with the slogan: ILLEGAL ABORTION KILLS, with, of course, art to match.
Tuh, why rent the next billboard? Posters like the ones you described are what God made spray paint for.
I find this part interesting:
“I would’ve allied myself with the cause sooner had choice advocates talked with me, rather than dismiss me. . .”
Because I’m not so sure it’s true. I think that simple argumentation, absent the life experiences necessary to ‘make it real,’ simply entrench anti-choicer thinking.
Kelly: I wasn’t convinced either way myself until #1: I became aware, either through close friends or personal experience, of some complex and frankly harsh realities and #2: I read “The Cider House Rules” by J. Irving. I cannot say I love every idea/attitude Irving works into his novels, nor that the world is the same now as the era in which the story takes place, but this one illustrated difficulties real people faced (and continue to face). Part of the book’s power is that it does not sugar coat any aspect of abortion, or the needs for it either.
I am surprised that Crichton, the neoluddite he is, was instrumental in opening a mind! Maybe I’ve judged him too harshly and need to go back and re-read a bit.
Feministy brings up what I think is another important angle—whether or not being “pro-life” means supporting an abortion ban. A lot of people enjoy the glint of self-righteous sex-hating that comes with condemning abortion, but when they stand in the voting booth to ban it, they find themselves remembering that just because you have sex doesn’t make you one of Them (the sluts). Now, making the leap into realizing that sluts, like virgins, belong more to the realm of mythology than reality and getting to the place where you accept abortion is a whole ‘nother ball of wax. But the great middle ground on the debate that keeps it controversial is in this—who is the bad slut and who is the girl who just has sex? A lot of people feel gray mainly about that, and we need to find a way to get them to realize the former category is a myth, and we’re all in the latter. Even those of us who don’t have the kind of sex that leads to abortions—we could be men, we could be lesbians, we could refrain from sexual intercourse and just masturbate or do “everything but”, we could be infertile, we could be religious about birth control (a lot of women take themselves out of the “slut” category for this reason that I’ve seen)—but in the end, these laws are still about controlling us, punishing us for being sluts.
It’s why I do insist on the pro-choice vs. anti-choice frame. A lot of people like the fuzzy feeling of being “pro-life”, but don’t think about the legal issues at stake. If you ground the debate on not whether abortion (remember: stand in for sluttiness) is bad, then a lot of people will be tempted to grandstand morally without considering the realities. If you ground the debate where it belongs, on whether or not it’s legal, people can think through the implications. Also, the choice framing puts forward the woman, not the imaginary baby, which makes a big difference in reminding people who actually has rights here.
I agree with rubberband regarding the quote “I would’ve allied myself with the cause sooner had choice advocates talked with me, rather than dismiss me. . .”
Because there are so many people who argue in bad faith I often wrestle with the dilemma of whether to engage somebody in discussion.
All too often I find that it really is a waste of breath to talk with an anti-choicer. Either they have genuinely bought into the whole “life begins at conception” shtick and it’s near impossible to get past that, or they use the “life begins at conception” shtick to cover up their belief that pregnancy and childbirth should be a slut’s punishment. Either way, I’ve found that there really is nothing I can say to change their mind.
I think this is why male anti-choicers are so frustrating to me. Of course they can talk to people and worry for the women in their life, but they will never have the experience of having to consider being pregnant themselves.
If I hadn’t already been pro-choice, I think that having hetero sex for the first time and being only a condom and/or a pill away from pregnancy would have made a huge impact on my opinions on abortion.
She discussed how many people ask pro-choicers questions like, “Why is it called a fetus when it is unplanned, and why to people call it a baby when it is planned?”
Because we trust women to define their experiences for themselves. A pregnancy that will lead to a baby by choice is an exciting event, and no one will begrudge a woman for thinking of her upcoming baby. But a pregnancy that will terminate long before there’s a baby is completely different.
