The Arguments in Favor of Abortion Rights are Perfect. Why aren’t they Working?
We’ve been fighting for a woman’s right to her own body for decades. Abortion is as old as time, but puritanical beliefs on women’s sexuality has made the subject taboo. Add in new beliefs, like that life begins at conception, and throw in a dash of religion to that belief (unsupported by any scripture, really), and you’ve got a topic that is tough to talk about. People, on both sides, believe very strongly in what they’re fighting for. A woman’s right to her body, to control her life, and the idea that terminating a pregnancy is terminating a life. I stand strongly on the side of being pro-choice, and there are plenty of logical reasons to support a woman’s choice — which I outline below — but that’s not good enough. We’ve been using logic to make our point, making observations about life, about potential vs actualized life, arguing for bodily autonomy, or a woman’s rights in this world vs a man’s, and the negative connotations of sex that are only thrust upon women. But really, it’s a deeper reason people do or do not support a woman’s right to choose. For me, it’s more than logic, it’s a feeling deep in my chest, like the cold hand of fate crushing my heart. The knowledge of what it’s like to have your body betray you, to have it turn your life upside down, tear it apart, and to be physically damaged irreparably. There’s a gripping fear that every woman with an unwanted pregnancy has, and no woman should have to go through that. Maybe that’s what we have to be communicating, alongside our typical logic-based arguments. There’s a deeply emotional aspect to both sides of this argument, and we haven’t been doing a good enough job on the pro-choice side of things to express that.
Fetus is not a life
Everyone knows this, even if they don’t realize it or outright refuse to admit it. A fetus is a potential life, like an acorn on the ground. Stepping on an acorn isn’t the same as cutting down a tree. Eating an egg isn’t the same as eating an entire chicken. We know these things. A common thought exercise is the idea of a burning fertility clinic. You rush into a room to find a baby sitting in a crib. On the other side of the room, just as far away as the baby, is a large container of 1,000 frozen fertilized embryos. Each one of those 1,000 embryos could be implanted in a woman with a fertile uterus, and she’d become pregnant with it. You only have time to save one before the building collapses and is burned to the ground. What do you save? The crying child in the crib who will burn to death, or the tank of embryos frozen in liquid nitrogen that will be destroyed? Every person, even anti-abortion people, will grab the baby and run out the door, without hesitation.
We know, deep in our hearts, that a baby is a precious life, and a fertilized egg is not. The problem is that the moment a woman becomes pregnant, anti-abortion people begin to think of that tiny egg as a finished product, the crying baby on the crib, rather than what it is, a fertilized egg about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. The potential of something is not the result. A fertilized egg is not a baby, it’s the beginning of what will become a fetus and one day a child, if everything goes right. If she wants it. If she doesn’t miscarry. If it or she does not die in childbirth.
There’s a huge problem with calling a potential object the finished one. If “abortion is murder” then stepping on an acorn is the same as cutting down a tree. It’s not. That might seem like a stretch, but fertilized eggs are often passed. These eggs often don’t find their way to a uterine wall, and instead pass out of the body. If you ask anti-abortion people who believe life begins at conception about this, they’d say a woman’s body miscarried, it’s a death. But she did nothing, couldn’t have even possibly known that she had the potential for life inside of her. This happens to women all the time. Surely they’re not all abortions, surely this isn’t murder or unintentional homicide. It’s simple, the potential for something is not the finished product. We know not to count our chickens before they hatch. We know an embryo isn’t a baby. We know this, deep in our hearts, both those in favor of abortion choices and those against it, we know the value of life.
Bodily Autonomy
The biggest argument of pro-choice is that a woman has a right to control her own body. But you’ve likely heard that so many times it has lost its meaning, so let me put it a different way. Anti-abortion people will, despite the above argument, claim that an embryo is a living human child. Okay, just for a few seconds, let’s pretend it is, for the purpose of another thought exercise. Let’s say a fertilized embryo is the same as an adult.
Put yourself in this hypothetical situation for a minute. A man is dying. He has an extremely, unheard of blood type. There’s only one person in the world who shares his blood type: you. You would have to give up a kidney and half of your liver, as well as a blood transfusion to save the man’s life. You’ll be in the hospital and may lose your job, your muscle mass, and damage your joints. You know that, if you do this, there’s a surprisingly high chance you will die. Your body will also be changed forever. You won’t be able to drink ever again, you’ll have to change your diet, and you may have health problems down the road. You’ll require frequent visits to the doctor. The receiver of your organs may not survive, and his body could quickly reject your organs if he’s not carefully monitored forever as well.
Should the government be able to kidnap you, force surgery upon you, and risk your life against your will? Would you wish that on someone else?
