Pro-life or pro-choice?

I am pro-choice, but I can understand and agree with some of the sentiment of the pro-life movement.  Abortion is creepy and I don't like that it kills fetuses, those beautiful about-to-be babies, cute, snuggly babies that we all love so much. But I don’t think that’s unusual; I doubt anyone actually likes the idea of abortion.  No one ever wakes up in the morning and says, “Oh, goody, I get to have an abortion today.” I’m even willing to concede that abortion may be evil. However, if it is, it’s a necessary evil, just like guns and wars and cops and everything else that frequently results in death and injury.  But I don’t see the pro-life movement out there protesting war, or killer cops, or even the death penalty, so I find it hard to believe that they really hold all human life to be sacred.

That’s the pro-life movement’s basic argument – human life is sacred, so because abortion is intentionally killing human life, it must be wrong – in fact it must be murder.  But that’s not really true – killing human beings in certain circumstances has always been permitted by even the most humane and democratic societies.  We kill people by the million during wartime.  Cops kill people, sometimes dangerous criminals and sometimes innocent victims (and all sorts of people in between) usually with impunity no matter what the circumstances.  In the U.S., hundreds of people die every year in completely accidental shootings, often by children, because some idiot left a loaded gun lying around or didn’t know how to clean their weapon.  We rarely consider any of those deaths to be murder. So, how can you believe that when overwhelming circumstances make it necessary to kill someone – a kidnapper with a gun or an enemy soldier – that that’s not murder, but a 13-year-old who doesn’t want to bear her rapist’s baby isn’t facing a situation just as overwhelming?  This sounds hypocritical to me.  It’s also misogynistic to say that the tribulations of (mostly male) soldiers are somehow different than those of (mostly female) victims of rape and incest.  (It's interesting to me that there are some vegans that make a similar argument about eating meat.  “Meat is murder,” they say, because they believe killing animals is wrong, and they advocate making meat-eating illegal.  Personally, I find that absurd, but the logic is almost exactly the same – the belief that something is murder and should be criminalized.)

 Another thing that makes me dislike the pro-life movement is that their strategy is not ending abortion – it’s criminalizing abortion.  This is not the same thing, for several reasons.  First, criminalizing social problems does not generally end them.  Read up on Prohibition or the War on Drugs if you doubt this.  Second, we know what reduces the number of women seeking abortions – primarily the availability of birth control and sex education, but also support for mothers and babies such as help with jobs, education, and housing.  I’ve yet to see anyone from the pro-life movement offering sex ed classes or giving out condoms.  In fact, many of them advocate for the opposite, supporting restrictions on both birth control and sex education, leading much of the pro-choice world to believe that it’s sex they’re opposed to more than anything else.

 The pro-life movement does pay lip service to providing health care and other support for pregnant women, but in my opinion it’s not much more than that.  For example, Focus on the Family’s website offers this information about Pregnancy Resource Centers (PRC):

 PRCs provide counseling and classes that address not only the decision to have a child, but the options afterward such as whether to raise the child yourself or to make an adoption plan. They might offer classes in parenting and sometimes even general life skills, which could include anything from healthy relationships to financial management. Many also offer material support, including basic baby supplies like diapers, clothing and formula.

They might offer parenting classes, maybe even other classes or possibly material support like baby supplies.  If they were serious about helping pregnant women, there would be no “might” or “maybe” about it – they would focus on helping women support themselves and their families.  And not just with baby supplies, since that baby’s not going to be any cheaper to support when she’s a toddler or a teen.  A class in financial management and a few packages of diapers is a poor substitute for the kind of social safety net women need to support their children.  It seems obvious to me that the pro-life movement doesn’t really care about the lives or well-being of women, mothers, or even babies, once they’re born.

Another argument the pro-life movement makes is that a woman will be “haunted” for the rest of her life for having an abortion.  This strikes me as illogical, since any choice a pregnant woman makes will have long-lasting affects, whether she has an abortion, gives up her baby for adoption, or raises a child.  There are pros and cons of each choice, and any woman can feel sad, anxious, regretful, happy, thankful, etc., about any of her choices.  I’ve met women who’ve spent much of their adult lives with sadness and regret about giving a child up for adoption – does anyone believe that that’s not something that can “haunt” you?  How could having an abortion possibly be any more haunting than giving up a child for adoption?  And there are plenty of women who have kids and – sadly – don’t find it to be a wonderful, loving, life-affirming experience.  As a result, there are millions of abused, neglected, damaged and dysfunctional kids out there.  I find that pretty haunting.

Getting back to the question of whether or not abortion is evil – like I said, I think I would concede that (but again, if it is evil, it’s a necessary evil).  However, it doesn’t really matter.  That’s not a legal question, but rather a religious one, and religious issues have no place in the legal system.  Most pro-life websites talk about the Christian basis for their beliefs.  That’s fine – I have no problem with people advocating for their religious beliefs (although please don’t ring my doorbell) but it’s one thing to advocate and another thing entirely to say your beliefs should be made into laws that affect people of all religions.  That’s another way of saying that you want a legally-mandated state religion, which in the U.S. is clearly unconstitutional.  How fucked up is that?