That question is like asking, “So why is sex with someone you love different than masturbation?” Or, “So why is a fancy meal you paid through the nose for different than a microwave meal you sucked down before returning to work?”
There’s nothing a Pro-Choicer could have said to this woman to bring her around sooner (and the fact that she says there is kind of strikes me as that concern-trollish “teh wimmenz are being mean waaah!” type of thing that you see pop up so often in these discussions). She pretty much states flat-out that she was rather intellectually lazy about the topic until it affected her and those she cared about directly. I think most people probably go through life the same way and ultimately have to change their own minds about these things.
Until they do, they can just stay the hell out of the way. If they aren’t part of the solution they have blood on their hands. Just like with men and sexism, passivity and feeling bad about it just aren’t good enough.
I used to be very pro-life, since, hey, who doesn’t like babies? Live and let live, right? Unless the woman’s life was in danger, I could see no reason to justify an abortion.
However, what changed my mind is that the “pro-life” side doesn’t really care about life at all. First of all, even if you did believe that abortion was wrong, making the procedure illegal would not prevent women from getting them. Also, the best way to keep women from having abortions is to make sure they don’t get pregnant, which means better access to reliable, affordable birth control. Finally, when women do get pregnant unintentionally, the best way to reduce abortion would be to make it easier for the women to take care of the baby. In other words, a strong social safety net for pregnant women and mothers and their children would be one of the best ways to reduce the abortion rate.
Surprisingly, the so-called “pro-life” movement isn’t interested in any common sense ways of reducing abortion. It is an anti-woman (anti-human, really) cultural and social movement that uses the idea of “saving babies” as a cover to make itself seem kinder and gentler.
They don’t care about women dying of illegal abortions. Some don’t even care about women dying from complications of pregnancy. So much for “pro-life.”
Not only do they not support improving access to contraception, the movement as a whole is opposed to any form of it. The reason why is because they want to go back to a mythical time and place without birth control. Couples will “wait until marriage” for sex. Happily procreating couples will keep marriages together and reduce the divorce rate. The reality is that couples never really waited until marriage for sex, and those who did mostly did so out of fear. Likewise, even if marriages with large families were more likely to stay together, who is to say that these marriages are happy? Perhaps the woman wants to leave but can’t do so because she is economically dependent on her husband? Conversely, this ideal puts an enormous amount of strain and pressure on the husband to take care of his large family. While a couple could prevent pregnancy by abstaining, abstinence has no place in marriage. Sex is good. Sexual desire in marriage is a sign of a healthy marriage. Abstinence in marriage will only lead to frustration and possibly adultery, if the frustration is great enough.
Furthermore, they use bad science (birth control pills cause abortions) to try to integrate this into their “saving babies” message, but it is clear that this has nothing to do with life or saving babies. They are not interested in any evidence to the contrary, but keep repeating their mantras (birth control pills cause abortions) louder when confronted.
Finally, they are surprisingly uninterested in promoting policies that will help pregnant women and mothers with children. Some are mildly interested, but others are openly hostile. They claim this is “rewarding illegitimacy,” even if the programs would help married women as well. Even the ones who are open to the idea see it as of secondary importance to an abortion ban.
So where do they get these ideas? The Vatican. (Because the Pope is an expert on marriage and family, right?) Even the non-Catholic members of the movement are cheating off of Rome’s paper when it comes to the theological justifications for these positions.
So the “pro-life” movement is not really about saving babies, it’s about using the idea of “saving babies” to force a worldview and a lifestyle on the population that most people have rejected.
My experience has been that the only side you can count on someone taking is their own. For people who are just intellectually lazy and haven’t taken the time to explore WHY they call themselves pro-life beyond simply having squishy Fetuses Are Just Little Babies thoughts, and that there can be a complex set of emotions and restrictions that would result in terminating a pregnancy, getting them to really think about their life and the logical conclusions about what they’re saying can actually go a long way — so long as you take a moment to point out that they’re not as exceptional as they might think they are
Going back to Cara’s comment at #7….
