pro-life feminism- an oxymoron?

[darleneconnor]

I dont know if it's possible to have this discussion without it turning into a pro/anti abortion or a pro/anti feminism catfight debate, but we'll see.

Having been an almost/potentially aborted fetus myself I was quite stongly anti-abortion in my teens. In those days I saw feminism/feminists as synonymous with pro-choice, and thus rejected the entire feminist cause (naive teen that I was).

In my 20s I got into feminism big time but found it difficult to reconcile with my (now much more liberal but still anti) views on abortion.

Now, in my 30's I see the pro-life movement (esp in USA) as deeply mysognyistic and would not wish to allign myself with them at all.

However, I do still think that abortion (esp surgical) is quite an unpleasent thing and that society would be better off if there were fewer of them. I would NEVER vote for any kind of criminalisation but I do think some effort should be made to reduce the numbers. No-one ever talks about this, probably because they are scared of being associated with radical anti-abortionists, which I can understand. But surely it is a feminist issue to try to prevent some of the female suffering that comes from this? Even if you discount the embryo/fetus, abortions (esp later ones)can be traumatic and harmful both physically and psychologically to the woman. The debate is so caught up with issues of fetal viability that the woman is forgotten.

So, the question is: can I be a feminist and think that (some) abortions are bad for (some) women?

In other words, even our state accepts that a woman's life, is more important than that of a foetus.

Except if it's not...

Lucky yours does. Mine doesn't. Recent EU court found that even though technically in Ireland you can get an abortion if there is a real threat to your life, in practice you cannot, for any reason at all. Even if you are dying.

So no, I don't think your much of a feminist if you think the state should control womens access to abortion, not least because it implies women can not regulate themselves.

I do think that feminism would be quite a small group if you restricted it to those who believed in abortion on demand up to term.

Believing on its restriction to cases of threat to the woman's life or severe foetal abnormality beyond the (say) 24 week stage is not a feminist position insofar as it is not motivated by feminism. It I'd motivated by the reasoning that a foetus of that age has interests which weigh in the equation - not equal to those of an actual human being, but potentially sufficient to outweigh very severe inconvenience (to put it mildly) to a human being in a very few very rare cases.
Perfectly mainstream position I'd say, and not incompatible with feminism any more than vegetarianism is - it's just a question of whether you give the interests of the foetus a non-zero weighting. Of course I'm coming at this from a utilitarian rather than a rights-based perspective,

Yes but a perfectly mainstream position by definition, isn't a feminist one.

Because feminism isn't mainstream. It's marginalised and considered berserk by the mainstream.

I also think that changing your whole life, is so much more than very severe inconvenience.

And call me old fashioned, but I do think that every child should be a wanted child. If possible.

DilysPrice, I agree with you. I said earlier that I do not think that abortion should be allowed in absolutely any circumstances i.e. it should not be illegal but it is right that there are some circumstances in which it is not permitted. I was asked to elaborate (though the discussion has moved in since then). I have a question of my own instead.

Dittany explains her view that a foetus is only a potential person, not an actual one. HerBex believes that, for anyone other than the pregnant woman to have any kind of say is unacceptable control by the state over women's bodies. A woman who wants to terminate her pregnancy wants the "potential person" she is carrying to be no longer alive. What I'd like to hear from those who think that to support any limits on abortion is to be anti-feminist is this.

At what stage does it cease to be acceptable for the "potential person" to be removed from the womb and made to be no longer alive? (I'm trying to avoid unnecessarily inflammatory language).

If you restrict access to abortion you are at some point giving the foetus precedence over the woman. You are saying to woman that she can't have a termination because you think its not ok and the foetus is more important, at whatever theoretical point you have determined.

I can't reconcile that with a feminist perspective. Its patriarchal, its telling women you know better than them. It doesn't matter that you aren't a man.

xpost. Well if its only a potential person it hasn't been alive.

HerBeX, of course the fact that I'm mainstream doesn't mean I'm right, or that you're wrong - it is quite literally a question of what value you put on a foetus's interests and no-one can ever prove what the right answer is to that. I was pointing out that I'm in the majority just because if you enter a conversation dominated by rights-based arguments from a utilitarian perspective then people tend to look at you funny.

