Pro-Life Feminists: I’m Pro-Abortion, and I Hope You’ll March with Me
On January 21st, I will write my primary contact information on my arm in black sharpie and I will march in the streets with thousands of others in the Women’s March on Washington. I’m a woman, a feminist, and I’m pro-abortion.
I used to say “pro-choice” but that language stopped feeling true. Neither you, nor I, believe women should not have choices. I believe women should have the right to choose an abortion, without any restrictions. I know we disagree. Still, I hope you’ll march with me. I don’t hope to change your mind, or to rehash fine lines of policy or medicine, or to argue semantics, ideology, or law. Not today, and not on January 21st. I don’t hope you’ll march with me for abortion access.
I hope you’ll march for the Affordable Care Act: for women’s access to birth control and for protected maternal care; for children’s healthcare and access to mental health services; for cancer screening and preventative care.
I hope you’ll march for an end to policy brutality and racial profiling. I hope you’ll march for an end to mass for-profit incarceration and for black children dead in our streets. I hope you’ll march for racial justice, for the promise of equality and dignity for everyone.
I hope you’ll march for LGBTQIA rights, freedoms, families, safety and love.
I hope you’ll march for caregivers. I hope you’ll march for protections for sex workers, who are vulnerable. I hope you’ll march for every victim of violence and exploitation.
I hope you’ll march for a good job and living wage for every American. I hope you’ll march for childcare and parental leave, for families, for sick leave and safe working conditions.
I hope you’ll march with me for the rights of immigrants, and for the human dignity the world owes to all refugees. For Syrian refugees walking across Europe. For Aleppo. For Dreamers. For families, pregnant women, and children held in detention centers. For migrant workers.
I hope you’ll march for clean water in Flint and the protection of sacred lands at Standing Rock.
I hope you’ll march for Planned Parenthood. I hope you’ll march for medically accurate sex education in public schools, for science education, for evolution and climate change. I hope you’ll march to protect our planet for the generations yet to be born.
I hope you’ll march against misogyny and white supremacy at the highest offices in the United States.
I hope you’ll march to stand in support of your fellow citizens expressing their dissent though the exercise of their civil rights to peacefully protest and assemble.
Next Saturday, January 21st, I hope you’ll stand with me. I know that someday you and I might meet again, on a different field, in a different political climate, holding different signs. I know that someday you and I may be directly at odds with one another, and that it is possible that there can be no compromise between us on abortion. Today is not that day.
January 21st is not that day. Women’s March on Washington, and its sister marches across the globe, are about more than abortion access. Today party lines are drawn deeper than ever before. The gulf between us is widening. Oppressors and the oppressed. The powerful and the powerless. Rich and poor. White and black. Urban and rural. Men and women. Straight and gay. Mainstream and marginalized. Democrats and Republicans. Pro-life and pro-choice. Even where we agree, infighting threatens our unity and the way forward.
This is the only invitation I can give you. I am not an organizer or an activist. I’m barely a writer. My authority means nothing. I am recognized by no one. I have no right to speak for the movement, or for anyone but myself. Today I speak from me to you. I hope you’ll stand with me. I’ll take my allies where I can find them, for as long as we can work together and on every issue we have in common until we must part ways. And on that day of parting, I hope it can be in mutual respect, with a deeper understanding of one another.
You are pro-life. I am pro-abortion. But that is not all that defines us. I hope you’ll stand with me. On January 21st, when I stand anonymous in a crowd of many, I would be honored to be standing with you.