I was pro-life until I needed an abortion. I was batshit-crazy pro-life through high school and most of my freshman year of college. In middle school and high school I actually went to rallies and stuff.
Once I became sexually active, abortion became a gray area for me. Then I got knocked up…found myself in a really distressing position (i.e., pregnant by the boyfriend who had dumped me, at a Christian school that I’d get expelled from if anyone found out, unable to tell anyone I knew because they would’ve gotten expelled if they didn’t tell on me…it blew). So anyhow, I thought it all out, made my choice, and haven’t looked back.
But even though I’ve never regretted my decision, there are things that I wish were different. One of my big problems with the pro-choice movement (although not big enough for me to not consider myself a part of it or stop being active in pro-choice organizations) is that I often feel like women who choose abortion aren’t provided with resources they need to heal from the experience.
Now, I don’t buy into the myth of post-abortion syndrome, and I certainly don’t think that ALL women who have abortions come out of the procedure feeling all fucked up about it. But after my abortion I really needed to talk to someone. I was having a really hard time dealing with the guilt I felt ( which I wouldn’t have experienced if I hadn’t been raised pro-life) and I had no one to go to. Not even friends. I was totally alone and it really, really sucked.
And of course, the only post-abortion counseling I could find was from pro-lifers who wanted me to say I had made a huge mistake, which wasn’t what I needed at all. And I didn’t feel like I’d made a mistake. I just needed to deal with it. Maybe if I’d had friends I wouldn’t have felt like I needed counseling, but I didn’t have friends and talking to my family was 100% out of the question.
That was a really long explanation for why I think some women might have an abortion and return to the pro-life movement. It probably would have been easier for vulnerable, 19-year old me to let myself get brainwashed all over again just because I needed to tell someone what I was feeling. The pro-choice movement as a whole doesn’t do a good enough job of providing empowering, affirming support for women who choose abortion. That should really change.
A fetus inside the womb may be a person, but it’s like a person (A) being kept alive by a life-support mechanism hooked up to another person (B). Is it moral to keep person A alive this way? Sure, BUT ONLY WITH THE CONSENT OF PERSON B.
I read a something a few months back where a researcher on values and the psychology thereof made that point.
Her analogy was imagine that there was someone who had organ failure. It would take 9 months to clone a new organ for them, and until that was done they had to have their plumbing connected to another person in order to stay alive. She presented different scenarios: one was that the person providing the life support had agreed to it beforehand, the second that he or she woke up one morning and discovered the procedure had been done while they slept.
When she asked that question to pro-choice and anti-abortion people, there answers she got were very consistent across the board: if the person consented to it, either before or after it had been done, there was a general feeling that they had a moral commitment to see it through (unless there were medical complications, and so on). If, on the other hand, the person refused, there was general agreement that it didn’t matter that a no-questions asked fully conscious, (and in her scenario, someone noteworthy like a famous musician, scientist or whatnot) living person was going to die, the subject had no obligation to act as a life support unit, especially in the case where it had been done without their knowledge.
In other words, take the magical words “baby” and “mother” and “sex” out of the equation, and there’s broad consensus that a woman shouldn’t be forced to act as an incubator and life-support unit if she doesn’t want to and/or there’s a sound medical reason that puts her life at risk. On the flip side, pro-choice people generally agree that if there’s consent (even if it’s a surprise initially) there’s some moral obligation to not change one’s mind later on (again, with the medical exceptions).
The problem comes when the people who float around in that middle ground end up being represented, or as seen as being represented fromt he other side, by people on the extremes: the ones who deny there’s any choice to be made at all, and, to be fair (and I am pro-choice), the ones who claim that there’s an absolute freedom to change ones mind at any time that doesn’t have any moral cost.