Oh I'm used to people looking at me funny.

I think that in all cases, women's lives should trump those of foetuses.

Because if they don't, then we are reducing women to vessels, wombs, just baby-carriers.

We just cannot concede that, that idea is one of the building blocks of patriarchy. It is a political necessity to insist that we are fully human and have the right to dictate what happens to our bodies and that if we don't want a baby in our womb, then it must come out.

I know that sounds brutal and utilitarian, but in a decent society where motherhood were truly valued, no sane woman would frivolously rip a baby from her womb anyway, so all the theoretical debate along the lines of - "do you think women at 40 weeks should be allowed to abort?" is a bit angels on pinheads IMO.

I think a lot could be done here by being pro-contraception and pro-sex education.

My daughter's school prospectus mentions addressing the "problems of puberty" so I think there's generally a long way to go !
( I've challenged them on their wording here )

It's a very feminist issue isn't it ?

Everyone would prefer contraception to abortion. But so little is done to facilitate this, especially for young women.

I think the church's teaching (especially RC ?) has been far from helpful too.

I'm saying that there comes a point, very late on, when the life of the foetus trumps the extraordinary inconvenience to the woman of bearing it through the last trimester and giving live birth at term (rather than giving birth to a large terminated foetus).
It's a huge deal either way, no doubt about it, but the fact that the number of women affected is tiny means that it's a massively less important source of oppression than (say) the Irish laws (rights-based thinkers will presumably disagree again).

DP, why do you think that the life of a foetus trumps the life of a woman?

Perhaps because she thnks that women are at heart stupid and selfish and don't know their place. And that if patriarchal controls on abortion are relaxed, then women will immediately wait till they are 38 weeks pregnant then, silly capricious bitches, will suddenly decide they want to terminate the pregnancy, laughing gaily at how scatterbrained they are for not having thought of it until now.
I am reminded of a briliantly nasty joke I once heard: 'I really want to have an abortion, but my boyfriend and I haven't been able to conceive yet.'

I would never say that the life of a foetus trumps the life of a woman, only the more loony Catholics would say that. I would absolutely advocate abortion up to term in case of risk to maternal life (over and above normal pregnancy and childbirth).
But I'd say that there comes a time when the whole life of a foetus trumps three months in the life of a woman, and her preferences over what happens to her body during that time.

Well that's possible SGB, but given that I've already said I support abortion on demand up to 12 weeks and that the state of the law after 24 weeks would only ever affect a tiny number of women then it seems unlikely that that's my position.

SGB, leaving aside how often it might actually happen for the moment (we can both agree it would be extremely rare), is there a point at which you personally would draw the line and say that abortion should not be legally permissible at X stage of gestation? Or would you personally be prepared to support termination and destruction of a foetus at absolutely any point prior to birth?

and don't you think those tiny amount of women can think for themselves? Thats the problem here.Could you eprsonally look those women in the eye and say, "well you might want or need an abortion but I have decided you are not allowed"?

DP it is simply not realistic to say that having a child represents 3 months inconvenience for a woman.

It is a life-changing event and it trivialises it to pretend that it's only 3 months inconvenience in the same way that it's a trivialisation to say that women would all go round aborting their babies at 39 weeks if they were allowed to.

It's a huge deal and a massive imposition, I agree, HerBeX, that's why opinions are going to vary about where you draw the line, and why I wouldn't say you're definitely provably wrong, but from where I'm starting, I think the stakes are high enough that that imposition is justifiable.

Buzz, where would your line be? I'm not sure where it is for me I just know it exists because when I visualise abortion at some stages of gestation, I know that they would be, for me, on the "wrong" side.

I don't have one. I think there should be abortion on demand at any stage. Do I personally like the idea odf it? No. But I think its the only real position, because it can never be my decision for someone else. Its really that simple.

Hope, I was talking about abortion right up to term for no other reason than that the woman wants it and meant to say so. It might affect a tiny number of women but that's no reason not have a reasoned view about what is right.

As for your last point, there are many many people whom I think make inadequate parents. I don't think that's any basis for deciding who gets to have them, though.