Can Pro-lifers be feminists?

[DevilsAdvocate123]

I am personally pro-choice, but in my 60 years, I have encountered pro-life feminists. Many of which asked that many other feminists try to "revoke their feminist cards", since they are pro-life.

I've asked them if it were sexist to be pro-life, and they explained these points to me:

-They entirely believe in the equality of men and women
-The reasoning behind the pro-life stance 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
-They want to save babies of all genders, as the reasoning behind the pro-life stance has nothing to do with sex

I'm a fairly reasonable person. I've had discussions with liberals that think socialism is evil, I've had discussions with gays that believe a private business can do business with whomever it chooses, and I've talked with gun rights advocates that staunchly believe in background checks. I like to hear people out. I get things.

In this instance, I believe I understand where the pro-life feminists are coming from when they say they are still feminists.

Should the feminist community embrace these people into the community and work together, or should these people be shunned from the feminist community and not welcome?

If we're doing hypotheticals here's one (though more applicable to people who're against abortion even within the first 8 weeks). 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.

I don't think people taking the "all life is equal and a fetus is a human life right from the beginning" stance are being very honest.

The reason why women who have late abortions at the moment do so in extreme situations (eg find out late that child will be very badly disabled) is because that is when they are allowed late abortions.
I'm not assuming that loads of women will move to having late abortions if they are allowed to do so. But I think it is pretty inevitable that some will. There will be less of a sense of urgency in making the (for many women very difficult) decision. And I think we can assume that some women at the moment don't make their mind up on time, and then go ahead and have the baby, reluctantly.
So there will be an increase in babies being killed when they have reached the viable stage. And that number will include babies who would either have been aborted earlier, or would not have been aborted at all, if the law remained as currently.
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.

Why do you want women to "reluctantly" have babies? In what way does that strike you as a positive outcome?

Again, I don't think you're being very honest.

and in the next breath say a woman's life is equal to an embryo/foetus

That's the problem right their though - pro-life don't see it as 'just' an embryo / foetus. They see it as another human - with some scope for debate about the point at which it becomes a human.
IF someone sees a foetus as a life, then the whole picture changes, and you have a paradox of the right of a woman do with her body as she pleases and the right of the human to live.
It's a hell of a lot easier if you don't see a foetus as a life.

I think a great deal of the public believe a foetus grows into a sentient person, and that it become a sentient person prior to birth, but they can't quite pinpoint the precise point at which this happens. An abortion at 8 weeks seems ok, but one at 39 weeks doesn't (in the eyes of a lot of people). Everything between is where most of the debate is.

(Last comment aimed not at Lass so much as at the people who seem convinced that abortions past week 30 are something women do for fun or convenience.)

My point about Canada was that having no limit may make it more difficult to access abortion than a jurisdiction where there is a recognised "no reason" time limit and no time limit if there are exceptional reasons. Canadian doctors were voluntarily imposing lower limits than UK doctors.

I concede this is virtue of Prof. Google but interesting.

Over 90% of abortions in Canada are done in the first trimester; only 2-3% are done after 16 weeks, and no doctor performs abortions past 20 or 21 weeks unless there are compelling health or genetic reasons

Abortion services are fully covered in Ontario, but wait times are long (up to 6 weeks in Ottawa). Only one in six hospitals in Canada offers abortions. There is a looming shortage of doctors willing to provide the service; many are approaching retirement and younger MDs are not replacing them, some out of fear of harassment and others because they have not witnessed the dangers of unsafe abortions. Hence, therapeutic abortion services may in theory be available, but they may not be accessible.

www.med.uottawa.ca/sim/data/abortion_e.htm

Removing the sense of urgency for women making difficult decisions actually seems to me to be a good reason to increase the time limit (or remove it). You can argue that abortions would happen later, but you could also see that some women may feel rushed in to abortion (as the law currently stands) and obviously it is better if the woman is allowed the time to make the correct decision for her.

*right there!

Angry - in what way am I not being honest? Either now or previously? No, having a baby "reluctantly" because you didn't make your decision to have an abortion in time is not a wonderful situation. But a fully viable baby that is due to be born in a few weeks being killed before the woman gives birth to it or has it cut out of her body, because she would prefer it not to "walk the earth" is not my idea of a great solution either. Because I consider a baby that is about to be born as not being so very different from a baby that has just been born. I think that what you want is too biased in favour of the woman. And let's not forget that she is the person who 1) had sex and became pregnant, 2) didn't make a decision about abortion in the several months that were available to her.