It’s why I do insist on the pro-choice vs. anti-choice frame. A lot of people like the fuzzy feeling of being “pro-life”, but don’t think about the legal issues at stake. If you ground the debate on not whether abortion (remember: stand in for sluttiness) is bad, then a lot of people will be tempted to grandstand morally without considering the realities. If you ground the debate where it belongs, on whether or not it’s legal, people can think through the implications.
Exactly– I’m really not all that interested in others’ feelings about most issues, only their public positions. We’re really a horribly self-indulgent society, pretending that spewing our feelings all over the airwaves (and voting booth) in the name of self-expression is a valid substitute for rationality and broad-mindedness. It’s not; just because we have the right to express ourselves doesn’t mean that our feelings should automatically be relevant to the rest of the general public. We owe our society something a bit higher than raw emotional honesty, and people who can’t be bothered to understand that distinction simply aren’t going to be very good citizens.
KeithM:
Absolutely. “Motherhood” is such an emotionally loaded idea. We all had a mother give birth to us, and most of us had some kind of mother to raise us. Nothing is a bigger flipping deal (in the abstract) than Motherhood.
If only it were treated that way in reality.
Serial post. I meant, if only society really valued motherhood instead of just saying it does (in order to avoid giving mothers some kind of real payment for their service to the world).
It’s kind of disappointing, the number of WOMEN who can’t seem to place themselves in their sister’s place without actually getting knocked up themselves.
“OH!! That’s what the fuss was all about! Oh, now I see: neverminddddd………” Jesus Christ.
“It’s kind of disappointing, the number of WOMEN who can’t seem to place themselves in their sister’s place without actually getting knocked up themselves.”
It’s just part of a trend in recent years of being completely unable to understand and sympathize with the lives and plights of people who are not “us”.
Torture prisoners in Guantanamo? Who cares - they’re all terrorists who are trying to destroy America.
Deny medical care to “illegal” immigrants? They’re just trespassing criminals who are taking jobs away from Americans.
Eliminate legal abortion? They’re all dirty sluts who deserve to be punished by getting knocked up…
What the hell is wrong with us?…
Why is it called rape when it is nonconsensual sex and making love when it is consensual sex?
Sorry, but that just fails the stupidity test to me.
“Why is it called rape when it is nonconsensual sex and making love when it is consensual sex?
Sorry, but that just fails the stupidity test to me. “
Remember, this is a society where a guy whose mother helped bring down an American president for a consensual blow job just came out with a book seriously suggesting that the Nazi’s were socialists because their full German name (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) translates into National Socialist German Workers’ Party, and this proves that Libruls are Fascists.
Stupid is the new smart - at least in America v2.0.
Remember, everything changed on 9/11…
I was just quoting Quindlen on that. You draw a good parallel.
“Sorry, but that just fails the stupidity test to me.”
Comment on this in moderation.
Moderation is our friend, moderation is our friend, moderation is our friend…
Saw a bumper sticker today that said: “THE ULTIMATE HATE CRIME: ABORTION.”
So many levels of stupid there…
Because we trust women to define their experiences for themselves. A pregnancy that will lead to a baby by choice is an exciting event, and no one will begrudge a woman for thinking of her upcoming baby. But a pregnancy that will terminate long before there’s a baby is completely different.
I never thought of it that way. After I read Quindlen’s Newsweek column about it, I remained perplexed by that question for a long time. Now it makes more sense. Again, I have to thank you for making me think. There was a time (in high school) where I would have NEVER considered any pro-choice arguments, but I am now.
In other words, take the magical words “baby” and “mother” and “sex” out of the equation, and there’s broad consensus that a woman shouldn’t be forced to act as an incubator and life-support unit if she doesn’t want to and/or there’s a sound medical reason that puts her life at risk. On the flip side, pro-choice people generally agree that if there’s consent (even if it’s a surprise initially) there’s some moral obligation to not change one’s mind later on (again, with the medical exceptions).
Keith, you’re missing the point that the pro-life people believe that if a woman consents to something going into her vagina, she automatically consents to someone coming out nine months later.
