QuestionHello, I an conducting research for being pro-choice for abortion. If you have a moment, i would greatly appreciate if you could answer the following questions:
1-Do you feel abortion is a human rights issue or a womens rights issue, or both?
2-Do you think religion has too much bearing in the abortion arguement?
3-Do you think abortion being made illegal would be a good or bad decision, and why do you feel that way?
4-How do you feel about the abortion laws in your area? Do you think it is readily available, or not enough?
5-Do you think it is possible to be a feminist and still be against abortion?
AnswerHello, Katie,
I will do my best to answer your questions.
1. Abortion is both a women's issue and a human rights issue. Please understand that abortion is deeply invasive of a woman's body and very dangerous. It can kill her. It can harm her future children. It can cause serious disability, or make her more likely to get a deadly form of breast cancer. Most women don't want an abortion, and feel they have no other choice. Obviously, when this is the case, "pro-choice" is meaningless. A woman has a right to know what the dangers are. And a woman has a right to refuse to have an abortion. Abortion is really a sign that a woman's basic needs are not being met. Most women seem to be ignorant of some very basic biological facts to begin with, but that doesn't stop them from subconsciously bonding with their child long before choosing an abortion even becomes a question. The fact that the suicide rate of women who have had abortions increases 7 times over what it would be if she carried to term tells you how women really feel about abortion. Also, many women consider a surgical abortion to be like a rape. I am one of those people. It is a deep invasion of a woman's body by a masked stranger, usually male. Most women, if told the things they will learn later throughout life, would not choose abortion. They would not consent. If we truly had the strength of character and self-respect and felt good about ourselves, we would never consent to abortion in the first place. Sooner or later, a woman will learn that she was carrying her own child. The information is out there. She may be told at the time that this is just a clump of cells, but she will find out otherwise. By the time a woman actually has an abortion, her baby probably already has a heartbeat, brainwaves, eyes, and fingers. She will find this out. When she does, then what? So abortion is a women's issue in the sense that we have a right to better answers, and setting up society so that abortion seems like the only way out is about as anti-woman as a society could get. Abortion is also a human rights issue in the sense that each baby has relatives, who will be deprived of his or her company, of the love that will be exchanged, and society is deprived of the sense of wonder and the hope for the future that each child represents.
2. For a person to have a religion is very natural. Atheism is definitely an exception, and I would argue that an atheist does have a religious faith of sorts. He is convinced there is no god. The only honest non-religion is agnosticism, not knowing. Human beings are built with a capacity and need for religion. If they don't find a true religion, or even a false one, they will invent one. Women instinctively know that when they get an abortion, they are harming their children and themselves. We have a built-in sense of morality. That's why most of us don't go around murdering and robbing each other. And women know that abortion violates their own ethics, their own standards. I get questions from women who tell me how much it violated their own standards. I do not think that religion is the reason to support a law against abortion, however. The question of when an individual human life begins is a scientific question. Science has made it quite clear that the individual human life begins when the genetic material for the new human being first assembles, and that's at fertilization. To label it a religious question is to evade what science has clearly told us. The reason to support a law is because abortion is destructive. It is destructive of women's lives, it is destructive of human relationships among loved ones, and it is destructive of society. Most people don't realize it, but the current economic woes that the world is currently experiencing can be blamed partly on widespread abortion. I read an article once that was analyzing the economy and the stock market, and such. It didn't mention abortion. Instead, it talked about the harm a falling rate of population growth does to the economy. Our world population is aging. There need to be young people to keep everything going. There need to be young people to care for and protect the elderly and disabled. The alternative is neglect or euthanasia, and both do horrible things to a society. All you have to do is study the lessons of history to learn what resorting to killing the innocent does to a society and to the economy. A poor economy means people's basic needs don't get met. At this point, the population of many countries is in freefall. There is no way they can recover at this point. Fanatical members of another religion that want to impose an extremely repressive form of government on a population used to freedom and human rights are replacing the people who have a well developed sense of human rights. In particular, their philosophy is more repressive of women than any other philosophy on the face of the earth. These fanatics are having lots of children. Children are the future. Without them, society is dying. So banning abortion should be based on human rights issues, especially on the right of women to be free from such dangerous and invasive answers to their problems. It is interesting to note that Poland outlawed abortion. Abortion was very common in Poland, but after it was banned, the number done per year for the entire country was less than 100. And Poland also decided to bite the bullet and renounce all forms of government protectionism in favor of a free market. It was rough. But they are now a prosperous nation, and people don't miss legalized abortion. Infant mortality and morbidity of birth have also declined significantly. Abortion doesn't just hurt women. It also hurts her future children.