Obviously that would be something from a dystopian society. In fact, the plot has been used before in dystopian sci-fi. The movie The Island was about clones raised solely to be killed for their organs so rich people who bought them could survive any illness. Is that any different than forcing a woman to sacrifice her life, her job, her wellbeing, and her way of life just for a potential life she doesn’t want to bring into the world? No, it’s not.
When you die, if you’re not an organ donor and your next of kin do not say anything, your body cannot be dismantled to save a life. Your dead body cannot be forced to give up it’s autonomy. Yet this is what anti-choice people ask of women. They ask women to give up their bodies, their way of life, yet we don’t imagine asking the same of a dead corpse. If this couldn’t be something we’d force upon everyone, not even a dead body, why is it ok to force upon women? Why is it ok to uproot a woman’s life, but not anyone else’s? Being anti-choice is amoral, it’s forcing a woman to go through horrors at the government’s behest, be nothing more than breeding factories. It’s admitting that a woman’s life is worth less than a potential life.
Women’s Rights vs Men’s and General Populous
Why is the threat against women’s bodily autonomy not more disgusting to anti-choice people? It’s the same reason I used a man and yourself, the reader, in the thought experiment above. Women’s bodily autonomy, women’s wishes, are taken as being less important than men’s. Otherwise, we’d be talking about forced organ donation for all people. Anyone would be a potential target for organ theft from your own government. However, this would affect everyone, men and women, including the predominantly male government. Abortion only affects women, and it’s no coincidence that women, underrepresented in government, are the only people who’s bodily autonomy is constantly under attack. If women had more power in government and religion, a woman’s wishes for her body and her life wouldn’t even be questioned. Instead, men are in charge, and women’s rights are threatened constantly.
Women Will Get Abortions Anyway
Abortion is as old as time, or, at least, as old as humanity. During America’s prohibition of abortion, women still got abortions. They’d travel to other countries that respected women’s rights, they’d get “back alley” abortions, performed by either doctors who would be willing to perform them, or random people who figured out how to do it and how to make a profit. Women had to become criminals just to control their bodies, but they were more than willing to do so. Many died, as much as 5,000 women per year. Abortion providers would have to leave the woman’s dead body where it was, knowing they’d be guilty of multiple crimes. They were even unwilling to get the women help if something went wrong. This is the gruesome reality of a nation that made a woman’s bodily autonomy illegal. Women were willing to break the law, risk death, risk infertility, just to gain a little grasp of control over their lives. Even today, women who cannot afford abortions, which are often expensive, will go this route, either through self harm traumatic enough to cause a miscarriage, or through more invasive procedures, the so-called, “clothes hanger abortion.” This is what abortion prohibition does, it doesn’t stop abortion, it just makes it deadly.
This is what abortion prohibition does, it doesn’t stop abortion, it just makes it deadly.
“What About the 20+ Week Abortion?”
Anti-abortion activists will often point to so-called “late term abortions” (a misnomer). Often what they’re referring to is abortions around the 20 week mark, or between 20 and 24 weeks since fertilization of the egg. These abortions aren’t a clump of cells, like earlier abortions, the fetus at this point is more formed, and starting to resemble a human child. It’s not too far away from viability, with about 50% born after 24 weeks capable of surviving–though most with debilitating health issues — thanks to modern medicine. These are fetuses born before the third trimester (begins around 26–27 weeks), and will likely have other health issues as a result. The latest an abortion can be performed in most of the United States is 24 weeks, with only two performing them until 30 weeks. After 20 weeks, the process gets more complicated, and more closely resembles actual birth. So why would anyone wait so long to get an abortion? Almost no one is unless they really need it. In fact, nearly 99% of all abortions happen before 21 weeks.
Anti-choice people will point to these later abortions and classify all in the same category. Most abortions are performed in the first few weeks of pregnancy, when we’re talking about a mass of cells that in no way looks like a human being. This is why anti-choice activists focus on the 20+ week abortions. There’s just one problem: those are exceedingly rare. Women don’t intentionally wait so long for an abortion.
