Why I am pro-choice and why you should be too
Before we start this very sensitive and polemical topic, we have to define our terms. Pro-Choice we’re talking about the woman having the choice to decide to either terminate a pregnancy or carry it to term. Usually the Pro-Life side wants to force the woman to carry it to term and ban the option to terminate a pregnancy. Once the baby is born however, they don’t seem to care what happens with the health of the mother during pregnancy, nor the health of the baby after being born. Therefore we can reasonably conclude that they are not pro-life, they are pro-birth & anti-choice. I can’t decide what another woman, or another man does with their body, all I can do is decide what I do with my body. That’s what bodily autonomy is, which is why I am pro-choice.
What is an Abortion
An abortion is the termination of a non-viable pregnancy that results in the termination of a fetus. Let’s be clear, it is not the right to kill a human life, it’s the right to terminate a pregnancy.
Morality of Abortions
If abortions are immoral, should it be illegal? Everything is legal until there’s a reason to make it illegal. We don’t legislate on morality or what people claim is immoral.
Pro-birthers are constantly shaming women for making a decision about their own body. I have no right as a man, to tell a woman what she can do with her own body, just like nobody can tell me what to do with my body. Bodily autonomy should be respected by people and even the Government. Pro-birthers assume that woman who commit abortions love doing it, when it’s a traumatic experience for them. I can’t even fathom what they are going through when they do decide to make that incredibly difficult decision.
People can argue about the process of an abortion, whether there are methods that could be more moral than others. In certain situations, abortions can be the most moral thing you can do; if the woman was raped, if the mother’s life is in danger if she does carry it to term, baby will have no quality of life, severe deformities etc.
Pro-birthers like to make it seem as if women are having abortions literally a few days before delivery, which is so far from the truth. Contrary to what you hear from pro-birthers, majority of abortions happen within the first trimester. Few of them happen in the 2nd trimester and 3rd trimester are mainly exceptions (i.e Health of the mother/severe deformity/no quality of life etc.).
Whether you think abortions are immoral, in the end, it doesn’t matter what you think. It’s not your decision to make.
Her body. Her choice. Your body. Your choice.
What if?
What if the Government or women wanted to force vasectomies on males until a certain age of maturity, then reverse it when males are mature enough? I can guarantee you there would be an uproar! Vasectomies are not even remotely analogous to a pregnancy yet men would protest. Vasectomies are painless, quick process, reversible, no physical changes to your body, no trauma, the list goes on. YET, men would object to such a violation of their bodily autonomy. Now if it’s wrong to violate men’s bodily autonomy with a quick painless vasectomy, how come when it comes to a woman’s bodily autonomy the tune changes? You may argue that a vasectomy doesn’t lead to the termination of a fetus, and you’d be right, the problem is; a fetus isn’t a human. Pro-birthers don’t want to grant rights to fetuses, they want to grant them special rights, over a human. The question remains; would it be okay for the Government to force women to carry a baby to term against their will? The answer is NO!
A woman’s bodily autonomy should not be violated by other people or the Government.
Consent
You hear “Well if you didn’t want to be pregnant then don’t have sex, assume responsibility”. Consent to sex doesn’t equal consent to pregnancy. Consent to pregnancy doesn’t equal consent to remaining pregnant. Consent to remaining pregnant doesn’t equal consent to carry it to term.
If I have a 1 year old child, does it have the right to use my body without my consent? How about a 2 years old? Or a 5 year old?
Then why would a minus 9 month old have the right to use a woman’s body without her consent? It’s never a trivial decision to terminate a pregnancy, it changes the woman forever.
Rights
If you say a woman has no right to terminate a pregnancy/to remove herself from the fetus. You’re not granting the fetus rights as I’ve mentioned, you want to grant a fetus special rights over a human being. You’re essentially valuing the life of a fetus more than a living, breathing human. You’re saying “I have the right to force you on behalf of the fetus, to force that fetus to keep using your body without your consent” when that wouldn’t apply anywhere else. You couldn’t force a parent to donate a kidney to their 2 year old, you can’t legally force them to do that.
Let’s say 2 people have sex that results in a pregnancy. The people who had sex are responsible for the pregnancy, which means they can either decide to take action in terminating the pregnancy or they can decide to carry it to term. I say they, as in both can decide together, but ultimately it’s the woman’s decision as it’s her body.
What if they both took the necessary precautions and it still ended with a pregnancy. Do you think they should be forced to carry it to term? If there’s a person who is pregnant, who didn’t want to be pregnant and you as an external person (or the Government) forces them to carry it to term as a form of punishment. It’s like saying “We know there’s a remedy, but we wont allow you to use it”.
What if the woman was raped? How can you, an outsider, force a woman who was raped, to carry a baby to term? It’s undoubtedly clear that you don’t even understand the trauma that comes with being raped.
What if a doctor says that by giving birth, the mother will lose her life…How can you, a self professed pro-lifer, force her to carry it to term knowing the outcome? Your special pleading makes you a hypocrite.
What if the child being born has no quality of life? Why would you want to force a child to suffer every day for the rest of his life. How about the mother witnessing her child suffering every day, and her role as a mother — to protect her child — can’t come to fruition because of the futility of her efforts.
Stop pretending to know the motivations of women, seriously. Stop pretending you know the circumstances that are at play. You have no idea and frankly, it’s none of your business.
What does the Bible have to say about abortions?
Majority of pro-birthers are religious people, though not all of them are. When you hear a pro-birther say “Abortion is murder”, even if they make abortions illegal, it still wouldn’t be murder because the term murder is solely for humans. Specifically, the Bible says nothing about abortions. There are 2 verses that I can think of, that are closest to what we’re talking about here.
