Can Pro-lifers be feminists?

“I'm sure there are many who would say I'm not allowed to be a feminist cos I bleach my hair or whatever.”

There absolutely aren’t!

The fundamental question is “Do you think that women should have the final say in what happens to their own bodies, or should someone else? Yes or no” If you say no, then you can’t be a feminist.

And pragmatically, you can’t ban abortion. You can only ban safe abortion.

BigDesk I didn't say they were live and let live, I said I was.

It depends. If they're pro-life with regards to their own bodies then that's fine. If they want to take away choice from other women this is not fine. I would struggle with a feminist who didn't agree with what is basically a cornerstone of women's liberation, i.e the right to control our fertility.

It's anti-choice not pro-life, as others have said.

You can be against abortion for yourself but I don't see feminism in supporting the restriction of bodily autonomy for other women.

People against TOP aren't 'live and let live', they are forcing a women to be pregnant against her will.

I don't like sticking labels all over people - or indeed, ripping them off.

As soon as you get into 'you're not a feminist because' or 'you're an MRA because' or 'you're a SJW because' there can't be any kind of discussion.

While I find being anti-choice quite a strange concept, if another woman has her reasons for it, then so be it. It's not up to me to start saying how she can and can't define herself. I'd rather just discuss it and see how she came to that conclusion.

I'm sure there are many who would say I'm not allowed to be a feminist cos I bleach my hair or whatever.

And we all know how tiring it is to be thrown out of the feminist club for not believing that transwomen are 'real' women.

So personally, I live and let live.

"But surely you can be pro-women's rights and pro-children's rights"

I think actually you can't. At some point the choice has to be made

Ultimately some women are going to have abortions regardless of whether they are legal or not, which is extremely dangerous. What good does it do to put these women's lives at risk when in all liklihood the babies will die anyway

There are no 'good' choices in the abortion debate. The best that can be done is providing good education and provision for contraception and facilities for abortion when required with the hope/aim that the requirement for abortion will be viewed as a last option

Nope.

'Pro-life' is a meaningless term.

Women who have had abortions aren't suddenly 'anti-life' - and it's an offensive implication, really.

The bottom line is who's choice is it? The women's, the state, the fathers? Anything other than the woman choice isn't a feminist one. How can women be liberated when forced into pregnancy?

At first I thought I could see where they're coming from...but no, you can't separate the issues can you? You can't say the sex of the person carrying the baby is irrelevant to your stance on abortion, because it's always going to be a woman. Especially since the fact that women are the ones who bear children is a major factor in our inequality.

Well no ones ever given me a feminist card, but

The anti choice lobby are all about punishing women (of the wrong, unmarried sort) for having sex (of the wrong, unmarried sort). And then heaping on condemnation for the women not wanting to ‘take their punhisment’ ie become a mother. Which is a highly derogatory way to think about children and women’s lives of course.
You can tell all that by how few of the pro life lobby ever give a shit to help or advocate about the exact same women if they were to keep their babies. I see very very few pro life outreach supporters specifically for single women with kids.

Of course this support of lone parents would be expensive complex work and it is a lot easier and apparently gets you much more pro life kudos to stand outside abortion clinics shouting and harassing and pestering and following the women and filming them. And the men who protest there are often perving because they get to know they are looking at women who have had sex and judge them.
None of which is feminist.

But there are a very few pro life points about surrogacy and egg donation which could appear to come from a feminist place and so I wonder if even a stopped, antichoice clock might tell the right time, every so often.

Emma I meant autonomy of rights, meaning the baby's right to life.

What’s the point of feminism though if we insist on embracing every single viewpoint? What about misogynist, sexist viewpoints? There have to be some basic principles that are not negotiable.

As I said in my first post, I don’t think we should shut down the abortion rights debate, I think we should engage in it.

I think someone who is anti-abortion can still be a feminist when it comes to other issues, but the anti-abortion position can never be a feminist position.

I doesn't actually matter at which point you, as an individual, decide that an embryo/foetus/baby became a person in its own right.