There are three main reasons women get these abortions later in their pregnancy, and it’s often a difficult choice. The first is the most obvious: the woman didn’t know she was pregnant. This happens most often with women who already have poor health, are overweight, or are teenagers, who are more accustom to irregular periods during puberty. The second reason is a high risk of death to the mother or child if the baby is born. The fetus may also have extreme deformities that would make life either impossible or extremely painful. Most of these, like heart defects, can’t be discovered until later in pregnancy. Finally, the third reason: the woman wanted to get one earlier, but was held back by reasons outside of her control. This includes states like Texas, with too few abortion clinics to serve the women of the state, women who are busy with work or other children, and women who cannot afford healthcare. So, one of the leading cause of the “late term” abortions that anti-abortion activists hate so much? Anti-abortion activists. Their laws making abortion clinics harder to find, harder to get an appointment with, and more expensive through the defunding of organizations like Planned Parenthood doesn’t decrease the number of abortions. No, all they do is make more women have later abortions, for more money. They’re not saving lives, they’re making them far more difficult. What’s worse, is that later abortions are more unsafe for the mother, but also often medically necessary, as the fetus could be 1) deformed, 2) already dead, or 3) a serious threat to the life and health of the mother. Once again, anti-choice people are their own worst enemies, while making themselves the greatest enemies of women and even unborn fetuses. They’re targeting teenagers, unhealthy women, women whose lives are at risk, and poor women. If they truly believe that a fetus can feel pain after 20 weeks (without scientifically sound evidence, of course), then why would they want more abortions performed in this time period? Instead, they should focus on improving access to birth control and abortion.
“She Knew the Risk.”
Officer O’Brian looked down at the young woman, lying on the ground by her car. He glanced over to the other officer on the scene, “What happened here?”
“Car crash. Seems a drunk driver ran this girl off the road. She hit that tree pretty hard, I’d say. Has internal bleeding. She’ll be dead in a few hours.”
The young woman looked up at officer O’Brian. “Please, officer, call an ambulance, help me!”
“Sorry, miss, but you knew the risk when you got behind the wheel of a car. If we send an ambulance for you, someone who passes out after an unsafe drop in blood pressure from a Viagra might need it. You understand.”
It’s an absurd situation, isn’t it? We take risks every day in order to enjoy life. Yes, eating certain foods will increase your risk of a heart attack, but that doesn’t mean you’re not entitled to medical care. Sex is an evolutionary urge, just like eating. We don’t deny healthcare for diabetes caused by eating too many sweets, why should a woman’s healthcare, her Plan B pill or abortion, be any different? Why should businesses be allowed to deny women access to birth control, something over half of women take for medical issues, when they’re not allowed to deny men access to Viagra or other erection medications? Why is only women’s sexuality attacked? Knowing that something is risky, from eating comfort food, to going skiing, or driving a car, has never been a reason to deny healthcare to someone, so why should it be denied of women? Even if this was a different situation because you claim to believe a fetus is a life, we’ve already covered why a person cannot force bodily harm on someone else against their will. So why can’t women get healthcare, just because they “knew the risk?” It all comes down to blaming women for sexuality.
America was born with puritanical beliefs staining its soul. From burning outspoken or intelligent women at the stake for “witchcraft,” to preventing them from voting, women have taken the brunt of western society for centuries. Even in biblical times, a man was not to allow himself to be seen as womanly, lest he be killed, because women were property. Men are possessive of women, and the idea that a woman could go out and have her own desires is scary to some (small) men. It’s a trait seen in the wild as well, males want to pass on their genes, so they’re possessive of their mates. In male dominated societies, women are blamed for causing men to have sexual desires, and often forced to dress a certain way. The U.S. dictated what women could wear on beaches or on TV well into the 20th century. Even now, websites and social networks like Instagram say female nipples can’t be shown, but male nipples are acceptable. Men who have sex with many women are congratulated for it, while women are shamed for each sex act. This is why, when a woman becomes pregnant, especially out of wedlock, puritanical beliefs once again rear their ugly heads, and shame the woman for taking the risk of pregnancy by having sex. That’s why we often say, “If men could get pregnant, there would be abortion clinics on every corner.” Women don’t have power, we’re told to be shameful for having sexual desires, and, as such, it’s considered okay to take away our rights as punishment for becoming pregnant.
“Killing a Fetus is Murder.”
A situation commonly pointed out by anti-choice people is the idea that if a pregnant woman is injured, and it causes her to miscarry, the person who injured her would be guilty of murder. This isn’t true in all states, and it’s not ruled as murder either. Still, they make the point that if you injure a woman and it causes her to miscarry, it’s a crime.
But of course it is. You took something away from her, away from her body. Assault is bad, assault that leaves people without a part of themselves is worse. A doctor can cut out my kidney, if I chose to donate it, and it’s fine. But if I wake up in a bath tub covered in ice and my kidney has been stolen, a serious crime has been committed. A person can use some crumpled up newspaper to start a fire, but if you take their 1969 moon landing paper and burn it… along with their house, you’ve done something truly awful. I can wipe the data from my iPhone and sell it when I buy a new one, but if a thief does that, they’ve broken the law. Are you seeing the difference here? Consent. I can do something to myself, my own property, or have a third party (doctor) perform an operation with my consent. Without consent, it’s a crime.
