Pro-choice

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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Like Briar Rose, we have been asleep, protected by the thorns and brambles of our self-selected insular communities in which our beliefs and feelings are constantly validated. We ‘unfriend’ or ‘unfollow’ those with whom we disagree – growing our brambles denser over time. We choose the veil of emotional safety rather than take the risk of engaging in conversation with those who believe differently. We protect our fragile egos and assume everything will be all right because we can only see what is within the confines of our homegrown thorns and brambles. Our hubris blinded us, such that we did not see the aura which envelops our American landscape.

In the cold, dark pre-dawn hours of Wednesday morning our edifice of thorns and brambles was ripped open with the news of Trump’s victory. We were awakened by an unwanted, unasked for kiss of a harsh new reality.

In our slumber, we dismissively believed that our constructed walls and our thorny attitudes were enough. We rested on our laurels granted to us by our mothers and grandmothers.

Somehow, in the intervening years, we forgot. We forgot what our mothers marched for and what our grandmothers fought for. We forgot that it took a struggle to even be able to wear pants, let alone a pantsuit. We are spoiled, my Gen X compatriots and my Millennial sisters. Our great conceit is that we take for granted the advances made by previous generations of American women.

My own mother was a member of NOW, NCJW, and the ACLU among other groups. She marched as an activist and advocate for women’s rights and equal rights for all. She successfully sued an employer in the 1970’s because her male colleagues were paid more than she was. She not only contributed financially to the groups and movements she supported, but she actively recruited new members and did grassroots work.

Her mother, my grandmother, met my grandfather at a socialist political rally in the late 1940’s. The two of them were politically active liberals for the entirety of their lives. My grandmother wore her pantsuits in the 1930’s and took to local elected offices in the 1960’s. She was brash and loud about her beliefs and worked to move things forward for all of us.

My paternal grandmother worked in Washington in the 1940’s until a pregnancy outside of marriage caused her to lose her job. She was an active member of the Democratic party until her descent into Alzheimer’s. She hosted dinners and rallies at her home and campaigned door to door for the candidates who supported progressive agendas.

Those women of my past worked diligently for the rights we now fear to lose. However, we quietly acquiesced to small injustices made against women including both our reproductive rights and, principally, our equal human rights.

We sat and did nothing as state by state, piecemeal, our rights have been chipped away.

Someone else will fix it. It’s not my job. Let NARAL and Planned Parenthood handle this.

A minor change of wording to a law here and there do little harm, so why fight it?

It’s still OK.

The small downshift in the number of weeks of pregnancy that abortion is acceptable.

It seems to makes sense, right? We can still have abortions, except for when we can’t.

Hobby Lobby winning their case to not cover birth control for their employees due to their CEO’s religious beliefs.

Well, it sucks, but what are you going to do?

These seemingly small shifts affect someone else, you see, not me. Till it does.

This death of our rights and our humanity is a death by a thousand cuts.

This is the insidious crawl of misogyny, writhing underneath the sheet of illusory safety draped upon us by men who truly believe they know what is best for women’s bodies.

It is the misogyny enforced with smug arrogance by the women who believe their religion or their tradition grant them the power to impose their way of life upon others.

I put my boots on the ground during March for Women's Lives in DC in April 2003 — I put my boots on the ground during March for Women’s Lives in DC in April 2003

Our fore-mothers put their big girl pants on to actively work for change. I call on you, my sisters and compatriots, to cut away your own protective brambles, to move from the perceived safety of your self-constructed segments of reality.

I call on you now – put your money where your mouth is, lace up your boots and work to further progress. Take the risk. Open yourself up to the possibility of making this country a better place for all people.

My boots are already on my feet. I am ready.

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On the Potentiality of a Fetus vs. the Realized Woman

On Proper Terminology

Pro-Life Beliefs, or Valuing the Fetus over the Woman

Anti-Abortion Feminists?

The Question of Bodily Autonomy

Arise: Sleeping Beauties No More