Can Pro-lifers be feminists?

I'm pro-choice but I think the transplant analogy is a bit of a non-starter. Probably the closest analogy would be if someone was already using your donated kidney and then you wanted it back.

The bone marrow example is analogous though. Yes, the recipient would die if you changed your mind, but you still cannot be forced to undergo the procedure if you choose not to allow your body to be used in this way.

Actually, come to think about it, I don't think any transplant donation analogy will work fully. One is insisting that a person undergoes a medical procedure (never acceptable where a person has the capacity to refuse) and the other is denying access to a medical procedure (sometimes acceptable even where a person has the capacity to consent).

The bone marrow analogy is still closer than (for example) kidney transplant tho.

I don't agree with the regular transplant analogy for this debate. That assumes that a woman at 24 weeks gestation has had no choice at all at that point to refuse to continue the pregnancy. It may work in countries which don't allow any abortion, but that isn't the case here. Women have choices before the 24 week limit, and further choices after that under specific circumstances.

I was recently selected as a candidate for potential bone marrow donation having signed up to the bone marrow register. In the literature, even at the stage before full blood testing is done, it is made abundantly clear that there comes a stage in bone marrow donation where the recipient would die if the donor changes her/his mind. That is far more analogous to the time limit vs no time limit debate.

The above argument also positions children as a punishment for sex, which isn't nearly as child friendly an argument as the people making it would probably like to think.

Srilli, I don’t understand how people can say if your pro life you are anti choice? In most cases surely the woman chose to have sex and also chose to not be using adequate contraception? Birth control is free in the UK and easily accessible. It really isn’t that hard to prevent most pregnancies. To me that is a lot of ‘choice’.
Obviously I am not talking here about cases where the woman was raped etc. But from what I know the number of abortions carried out as a result of rape is very small compared to those carried out for reasons of absent or failed contraception

Contraception fails, women have every right to fix that failure by choice
Women on contraception didnt want to be pregnant in the first place so why deny them?

Clarissa I don't trust every woman to make the "right decision". Some women get pregnant and abort repeatedly. For starters, I don't believe that they are making the right decisions. Why are women assumed to be such infallibly good decision makers? And why are unborn children being given absolutely no value at all, while suddenly gaining massive value and rights as soon as they leave the uterus? If you feel this way about the unborn baby, it doesn't seem too much of a leap to approving of female infanticide, for instance - there's only 5 minutes difference between what has been described as a parasite in the woman's body, that she should be free to deal with as she wishes, and the newly born unwanted baby girl

First up, children are born, we are talking a fetus here.
A fetus has value, if the woman wants the pregnancy. If not its a problem that needs removal, that simple, take the bs emotion out of it.
In that 5 minutes a big thing changes. The fetus goes from attached from the woman and a risk to her wellbeing to a legal seperate person that isnt attached to anothers body.
Once born can you demand someone gives you a kidney or donates blood? No, even if you die, so how is it different for a woman and her uterus

Missymoo100
Squeakums-
As I said, and other added...
FGM for consenting adults- I see you agree with this
But these....
Wilful grievous assault with consent
Illegal drugs
Prostitution
Do you think the law should be remove to allow bodily autonomy I'm these cases, if it's so important.
Then as jemima added
Porn
Page 3
Etc....
If you say autonomy is absolute you cannot place restriction on anyone, everything is allowable, even if they are harming themselves or indirectly others

Prostitution, page 3, drugs, again all a persons choice and i have no issue with them. It dont harm me, as long as they not forced its all good to me, i do grant there are womem who forced into prostitution and that is wrong on every level. Im talking the woman who do it purely by choice and want
Ive never heard of someone wanting to be asulted but i spose people get their kicks in many ways, again if they consenting whats the issue? Its their body

Laws in reality are on paper, as it stands you dont have to obey them and can do as you wish with your body, just depends if your willing to put up with the punishment IF your caught.

An obvious rejoinder is how many women are coerced into having abortions? Either by partners or their own families? Furthermore how many women choose to terminate because they no they are lacking funds, and were it not for poverty would choose to have the child?

I fail to see how the "free choice" arguments work for abortion but not prostitution?

I agree Lass and I could see the arguments against even when I wrote it. It is difficult to counter the 'happy hooker' argument because there are undeniably some who will enter voluntarily. It doesn't mean it's a good choice much like continuing to drink to excess or take Class A drugs is not a good choice. Is it right to justify it as a valid choice because some people choose it, whereas many/most (?) just end up in it? I would tend to think not

There are also some who consistently enter or stay in abusive relationships because they 'love' the partners.

That's not even taking into account those who forced into prostitution or those forced to remain in it

Porn and prostitution are the antithesis of bodily autonomy

They are the antithesis of bodily autonomy in the opinion of the radical feminists on here because they do not consider the women involved are making a true choice. There are many people who disagree with that.

Some one defined bodily autonomy as it means deciding what happens in, to and on your body - what goes in it, what comes out of it, who touches it

I don't think that was a helpful definition because unless you whole heartedly accept there is no free choice ever in being inolved in the "sex industry" that definition applies to it as much as deciding to have an abortion.

