I am Pro-Life

[AmandaPandtheTantrumofDoom]

Inspired by the Wendy Davis threads and something being discussed on those, so please forgive the repetition.

I am sick of the anti-abortion debate hogging the term pro-life and making me out, by implication, to be anti-life.

I am pro-life.

I am pro-women's, men's and children's lives. I am pro-medical advances that extend lives and cure diseases. I am pro-healthcare programmes designed to improve public health and extend lives. I am pro-care for the elderly. I am pro-feeding the hungry and helping the poor. I am pro-advances which allow more women to successfully carry a pregnancy. I am pro- supporting those with mental illnesses.

Thinking specifically of the developing world, I am pro-safe drinking water. I am pro-sanitation. I am pro-medication and malaria nets and my wonderful friend who researches in the area of malaria. I am pro-education and and I am pro-those seeking to wipe out FGM.

That's just a few of the ways I am pro-life. I am going to stand up and say it loudly. I am pro life.

I am also pro-a woman's right to access a safe and legal abortion if she wants to or needs to.

Vodka - But you still haven't answered why you think it should be available in cases of rape, or how that would work? I do appreciate that you are thinking things through, but I think knee jerk reactions like that (oh yes, obviously an exemption for rape) do need to be challenged and thought through.

I acknowledged it wouldn't be simple to do. I accept it may not even be possible.

My views are based on choice. If someone is raped and becomes pregnant they did not make the choice to. If someone has consensual sex, knowing that there is a chance they may conceive then there are opportunities to make a choice before conception. And if accidents happen there is the morning after pill. And there is just not doing something if you can't live with the consequences.

But, you're right, none of this could be monitored effectively. As I said, my views are for me and the decisions I make. Yes, I don't understand why people can't make a choice before hand. But I do believe everyone should be able to make the decisions right for them. I don't have to agree though.

I want to add I am going through a miscarriage at the moment so my feelings on this are heightened and confused. I do know I am grieving for my unborn child. Every unborn child is a life to me and it makes sense to me that choice should be considered well before the stage of ending a life in the cases where this argument is relevant.

Vodka, I am sorry for your loss.

If contraception fails, where is the choice?

Thank you. For me, I would use the morning after pill. I also know that when I choose to have sex I could c

Thank you.

For me, I would use the morning after pill. I also know that when I choose to have sex I could conceive so if contraception fails I know I could get pregnant. For me that is where the choice starts. I wouldn't have sex at all if I felt so unable to deal with the consequences of it. That's me, and how I live my life.

This is how I have always felt even before I was married. Even when in a relationship I didn't necessarily see as long term I could have acknowledged the chance of conception and known I would happily bring a life into the world.

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Vodka, I am sorry for your loss. I have experienced miscarriage myself twice, and do understand the feelings of grieving for a lost baby. If this discussion gets too hard, just say.

As regards the 'rape exemption'. The reason I specifically raised it is that, as far as I can see, it is incompatible with any anti-abortion argument based on the fetus having a right to life. If the fetus has a right to life, then that right must continue regardless of how it was conceived or who its parents are. Unless of course that right is not absolute, but overridden depending on how 'bad' the consequences for the mother. In which case I'm not clear why being raped and having a child is worse than some of the other circumstances in which a woman might desperately want or need a termination.

I also find the 'right to life' argument incompatible with arguments about the morning after pill (which, of course, is only an option if you know your contraception has failed. Which you don't necessarily with the pill or coil or injection) due to its mechanism of operation. I've said on threads here before that I don't think I could personally ever contemplate an abortion, and indeed didn't use the morning after pill when I knew we'd had an accident for the same reasons.

Your argument seems to be slightly different. It seems to be that, if a woman chooses to have sex, she is taking on the responsibility of possible pregnancy. So if she didn't choose to have sex, she shouldn't bear the responsibility.

I am not quite sure why you think that there should be such an absolute and crushing responsibility unless the fetus has a right to life though?

Do your views extend to placing such exacting standard on every man who chooses to have sex? What should his risk profile be every time? Because the woman is gambling with some pretty high stakes given that no contraception is 100% effective, and that many failures are not known about at the time.

Your argument also doesn't seem to about how we legislate, but rather your moral views on others' choices. Which is fine. But that makes you pro-choice. The whole point of being pro-choice is that other people get to make choices that you might never choose to make yourself.

Contraception fails and you don't often know until you find out you are pregnant, choosing to have a termination is dealing with it and for some people that is the right and responsible choice.

I have never had an abortion, tho my mum wanted me to when I got preg at 19 whilst at uni. Ds1 is now almost 14,I still completed my degree, but yes it made it harder. I font regret having him at all but I have wondered how different things would have been.

I don't know if I could have an abortion but I will never say never as I don't know what life may throw at me.

I believe in choice, as early as possible, as late as necessary. An abortion isn't something done on a whim fgs. Women have the right to bodily autonomy, I value the living, breathing woman over the unborn fetus. It is a potential life. I have also had two miscarriages and yes I mourned my lost babies. I can do that and still respect another woman's right to terminate.