"Babies being killed" 🙄 this is when I stop listening to someone who has a different view on abortion to mine.
I'm open minded, I like a debate and love to hear others opinions and why they have those opinions.

I just can't take a person seriously when this shit is spouted..

Same as someone on the other side saying an embryo/foetus/unborn baby isn't human
Both stupid extremes

For anyone who really does want to reduce the number of abortions happening later rather than earlier the best way to do so is to make abortion more easily and quickly accessible. There are part of the US where women have to travel hundreds of miles to a clinic that does abortions, and that certainly can cause a delay, especially if the woman doesn't have much money and works at the kind of job where it's not easy to get time off.

An anti-abortion atmosphere does not in any way help to achieve this goal, as can be clearly seen in the US.

But a fully viable baby that is due to be born in a few weeks being killed before the woman gives birth to it or has it cut out of her body, because she would prefer it not to "walk the earth" is not my idea of a great solution either.

OK, then find an example of a situation where this actually happened and we can talk about it.

It's not "shit" - people on here are arguing for the absolute right to abort up until birth.
And we've heard that where this is the law doctors can't bring themselves to carry out the abortions. Maybe because they went into medicine to save lives?

If you want to encourage a positive attitude towards abortion rights, I recommend that you don't try to introduce the right to have an abortion for any / no particular reason up until birth.

Off to bed now, not abandoning the argument.

Ah yes I've heard that so many times now.. I grew up in the Ireland under the Catholic Church
If a Woman has sex for pleasure and becomes pregnant tough but if she's raped then it's not her fault but still she should take it on the chin and carry on
women know your place!

I had a man tell me I should have kept my legs closed if I didn't want to get pregnant and having mental health problems wasn't a "good enough reason" to have an abortion

I think the right to abort right up until birth has to be on very strong medical (life threatening grounds). In that situation, I'd absolutely support it.
If someone is advocating that right 'just because' it's every woman's right, I couldn't support that, because I too can't see any difference between 'ok to terminate on Monday', 'not ok on Tuesday because it's actually being born'.
You still end up with the same issue though.... a termination at 1 day seems ok because it's easy to consider the foetus as less than human, and it's not ok to terminate the day before birth because at this stage, it's hard NOT to see the foetus as anything but human. But where in the intervening 9 month do we draw the line? 24 weeks seems to be the line that science has drawn (for now).

Just for clarification - are the anti-abortion feminists on this thread saying that I, personally, shouldn't be able to have an abortion?

I will answer as an anti-abortion feminist... on the basis that an unborn baby is a live human being, if you are to kill this baby, then you should have a very compelling reason to do so.

Part of the problem is that the pregnancy is what is being aborted, whether the fetus is alive or dead or incapable of surviving the birth experience, i e the severing of the placenta. The words matter.
I trust women to make the best decision they can under the circumstances..

I do not accept Leilaniii as having the moral authority to make my decisions for me, or to decide whether my reasons for having an abortion are sufficiently "compelling".

Indeed angrykitten
Thankfully we don't have to actually listen to or take on board this opinion

Compelling reason ffs

What are your compelling reasons that are "good enough" leil

It's more a case of being honest about the process so that women really can make INFORMED decisions. Speaking in Latin in order to emotionally disconnect ourselves from the process is a lie. It is amazing how many women don't really understand what has happened until they have further children and see them on ultrasound.

Late term abortions are not something that women have for shits and giggles, or because they just don't want a baby. There's pretty much always a medical reason

Does any country allow legal abortion to term without a medical reason ? In the UK all legal abortions since 1967 after 28 / 24 weeks must have been for medical reasons.

So no , women are not having late abortions for non-medical reasons as there is currently no legal option for them to do so.

Do you work for one of those American crisis pregnancy centers that pretend that they offer abortion but instead are fronts designed to bully women out of getting an abortion, Leilaniiii? You sound like you're reading from one of their pamplets.

As a general rule most women are aware what a fetus looks like at various stages. It does not look like a thumb sucking Gerber baby at 8 weeks.

Does any country allow legal abortion to term without a medical reason? Canada was mentioned upthread. They have no time limit because they trust women and their doctors to do what is appropriate.

I would like to know where all these women are who are casually aborting in the 23 week or the 36th week. I am calling hyperbole on that.