3. Making abortion illegal isn't really the major question to my mind. Instead, I think we should work to make it unthinkable. If abortion is unthinkable, it can be legal, and nobody would want one. Laws do help protect vulnerable women, women who will be coerced and defrauded, and who will be forced to choose something they would rather not choose. Every time a woman is spared the fate of an abortion, that is a victory. But we women need to stand firm in our bodily integrity. Letting men use us a sex objects should not be an option. Our sexuality is different from a man's. We require a deep and abiding bond to get the full benefit of sex. Our sexuality includes our childbearing and breastfeeding capacity. In fact, we experience sexual pleasure from both, if we have normal bodies. Too many don't, and that's one reason childbirth is painful for some, but I can tell you from personal experience that pain in childbirth is NOT inevitable. A woman has a right to have a man who will cherish her. Men who take women to bed for casual sex are not cherishing them at all. They're doing the opposite. They're using women. If women maintained their bodily integrity, there wouldn't be that many unwanted pregnancies to start with. And we also need to do something about rape. Rape is unacceptable. We need to teach women to defend themselves. My self defense instructor told us that 72% of untrained women who fight back in a rape situation escape unharmed. I advise every woman to train in the martial arts, whether able-bodied or not, and to earn at least a black belt. If would-be rapists knew we were armed with these skills, they would leave us alone. They are looking for cowards, because they are cowards. They want someone they can bully. We need to make rape unthinkable. A close friend of mine, who worked with one of the Native American Nations, told me that Indians didn't tolerate rape. If a man raped a woman, the women of the group would take him out someplace and take care of him. So they didn't have a problem with rape.
4. Abortion is too easy to get. So many people see it as a quick fix. It's not. It is the MOST devastating of the choices available. Making abortion legal doesn't make it safe. This is one of the biggest frauds. People think that because abortion is legal, it is safe. There is no way to make abortion safe. Our bodies were designed to protect our children, so the only way an abortion can be done is to harm our bodies. Abortionists are careless, and they cause grave injury to many women. And these injuries don't care how certain a woman was she wanted an abortion. They can happen to anybody. When you say you are considering the pro-choice position, you should ask yourself, WHOSE choice? The person who makes the decision for a woman to have an abortion is usually NOT the woman! It is either her partner, who either abandons her or coerces her, or her parents, or circumstances. The purpose of a law is to protect women from these types of coercion, and from abortionists. It's not to penalize the woman. In law, if a person commits a crime, but it is shown that there was coercion to commit that crime, this is called a mitigating factor. Always in the past, it wasn't women that the law went after. It was abortionists. If a woman refused to tell the police who did the abortion, she might get prosecuted, but if she identified him, she usually wasn't prosecuted at all. Some women feel very vulnerable. I've been there and done that. I had an abortionist try to intimidate me into letting him do an abortion on me by telling me that if he didn't, I would die. He also didn't use the word "abortion". He tried to convince me my baby was dead. That was a lie. A woman needs to be able to tell whoever is trying to coerce her, that abortion is illegal, and she won't commit an illegal act.
5. Absolutely! In fact, I would hold that the ONLY feminist position is to be adamantly against it! The suffragists, who won the vote for women, were all bitterly opposed to abortion. You can read their words here:
http://feministsforlife.org/history/index.htm
http://feministsforlife.org/history/foremoth.htm
There are modern-day feminists who follow in their footsteps. You can read about them on the same web site. Also read the article, The Case Against Abortion, in this magazine (it's a ways down):
http://feministsforlife.org/taf/2004/summer-fall/Summer-Fall04.pdf
I would hold that readily available abortion has guaranteed that we will not receive any MEANINGFUL rights. Abortion is a really good way for people to escape giving us those rights, and that's exactly what has happened. Legal abortion has set back the fight for equality to an incalculable extent.
One more thing: you may know women who said they had an abortion, and they are fine with it, and didn't suffer any damage. That's not necessarily the case. Many women go into a state of denial. They deny that abortion hurt them. They may maintain this viewpoint for years or even decades. But eventually, most of them have to come to terms with it. Some go to their graves thinking abortion was OK for them, but they are few and far between. So just because a woman assures you that abortion was right for her and she suffered no damage doesn't mean that is really the case.
Given my answers, you may be wondering exactly what it is I do here. I don't argue the political and legal questions. Instead, I try to reach out to individual women, and help them find better answers. We deserve better. So many of the women who ask me questions are suffering the medical consequences of abortions they have already had. I try to help them find medical help and answers, so they don't die as a result. I think some of them actually have. There is only so much you can do over the internet. And I also get questions from women who are suicidal, and I do my best to discourage them from doing it. I think I lost at least one. Don't think it doesn't haunt me, that I never heard from her again. She never read my message. I have sat up all night with women who were suicidal from abortion. That was the most frightening thing that I have ever experienced in my life!
If you personally have ever had any contact with abortion, please be aware that emotional and spiritual healing are possible. Abandoning other women to the same fate is not an answer. We owe it to our sisters to help protect them from abortion, and to find an answer they can live with. We owe it to them to help them have a better future without having to resort to abortion.
I hope this helps. Feel free to ask more questions.