I saw a study a few months ago of attitudes toward a variety of moral/ethical questions, everything from speaking up when you get the wrong change to abortion. They study found younger people much more strident that abortion is wrong in nearly every circumstance. The person writing it up seemed to take this as some sort of generational shift in moral values, but it seemed to me they just hadn’t lived long enough to see how this really plays out. I was really black and white on a lot of things when I was in high school (more from a leftist standpoint, but nonetheless, black and white). You grow up, you experience things, your friends and relatives experience things, and you realize the ideologies you were raised with or adopted out of sentiment might not apply to every situation. It’s called growing up.
“What if you were aborted…then you wouldn’t be here to argue about it?”
My reply: I’d much rather be the result of a choice than the result of forced pregnancy.
That is the same way I became pro-choice in 2003. Pro-lifers don’t help women. Pro-lifers only hurt and kill women. Just like what the pro-lifers are doing in Nicaragua right now.
Re adoption: the book “The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Their Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade” by Ann Fessler is very enlightening. It blows away the notion that adoption is a cost-free alternative to abortion. The women Fessler interviewed were scarred for life by having to give birth to a child, give him/her up for adoption, then often never see the child for the rest of their lives. A very moving book.
Chingona–the survey data about vehement opposition among young people toward abortion is interesting. I wonder if it is not just generational (ie, the stridency of youth) but also the consequences of not really having to think deeply about the consequences of those attitudes. Having grown up with abortion being legal (if not always accessible) makes an unwanted pregnancy seem much more abstract.
Interestingly, one of the most strident pro-choice women I knew was a woman who had been pro-life until she became pregnant. She wound up having the child but said that the availability of a genuine choice enabled her to make a decision with which she was comfortable rather than feeling forced into having a child. She did not feel forced into having the child. And her research into adoption (and experiences with pregnancy) made her think twice about the “give it up!” stuff.
“What if you were aborted…then you wouldn’t be here to argue about it?”
I answer this with “I think my mother’s life is worth the sacrifice of my own. I’d do anything to protect her.”
If it’s a Christian warrior, I add “Honor thy mother.” In person, I spread my arms out and strike a crucifixion pose and mumble something about Jesus sacrificing his life for our sins. Sometimes I even cross my feet a little and stand on my tippy toes for added effect.
I’m with those who are against the adoption trope. In fact, it makes me seethe, and thus I will reserve comment so as not to offend anyone.
“What if you were aborted…then you wouldn’t be here to argue about it?”
My reply: I’d much rather be the result of a choice than the result of forced pregnancy.
Nah - accuse them of murdering the ten to twelve babies that could have been conceived while their mother was pregnant with them, and then slip out the door while they’re floundering in confusion…
I heard about ‘abortion doulas’ probably on this site. I think it is a wonderful idea that all pregnancies, regardless of the outcome of the pregnancy (spontaneous abortion, medical abortion, birth, still birth, etc) would have some sort of support network.
I’ve talked about my own “conversion” before, so yeah, I would ask pro-choicers not to write off all anti-choicers or assume that they will only change their minds if they themselves need abortions. That never happened to me, but I changed my mind anyway. Mainly because, as others have said, I came to understand that anti-choice policy does not work to reduce abortions, and because pregnancy is a state unique to women and thus literally outside the laws we currently have, all based on male property ownership. Even if you could prove that a fetus was viable by a certain point, you cannot override a woman’s right to bodily autonomy and still have a free society. Period. So the only proper response is 1) make abortion easily available but also less necessary because of better contraception/social support and 2) trust women to make the decisions for themselves and the fetus.
I’m sure you’re right, pennylane. A lot of people don’t even know what the coathanger represents.
And in my own way I had the same experience as your friend. I always considered myself pro-choice, but I am much more passionate about that position now that I’ve had a kid. It was a planned pregnancy in a stable relationship. But parenting is damn hard work, even when you have emotional and financial support. No one should ever be forced to take that on just so they realize the “consequences” of their actions.
