With eight states (so far) passing laws that effectively ban abortion, including some laws that criminally punish both women and doctors for having or performing an abortion, it is beyond time for us to stand up and speak out. Preaching to the choir is nice, but won’t make change. So, here I write for those who are opposed to abortion.
On Proper Terminology
**Note: I use the correct medical term fetus instead of baby, with good reason. When sperm meets egg, the cluster of cells is called a zygote. Then it becomes an embryo. It remains an embryo till week 11 (date from last menstrual period). Afterwards, it becomes a fetus. It is a fetus until it is born and a valve in its heart closes so it can circulate oxygen through the lungs as opposed to receiving it through the umbilical cord. The physiology of a fetus is not the same as a baby after birth.
Pro-Life Beliefs, or Valuing the Fetus over the Woman
The pro-life belief presumes to value the life of the fetus and in doing so, determines that abortion is taking a life. In that, the belief is that taking a life is morally wrong and therefore abortion should not be an option for pregnant people.
Fundamentally, this belief values the life of the embryo or fetus over that of the woman. It values the potentiality of that life over the realized life of the woman. It values a maybe over what is.
I had a social media discussion, in the context of the abortion debate, with a man this week in which he said that he values the lives of both his wife and his children equally. Yet, what he could not see is that those are realized children, not potential children. When I mentioned a litany of pregnancy complications, including stroke, hemorrhage and death that a woman may suffer, he still insisted that the life of the fetus was valued as much as that of the woman so the woman should take the risk of pregnancy… yet, he values his wife? Do you see the problem here? This is him valuing the fetus over the mother, unarguably.
The pro-life beliefs are not that they value the life of the fetus and the woman equally, though they say that often. The pro-life beliefs value the fetus over the mother, no matter the cost to the pregnant person. The costs to her are physical, emotional, economic, social, relational, and temporal. When we value a fetus, an unrealized potentiality, over a fully realized woman, we place her status as second class. She is demoted.
Anti-Abortion Feminists?
To those who claim to be feminists and anti-abortion, you find yourselves in a paradoxical state. Feminism is equality for all genders in all matters
physical, emotional, economic, social, relational, and temporal. By demoting a woman’s value to below that of an unrealized potential you have stripped her of her equality. You can not claim to be a feminist while decreasing a woman’s value at the same time.
The Question of Bodily Autonomy
Ok, so what about the question of bodily autonomy? A zygote, embryo and fetus are only sustained because of the woman’s body. Without the woman’s uterus the fetus has no nutrients, oxygen, water or anything else it needs to grow and develop. If you remove it from the uterus it is incompatible with life. As such, its body is not in any way separate from the woman’s body. It shares blood circulation through the placenta. The woman’s heart beats therefore so does the fetus’s. If the woman dies, her heart stops, so does that of the fetus. Given that, the fetus is thus part of a woman’s body and therefore is under her dominion. The realized woman has autonomy. The potentiality of a fetus does not.
Autonomy also assumes the ability to make decisions about one’s own body. A fetus has no decision making capability. A newborn baby, 2 weeks old, has no decision making capability. All decisions for and about the baby are made by its parent(s). Neither the fetus nor the baby have autonomy. They are incapable of such a thing. They have no ability to govern their body of their beliefs. A realized person does. The pregnant person, being realized, has autonomy. Therefore, the decision as to how she handles her body and everything contained within is solely up to her.
The pregnant woman is stripped of her human rights and of her autonomy by anti-abortion legislation. By valuing a fetus, a potentiality, over the reality of a woman it thus demotes her to below the level of men do who have full dominion over their bodies. She and her body are put under the control of the state.
The issue has never been about fetus’s lives or the question thereof. If you believe that you have fallen for a red herring. The issue, is and always will be, controlling women and their bodies. Pro-life isn’t pro-life. It is pro-birth, pro-control and pro-women-as-second-class-citizens.
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Thank you for your thoughts Deena.
I find these arguments so painful. I believe that the majority of those who choose an abortion don’t do so light-heartedly. Their decision will be theirs to deal with, for a lifetime. Those who protest loudly outside of clinics cannot see the individual and her inner and outer circumstances or that of the conception. Neither do they assume that the decision was a process, most likely extremely painful, traumatic, full of fear, shame, self blame.
Yes, there will be women, a few in comparison, who may not be -or think the are not- thus affected.
And there will be countless mothers, families, couples, who go through their pregnancies, have their babies and never look back. This is the majority I should like to think.
What are we asking for: unwanted babies born into illness (when mother is sick, or in any other way physically or mentally unfit), trauma and lack of connection (rape victims), or waiting for years to be adopted without the security of a loving care provider….? 12 year-old mothers, because they didn’t know any better?
For crying out loud, when did blame and punishment bring development?
How about spending that time, money, energy on loving care, education, support, and having for a change compassion…..?