So sorry unless your audience is always restricted to like-minded radical feminists I think it is a defintion which shoots you in the foot and makes you a hostage to supporters of porn etc.

Personally I think porn and prostitution are so damaging and degrading to the women involved and society as a whole that the "bodily autonomy " argument is irrelevant. I don't care how freely someone enters into it- porn and prostitution ultimately do no good to anyone.

I found the appropriation of Savita Halappanavar and the misrepresentation that anyone who does not support abortion to term in all circumstances would support what happened to her offensive.

I don't get that argument either.

Porn and prostitution are the antithesis of bodily autonomy

I'm late to the thread and have tried to RTFT but have probably missed lots

I have said from the outset I support 24 weeks, the removal of the 2 doctor rule and the retention of no limit in exceptional circumstances. If that mainstream to liberal stance makes me a "forced birther" heaven help you changing the minds of anti abortion supporters

I agree with this completely. I've said before on similar threads that, having had a prem baby at 35 weeks who needed no medical intervention at all to thrive, I can't support the proposition that women should be able to choose abortion to term for any reason at all. I understand the "as early as possible, as late as necessary" mantra, and I nod along to most of the arguments made for the removal of the upper time limit in abortion law in England, Wales and Scotland. If that means that I don't fit the definition of a feminist, well, so be it (though I would argue that I "qualify" on many other grounds)

Thanks kittens, and bert.

I've had a glass of wine and some dinner and I could probably get back in the ring for round two now.

I agree. The "Well, if you agree with abortion then you have to agree with porn and prostitution" line is deeply distasteful.

I'm with Sophocles. This is not a good subject to be pedantic and devil's advocate-y about, and having anti-feminist men stick their oar in too isn't helping.

Obviously, people have different understandings of what bodily autonomy means than I do It doesn't necessarily follow that mine is wrong.

There's something about the freedom of the choice involved in prostitution and its relation to bodily autonomy (ie bodily autonomy is fine for the Happy Hooker (TM) but not for the trafficked woman), but you know what - I've had a shit day at work, I'm tired, and I can't be arsed with the tone of the debate here right now. It's wearing me down right now that posters who I think agree with me on large chunks of stuff can't be bothered to engage in the common ground without attacking the areas of difference. Too tired. Agree to differ.

In addition, if it is believed that "bodily autonomy for women" at all costs, and in every case, is a core principle of feminism, it logically follows that feminists MUST support legalisation of prostitution and that campaigning against grid girls / pornography / page 3 is an anti-feminist act because it impinges the bodily autonomy of women who want to do those jobs.
No it doesn't. Bodily autonomy precludes coercion. Feminist theory does not support coerced abortion any more that it supports forced birth.

You're in a facility that does IVF and associated procedures, and a fire breaks out. In the room with you is a container with hundreds of already fertilized embryos, and a toddler. You can only carry one. Which do you save? If a fertilized embryo really is a life then surely you'd have to save the container with hundreds of them rather than one child. And yet I've never yet encountered a person whose immediate gut response wouldn't be to grab the toddler and run

It is taken me a while to realise what is wrong with that question. If you leave the toddler she will die in considerable pain and fear. The embryos, if they do not survive will not even be aware of it , far less suffer pain and distress.

Savita Halappanavar. Say her name.
She is an example of what happens when self righteous people pass laws banning abortion. This was a late term pregnancy that should have been aborted and was not. This is the reality of what we are talking about here

No it is not. No one on here has said abortion in those circumstances should be banned. No one has said they support the Irish position.

bewilderness

Ok. UK or whatever, my position is that unless there is a threat to the mother's life or a reason threatening the child's health, abortion after viability date should not be necessary. If you can think of other exceptions, such as a rape victim not knowing that they were in fact pg until after that time, then certainly these situations should be covered.

Nor am I saying that there are lots of late term abortions, but some people advocate abortion up to birth, which I can't accept.

Our difference in opinion is probaby due to my believing that there is life from conception in some form, but after the date of viability, I cannot countenance that that life should be terminated without there being risk to life of the mother. On a person level, I don't believe that disability shoud be a reason for late termination either, but I would not campaign to have this removed

So is your position that the law should be changed to allow abortion on demand up to term, because no woman would ever have an abortion after foetal viability? That isn’t a logical position, and, given the fact that women do conceal births and let their babies die, unlikely to be true.

If a law is to be changed, the consequences must be explored.

These women who abort a live fetus at term are about as common as the welfare queen driving the Cadillac collecting for fourteen children each from a different father made famous by Ronald Reagan. None of whom have ever been found.

So to my simple brain, bodily autonomy allows for the ending of a pregnacy at any time. I get that.

Where to logic comes unstuck is when the mother then has the additional right to determine whether, post viability, it is a live or still birth because in a late termination she will have to go into labour regardless.

By all means end a pregancy at 35 weeks but as the foetus is totally viable outisde the womb bodily autonomy does not allow the mother the right to terminate life and by this point the person who provides 50% of the DNA would also have a say (not in ending the pregnancy of course)

Its all pointless semantics anyway is it would never be allowed in the 1st place.