‘If it’s a Christian warrior, I add “Honor thy mother.” In person, I spread my arms out and strike a crucifixion pose and mumble something about Jesus sacrificing his life for our sins. Sometimes I even cross my feet a little and stand on my tippy toes for added effect.’
Well done (as are all the numerous other responses to the question.)
Picked this one out because on the religious note, I’d also consider debating with such an anti-choicer “Christian warrior” about the real meaning of “thou shalt not kill” and point out the war, death penalty, etc. Because a common argument for the religious right is that it’s more literally translated “thou shalt not murder,” and they consider those other killings to not be “murder” in the same sense.
(In a good example on that note of how a broken clock can be right twice a day, even some more conservative Catholics like Santorum and Brownback actually want the death penalty more restricted; I’d say Catholics tend to be more likely to be consistent life ethicists than most other branches of Christianity.)
I often feel like women who choose abortion aren’t provided with resources they need to heal from the experience.
…
And of course, the only post-abortion counseling I could find was from pro-lifers who wanted me to say I had made a huge mistake, which wasn’t what I needed at all. And I didn’t feel like I’d made a mistake. I just needed to deal with it.
i’m sorry that happened to you and they didn’t refer you to someone like that just in case. i’m also sorry this is way too late to be of help to you, but maybe someone else might find it useful at some point.
exhale is “an after-abortion counseling hotline” that the clinic i used to work at recommended to women who wanted to maintain some emotional support after their abortions. whether a caller regrets her abortion or feels relieved-but-alone, exhale is pro-woman and pro-her-choice. they don’t do the “…and that’s why abortion is bad and you should fight to ban it” thing. i strongly recommend recommending it to others. 1-866-4-EXHALE or www.4exhale.org
Just a nitpick on this “well, they can save micropreemies, so why shouldn’t fetuses have more legal rights than women?” argument. I’m not so focused on the quality-of-life issues, because I’ve seen kids borns at 25 weeks or less who anybody (who wanted a kid) would be thrilled to have as their offspring. I’m focused on the fundamental illogic.
If medical science is capable of saving a micropreemie, then where do you get an argument for forcing a woman who wants not to be pregnant to keep it inside her body for the rest of its “natural” term? Can you imagine the outrage wingnuts would have if doctors started prescribing dilation drugs and piles of pitocin to late second and early third trimester pregnant women who wanted not to be pregnant and had signed papers making the fetus a ward of the state? Imagine in particular the screams about how much it would cost for hospitals to treat such young wards of the state, and it becomes clear that “low-cost incubator” is considered women’s proper role…
This post and the comments really struck a cord with me. I was raised in a very liberal ‘Catholic’ family (religion only ever played a role when I was being bad, and of course the standard baptism/first communion/confirmation just to have the bases covered in case god actually exists). My family is *very* pro-choice but I wasn’t until almost a year ago, my four years at a Catholic high school making me rabidly anti-choice after the brainwashing. It’s not just that they told us all about “the innocent baybeez” and their evil murderous baby-hating slutty incubators (that would somehow magically become good moral women once they gave birth), but the *way* they told us. Our ’sex education’ consisted of an hour-long video of watching the camera slowly move from fetus-cup to fetus-cup (fyi half my class ended up in the bathroom after that puking their guts out) and deliberately misleading us with a sonogram of a fetus during an abortion trying to ‘escape.’ The whole thing was to make us think it was a conscious person (albeit little) in there that they were *murdering*. They made it seem as if women regularly put off having abortions until it was practically ready to be born. My freshman year at one of our retreats they made a really big deal about a former student who got pregnant her junior year and ‘decided’ to keep it, they had her go first and everyone else that talked afterwards only applauded her ‘decision’ and how it was the only humane thing that could be done under those circumstances. To be honest even though I was (and still am) liberal and a rebel-type I identified as pro-life because of the way they brainwash. Those dirty sluts totally deserved what they got for uncrossing their legs for just anyone!
