I remember having a conversation with Hannah about feminism, where I said I was a feminist. She told me to be careful with all the other connotations also attached to feminism apart from its basic tenet of equality between men and women, which I didn't quite understand at the time, but now have a better grasp of. Often, being pro-choice in the abortion debate is seen as the feminist standpoint, because it gives the woman autonomy of choice. However, I've never been able to accept abortion, because in my mind it has always been an act of violence to an innocent. Basically, I was defending the baby. Recently I read this article, which gave such compelling evidence to why abortion is also a worry for the woman. It may seem like a quick solution but it in fact speaks of deeper injustices, inequalities, and perspective problems within our society, where the act of ending the life of a child is in fact stemming from the same oppressive forces that prevent equality between men and women, namely perspectives where something is considered less worthy than another based on humanly constructed notions of worth. Ultimately, it is a systemic disease that has turned mother against child - one of the most unnatural things imaginable.
"[Abortion] gets presented as if it’s a tug of war between the woman and the baby. We see them as mortal enemies, locked in a fight to the death. But that’s a strange idea, isn’t it? It must be the first time in history when mothers and their own children have been assumed to be at war. We’re supposed to picture the child attacking her, trying to destroy her hopes and plans, and picture the woman grateful for the abortion, since it rescued her from the clutches of her child. If you were in charge of a nature preserve and you noticed that the pregnant female mammals were trying to miscarry their pregnancies, eating poisonous plants or injuring themselves, what would you do? Would you think of it as a battle between the pregnant female and her unborn and find ways to help those pregnant animals miscarry? No, of course not. You would immediately think, “Something must be really wrong in this environment.” Something is creating intolerable stress, so much so that animals would rather destroy their own offspring than bring them into the world. You would strive to identify and correct whatever factors were causing this stress in the animals. The same thing goes for the human animal.
Because abortion is a product of a merciless system that pushes mothers into a corner with no recourse, the idea of 'pro-choice' becomes an ironic one, because it is supporting a decision that is forced and helplessness, which is incidentally antithetical to choice itself which is meant, like feminism, to be empowering. It seems to me utterly natural then, to be a feminist and also to be pro-life.
“No one wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal, caught in a trap, wants to gnaw off its own leg.”
Adult, child, infant, foetus, animal, plant, or earth, everything deserves the respect of being created by an all-powerful, all-loving God, being touched by his hand and called his own.
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