Can a person be pro-choice but anti-abortion? I used to think no. Even though that is exactly how I felt. I have always been anti-abortion, but have always been pro-choice. I just thought that was wrong. So I never voiced my thoughts. That ended one day when the professor in my Third Wave Feminist class put into words what I never did. Soneone else felt the same way I did! Not only someone else, but someone much more educated on Women's Studies than I was.
This made me think about the subject a little more. If pro-choice is about a women's right to choose, shouldn't she have a right to be against abortion as well as be for another women's right to have an abortion? I finally realized they were not the same thing at all. Pro-choice was not pro-abortion. I will always defend a women's right to choose, ALWAYS. Which means I will never judge a woman for choosing abortion, even if I do not agree with her reasons. It is her choice which means her reason does not make a difference to me.
The right of a woman to choose what she does with her body is enough for me to believe in abortion being legal. But there are more pressing reasons than that. What if a woman is told that she will die if she brings a baby to term and tried to give birth. Shouldn't a woman be able to decided whether she is going to live or die? Or what if a woman is raped? There certainly are woman who are raped, get pregnant, and have that child. But should a woman be forced to do that? What of the case of incest? A girl being molested by a family member ends up pregnant. Should she be forced to have a relative's baby? Should she be forced to raise a baby that is say her child but also her sister? In the last two cases I know abortion is an option. But why should a woman, or a child, be forced to go through a pregnancy and give birth under these circumstances? What are the chances of a person working through the trauma they went through while waiting to give birth to the child that resulted from that trauma?
The question I posed in the title of this post was are pro-choice and pro-abortion the same thing. Very simeple answer: no. Just because a person believes a woman should have the right to do what she wants with her body does not neam that person believes in abortion. We should be able to seperate choice from the act itself. Unfortunately, some people believe that because they are against abortion and choice that everyone should fall in line with that thinking. No one has the right to make decisions for another human being based on their own moral beliefs. After all being for or against abortion is a moral issue. What works for me may not work for someone else, so who am I to decide what someone else should do? No one should have control over the life and body of another human being. Which is why I hope that abortion never becomes illegal, no matter what I would do. Everyone else should not have to do what I or anyone else would do.
Janet Lee Smith
01/18/11
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