It wasn’t until the end of senior year that I really started to look at the issues because of all the teasing and subtle bullying I endured for being different politically that I discovered the truth about abortion. I went through a period where I was technically pro-choice but couldn’t move away from the pro-life label, instead choosing the easy way out and saying “well other women can have abortions but I don’t think I could, adoption’s the best choice!” I tried ignoring how this wasn’t right either in order to still feel I was a good, moral girl not technically betraying the Church (even though I’d thought it was full of shit since I was seven). Being pro-life for me wasn’t so much that I actually believed those dirty whores just couldn’t stop having sex (though if you asked me then I’d have answered with that - now I’m smart enough to realize it was something else) as it was identifying with the people around me. I didn’t want to think on my own, it just lead to a rift between me and my ‘world.’ If someone had simply come up to me and told me the truth I honestly think I would’ve ignored them. It’s not just about being confronted with the truth as it is being open to it and being ready for it. I have to hand it to the crazies on the right, they sure know how to fuck with your head (I only had *four* years with them) and make you feel ashamed and guilty for even thinking the opposition isn’t as bad as they claim it to be. I still suffer from that (as well as other problems I developed - unfortunately they couldn’t start at me when I was really young so I was semi-aware as they tried to cram it all into me before I left) and it makes me angry with myself at the way I used to be. Anyway, my whole point was that I really understand this post. (Sorry for the bad grammar and really long back-story)
I also used to be vehemently “pro-life”. It changed along with all of my other viewpoints at relatively the same time, but if I had to pick out some of the specifics that helped:
I had two children in short succession, the second a surprise. It was hell on my body. After that, the “you could just have it and give it up for adoption” argument didn’t work for me any more. I knew firsthand how hard pregnancy could be, and mine were relatively easy compared to some other women I knew. Much more recently, I read “The girls who went away”, and anyone who comes out after reading that who is still blithe about adoption must be emotionally dead.
The argument about forced organ donation really worked on the logical side of my brain, to be honest.
I learned more about embryonic development. As for a “soul” existing no matter how unformed the fetus, twinning and the recent discovery that absorbed twins are somewhat common (humans who are chimeras of two fraternal twins but don’t know it) kind of blows that out of the water.
I read stories by women who needed late-term abortions for devastating, heartbreaking reasons, many of whom would have died otherwise. I also read a recent book (the title I can’t remember now) about the history of abortions in the US, and how many, many women died as a result of botched back-alley abortions.
That’s just a few of the things that had the most impact on changing my mind.
For me, it was meeting more real people and reading more real stories on the Internet (including this blog, among others) that moved me from pro-life (even when I wanted to be pro-choice, I would reason that it was killing a person and that, hey, she should just not have had sex) to what I think is a pro-choice position now.
I do still feel guilty sometimes for accepting abortion as an alternative if the woman wants one, and have to remind myself that “pro-choice” doesn’t mean “i’m in ur uterus, steeling all ur kids”, but just that the woman who has the baby is the one who gets to choose. What you learn growing up sticks with you, especially if it’s given moral or religious weight by your parents, so I guess it makes sense that I still feel guilty for being pro-choice sometimes. But I have decided that even if there are days I feel squeamish about abortion, it MUST be legal, because the alternatives are far worse. And I also know that if I became unintentionally pregnant myself, I would freak the hell out. Being pro-choice means I’m allowed to admit that to myself.
So, tell your stories. The real stories of actual people and what they actually felt (not what the Lifetime TV movie of the week says they should feel) about their lives–that can make a difference even when someone has battened down the hatches and won’t listen to intellectual arguments. But don’t stop with the logic, either–I think I’m going to take both “honour your mother” (oooh, I love it!) and “life support for 9 months for some other adult” from this thread for future arguments. Even if the arguments are with myself…
PS Happy winter holidays, Pandagonians! Great Discoball bless you all!