Religion and politics have no place in my womb or any other woman's womb.

I am sorry for your loss vodka xx

Thanks for your replies and I am sorry for your losses too.

Your last paragraph sums me up Amanda and has made clearer to me where I stand (I think?!) I am pro-choice and certainly not anti-abortion in all cases. I can easily disagree with people's choices but I would NEVER want someone to feel bad about their choices and would never vocalise my views to make someone regret a traumatic and difficult decision.

I guess I do believe in right to life but also that the woman has a right to what happens to her body and life. The two things will rarely sit well together. It may not make sense so I can only apply my views and beliefs to my life and the decisions I make.

As for men, absolutely- I do think they should be responsible for any life they create but the nature of it is that the woman would be the one affected so how could we make men responsible? We couldn't so, yeah, my argument is flawed.

Vodka - Thanks for the interesting discussion.

I do think that, in the polarising and often aggressive debate on abortion, what you need to believe to be pro-choice is often mis-represented. You can be sure you would never choose abortion yourself. You can think it is rather horrible and very sad and the wrong decision in many cases. You can think all those things and still be pro choice if you believe that legally every woman should have the right to decide for herself. Of course, many feminists don't believe any of those things and have far more morally neutral views on the whole area - but actually pro-choice represents a massively wide range of emotions about abortion, with just the central agreement that it must be up to the individual woman and it must be legal and safe. Pro-life groups, who try to characterise pro-choice as being the same as being pro-abortion, rather miss that fact.

I know what you mean about struggling with two opposing views. I get that problem when the discussion reaches late term abortion. On the one hand, I believe in a women's right to bodily autonomy at all times. On the other, at 34 weeks or whatever, you are so clearly dealing with a viable baby who could live and thrive without advanced medical care (barring other complications). I've never squared the two, and the position under English law means I probably won't need to, especially since we are talking about such tiny numbers. I am comfortable with the law where it is. But nevertheless, I do get what you mean about trying to fit two views together that just don't go!

Sorry again for your loss and I hope that your recovery is swift. Be kind to yourself and don't overdo it. And if you are partial to one, a nice glass of later on (or a good if not).

Thanks Amanda. I am pleased I entered this discussion. It really has helped me think about what I really feel and believe. I am pro-choice and not pro-abortion. At the risk
of sounding stupid- Thanks for helping me realise I can be both!

I don't agree in all cases but would never want a woman to be forced into a situation she was unhappy (understatement!) with.

The more pro-choice people who also identify as pro-life, the less power that phrase has.

Do you know, for all the times I've argued about this phrase, I'd never thought of simply adopting it :) Thank you!

I don't like the idea of late term abortion but I simply believe that no woman would do it unless they had good reason. I also think its wrong that we allow it for babies diagnosed with disability etc in the womb and yet not healthy babies. By doing so we are judging the disabled as less worthy of life and that is wrong IMO.

And I truly think once you start giving a fetus rights we are leading down a very slippery slope. Women have the right to bodily autonomy.

Great thread. Thank you for the incredibly clear, concise and sensible discussion.

This has to be the only time I've seen an adult discussion about this subject. Thank you to all the contributors, you have helped me to think differently about this.

5Mad - Yes, at an intellectual level I totally agree. I wasn't trying to steer the discussion off onto late term abortion (goodness knows it goes there on its own often enough). I was more trying to illustrate that many of us have areas of the debate that make us uncomfortable, parts of our views and emotions that we try to reconcile. And that that was ok.

Garlic - yes, it sort of dawned on me during the Wendy Davis stuff. If I walk up to a stranger and say "Hi, I'm Amanda, I'm pro-life", they'll assume I'm anti legalised abortion (and a bit of a nutter for walking up to them and announcing it, plus my name obviously isn't Amanda, so that would be extra odd ). What if walking up to someone and saying that didn't automatically make a statement about abortion? What if it was just met by the other person thinking "well most people other than dictators and terrorists are, surely"

When someone says to me that they are pro-life I always say "whose life?" because, sure as hell, they are not pro the woman's life.

"pro-life" surely means "pro-pre-life"?

Not as catchy, but much more accurate.

If you are pro-life, you're in the wrong place. There is no such thing as a pro-life feminist. No such thing.

Peace, you've missed the point of the thread then. Vodka was thinking aloud on this, and you've closed it down.

I think that what's commonly described as 'pro-life' could/should more accurately be described as 'anti-choice'. What I see on this thread and on other discussions is an acceptance that while an individual woman may not want/would not want to choose an abortion for herself, that she acknowledges the right of other women to make that decision for themselves.

However, what I see too often in the anti-abortion debate is a refusal to acknowledge that the choices of other women are valid and that the right to choose and the concomitant access to safe abortion should be open to those women.

I do wonder, though, whether a position that denies other women that bodily autonomy can be described as feminist, which I think is what Peace is saying. Personally I don't believe that that position can be a valid feminist position - I don't believe that if one is absolutely anti-choice and believe that that should be imposed on other women, that that is a viewpoint that I can recognise as feminist.