There’s more to this too. If a woman is in an accident on her way to an abortion clinic, and it results in a miscarriage, she’s probably not going to hold the person who caused the accident liable. Taking something away from someone that they wanted is a much bigger problem than taking something unwanted away. We punish people for taking away something that was wanted. We punish people for the pain their cause without consent. Sex itself is a perfect example. Sex: good, consensual, fun. Rape: same act, no consent, an obvious and egregious crime worthy of a life behind bars.
Furthermore, we once again come back to bodily autonomy. It’s her body, her choice, and her right to consent to the removal of a fetus. Doing anything without a person’s consent isn’t good. It’s utterly shameful to suggest otherwise.
Why not Pro-Life?
You might have noticed I refrained from calling anti-abortion people “pro-life.” Why is that? There are a few reasons. First, everyone is “pro-life.” Well, that is, everyone but psychopathic serial killers, but they’re so rare they’re not worth talking about. No one actively is against life. That’s why anti-abortion people chose that moniker, because “anti-choice” sounds far too harsh of a movement for anyone to join. No one wants to be “anti-” anything, but that’s exactly what they are. They’re not “pro-life,” not if they’re not willing to allow women to have an abortion when her life is in danger or support children after they’re born. You can’t be “pro-life” if you’re also in favor of the death penalty. You can’t be “pro-life” and be against universal or single payer healthcare, so even the poor can get lifesaving healthcare. Most of these people are. Besides, if all the money and time that went into fighting women’s choices went instead into supporting women’s right to birth control, providing healthcare to Americans, and adoption of the millions of children without parents, then none of these things would be issues. They’ve wasted so much time and money on a cause that makes no logical sense, that hurts people, and limits choice. That’s not “pro-life.” But logic alone doesn’t get through to people.
Something Different: The Empathetic Approach
Logic and science tear any anti-choice argument apart, as I hope I’ve displayed above. But that’s not how we reach people. I’m not pro-choice solely for logical reasons. I’m pro-choice because I’m pro-woman. I’m pro-choice because I fear the horror of your body doing something wrong, as does anyone who has had an appendix burst, or tonsils that need to be removed. Imagine if you couldn’t get your appendix out until it burst, not merely when it was infected and going to burst. Imagine if doctors said you had to go through that pain and suffering, and risk your life, just because they didn’t want the possibility of it getting better all on its own to be ignored. It would be excruciating and horrifying. That would be PTSD-inducing trauma. And yet that’s exactly the trauma anti-choice people push upon women. That trauma is what women who can’t get an abortion feel.
They feel trapped in their own bodies, twisted by their own fate. They watch helplessly in horror as their body changes, morphs into something. They think of the scars, the stretch marks, the vaginal tearing, the risk of permanent nerve damage, the risk of death. They have to stop drinking, smoking, having coffee, eating fish. Those addicted to drugs pass on their addictions to their children, and may not have known they were pregnant until they already exposed the fetus to drugs. They fear the pain they would cause a living child. Trapping women in their bodies through legislation, metaphorically tying them down so they can’t cause an abortion themselves, is horrific, something out of a dystopian novel. Removing the choice from women will neither make abortions stop, nor will it stop women from wanting them. All it will do is cause women pain, agony, and severe mental anguish. It’ll cause the waitress to lose her job, the woman climbing the office food chain to take a massive step back in her career that she may never recover from. And don’t let me get started on dating. Let’s not forget, not all pregnancies happen within a relationship. A woman could be raped, and now finds the dating scene impossible. Finding love is hard enough! Let’s not add in superficial fears of scars and stretch marks, a baby bump, or the fact that you can’t even meet for coffee or at a bar, two popular first date options! Being pregnant when you don’t want to be is like being tied up, forced to watch your body distort. It’s body horror akin to horror movies. Why would anyone want to inflict such pain on a woman?
When you think about abortion rights, think about the life of the person most affected: the woman. Because a fetus is not a life. A potential life is not a finished product. What you have is a woman who is suffering, and a way of easing her pain. That’s it. That’s why it’s her body, her choice. Because forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy to term is torture, violates her bodily autonomy, it’s basically slavery, forcing a woman to breed for your beliefs, and it’s just plain wrong. You don’t have to be pro-abortion to believe no woman should go through that suffering to be pro-choice. If you want fewer abortions, support better and more affordable healthcare, like that offered by Planned Parenthood or through universal healthcare. Support safe sex education over abstinence-only education, as it’s been shown to drastically reduce teenage and unwanted pregnancies. Support women, and you’ll actually be pro-life.