Jeremiah 1:5
Jeremiah 1:5 is the most commonly cited verse; essentially it’s God saying “before I formed you in the womb, I knew you”. It supports the notion that life, identity, personhood, begins not just at conception but before conception. It doesn’t hint at abortion, it could be viewed as poetic to be honest. A parent could tell their child one day “Even before you were my child, I knew you. You were what I hoped for, you are who I always wanted”, it’s Pinocchio-esque.
Nothing about Jeremiah 1:5 suggest you shouldn’t terminate a pregnancy. A child is not eternal, only God is eternal. At most you were a thought, an idea in God’s eyes.
Census
For a census: The Bible states that 1 month old to 5 years old, you shall evaluate them as 5 shekels. They are essentially property of the parents. Under 5yrs old they don’t consider you a person/human, you are property. Fetuses and less than 1 month old’s are not even counted when tallying people. Essentially you’re not a person until you’ve been outside of a womb for over a month — largely due to the fact that mortality rates were so high they didn’t bother counting them.
Using God and the Bible to support pro-life idea is nonsensical. According to the Bible, God didn’t have a problem telling people to commit mass genocides, he even committed one with the global flood. Bible orders the slaughter of all men & women during war, God said to keep the virgin women and children for yourselves. When a woman is raped, god watches in indifference; god cares more about the rapists’ “free will” than he does about the woman being raped. If I was an omnipotent, omnibenevolent deity, I would stop a woman from being raped because that’s the moral thing to do. We can’t blame these evil acts on free will because WHO created Satan knowing he would cause so much evil? God. WHO created the tree of knowledge knowing the Fall would happen? God. WHO let the fall happen which affected our “Free will”? God. Who is omniscient and could/should have prevented this? God. God is thus the enabler of sin (Isaiah 45:7). Some might say “Evil happens but it will all work out in the end, it’s for the greater good in gods plan”. First, any one of us could think of a better Plan (I.e Avoid creating Satan and Tree of Knowledge debacle). Second, if evil happens for the greater good, then we should ALL cheer when a children die of preventable diseases, we should celebrate when a woman is raped and killed, or cancer takes another human life, natural disasters killing thousands, animals being mauled to death in the animal kingdom (I can go on and on) because it’s all part of God’s Master Plan of Greater Good. The Epicurean dilemma of Theodicy is problematic for a god that is supposed to be omnibenevolent. And the problem of Divine Hiddenness is problematic since god likes to play the biggest game of Hide and Seek with humans.
There’s even a passage in Hosea where if the husband does something wrong, God gives the woman miscarrying wombs and dry breasts as punishment for what something somebody else has done. In Hosea 13:16, about the people of Samaria; the women rebelled against god “they shall fall by the sword, their infant shall be dashed in pieces and the women with child shall be ripped up”. This is god’s punishment to people who rebelled against him.
God is the worst example of pro-life.
Numbers 5:27–28
If you suspect that your wife has been unfaithful to you. Then you can make this concoction as essentially a curse. This concoction will cause your bowels to be cursed, belly swelling etc. It’s saying you can make the wife drink something that can cause an abortion/termination of a pregnancy, miscarriage. The biblical logic here is; if she was faithful, she’ll drink it and she’ll be fine. If she wasn’t faithful, it will cause all kinds of problems. There’s debates on this passage, whether it really means abortion or sterility. It’s possible that we could come up with a concoction that could do either. The one that is described in this passage probably wouldn’t do anything (Largely because of the lack of understanding from the authors about how the world works)
It’s kind of like old school blood magic, it’s a “Let’s let God decide” game.
You say you’ve been faithful, let’s see. Now, whether it’s forced sterility or forced abortion, both are immoral. There’s no mechanism that could correlate the concoction to “Hey, you were unfaithful/faithful”, the Bible is advocating for blood magic here. Everything in this verse is silly, God is God, he doesn’t need you to drink anything for you to have an abortion, or forced sterility, or a miscarriage. All it does is now they can force any woman that’s suspected of being unfaithful to drink a concoction as punishment, which is immoral. I wonder, what if a woman suspects a man of cheating? No concoction? How convenient…
It goes back to the fact that in the bible, women are viewed as second class citizens: “Women shall not hold authority over man” “Woman should stay silent in church, they are not allowed to speak, must be submissive”(1 Corinthians 14, 1 Timothy 2). Moreover, women — depending on their age — are worth between 1/2 and 2/3’s of a man.
Christians should stop using the Bible as a justification for why abortions are wrong. The Bible doesn’t give rights or even special rights to fetuses at all.
Conclusion
The important part here is bodily autonomy. Government shouldn’t be allowed to force a woman to carry a baby to term, and neither do you. Most people who argue over abortions don’t understand how it happened, the circumstances at play, the consequences etc. Once a baby is born they don’t care what happens to the baby nor the mother.
If you want to be called pro-life, it implies all-life. The minute you force a mother to carry a baby to term for example, knowing her health is in jeopardy and she passes away as a result. You can’t possibly call yourself pro-life.
For religious people who act like they are “warriors of God” “Fighters of life”, read this book by Candida Moss & Joel Baden: Reconceiving Infertility: Biblical Perspectives on Procreation and Childlessness. You’ll see how the Bible shames women constantly, for being suspected of unfaithfulness, infertility, promiscuity, the list goes on and on. These views about women have to change.
Thankfully, in the end, it doesn’t matter what the Bible says. We fortunately don’t live in a theocracy.
Few things to remember:
- Please stop pretending to know a woman’s motivation
- Please stop pretending to know how pregnancy happened
- Please stop pretending to know the circumstances at play
- Please stop shaming women
- Support bodily autonomy
- Women abortion decisions, are none of your business
Hopefully this article helped you become Pro-choice as a supporter of bodily autonomy and women’s rights.
Justin