The question is whether a particular viewpoint means you cannot be feminist.

There are many permutations of laws around TOPs, and I would be very cautious if saying that those who support models I don't particularly like are somehow not allowed to identify themselves as feminists.

Remember - this thread started out about whether feminism is a concept that can embrace differing viewpoints.

I would like to see it able to do so.

“But what about the baby's body autonomy?”
😂
Interested to know how you can have bodily autonomy when you are inside another person’s body and getting all your oxygen and nutrients from them!!

But what about the baby's body autonomy?

I don’t think you can. Bodily autonomy is such a fundamental thing- anyone who thinks women should not have it is not a feminist.

You can be pro-life and feminist if you hold strong views about the ethics of abortion whilst never doing anything - even so much as signing a petition or voting for an anti-choice political candidate - that restricts the access to abortion for a woman who disagrees with you.

You can't be a feminist if you think its ok for a woman to have her human rights to personal bodily autonomy suspended for 9 months against her will.

The reasoning behind the pro-life stance has nothing to do with sex

I suppose the reasoning is 'we want to save babies'. This fundamentally ignores the fact that to do that (using the assumption that the foetus is actually a baby for the purposes of this post) it requires members of one sex to suffer physically and mentally, and go through medical treatments and procedures which risk death or serious harm (and then be left with an unwanted child which then will be raised in an unloving home or in care but I don't see them offering up their homes).

Just because they don't think 'I believe women shouldn't have access to abortion, but theoretically men should' doesn't mean sex is irrelevant. Simply ignoring the fact that the result of pro-life teachings only impacts one sex in any real way doesn't mean it has nothing to do with sex.

If men could bear children, their opinion of abortion would be the exact same, as the reasoning behind the pro-life stance has nothing to do with sex

But they can't. So the 'what if' is entirely irrelevant supposition.

They want to save babies of all genders, as the reasoning behind the pro-life stance has nothing to do with sex

See above

Fundamentally, I'd struggle to reconcile the views of a pro-lifer with feminism as I know it. Yet again it's putting the wants of another group above the needs of women and to me that is entirely unfeminist.

Emma,

This is a forum, not an academic paper. Yes tfmr is legal, as it ought to be.

The debate has been ongoing for many years and the current law, after much consideration, stands at 24 weeks. A substantial minority of women would like to reduce this limit (according to a 2017 comres poll, a 70% majority) would like to reduce this limit. Only 1% of women want to extend it.

Better?

I can't see how you can be both a feminist and anti termination of pregnancy. How is forced pregnancy beneficial to women?

“The debate has accepted 24 weeks as that point where the foetus effectively gains the right to not be aborted. People can play clever games with words saying the foetus is not a person and thus cannot have rights. However the 24 week limit de facto grants the foetus the basic right to not be aborted.”

“The debate has accepted...”
That doesn’t really make sense, “the debate” can’t accept anything. 24 weeks is the law as it stands. Some people accept that and some people don’t.
And it’s not even true that a foetus has the right not to be aborted after 24 weeks. TFMR is still legal after that point.

But surely you can be pro-women's rights and pro-children's rights? Obviously there becomes a situation where one has to trump the other, but I believe that in most cases the life of the child is more important because it's their life.

This ‘choice’ and ‘life’ thing is ridiculous. They are both emotive words. What is wrong with pro and anti medically-assisted abortion?

It seems odd to me to think that a few undifferentiated cells have any rights. Equally it seems bizarre to me that a fully formed baby just before birth has no rights. The debate has accepted 24 weeks as that point where the foetus effectively gains the right to not be aborted. People can play clever games with words saying the foetus is not a person and thus cannot have rights. However the 24 week limit de facto grants the foetus the basic right to not be aborted.

Most women are pro the current time limit. A substantial minority want to reduce it. A tiny 1% want to extend it.

Is 1% of women telling 99% of women what to think feminist? You have to be very sure of your position to not listen to the 99% majority (some might say dangerously so).