Pro-Abortion, Pro-Choice
With our 108 event coming up this weekend, I am thinking about reproductive freedoms and am choosing to write my thoughts down here so that I don’t take an hour pre-108 exploring my frustrations about the state of reproductive health. For a more in-depth discussion, please read Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall. The chapter entitled “Reproductive Justice, Eugenics and Maternal Mortality” gives facts, history and compelling arguments regarding an updated, intersectional approach to feminism, reproductive rights and body autonomy.
Also, please access this blog as a pdf if you’d like to get all the linked citations which didn’t come through when I pasted it here.
Since having a child impacts our health, our finances and our general minute to minute, day to day autonomy, the choice to continue a pregnancy is one that will have far reaching effects on the course of a person’s life. It is a choice that has bearing on our personal autonomy, our basic dignity, our bodily integrity, and our self-determination.
The 14th amendment acknowledges body autonomy as part of a citizen’s right to privacy. As such, this right - to decide what happens to our bodies – is, or was, Constitutionally protected. By repealing Roe vs. Wade, the current supreme court has withdrawn fundamental constitutional protections in order to end self-determination when it comes to the bodies of people with uteruses.
At its core, the repeal of RvW is an attempt to limit our Constitutional rights and to try to control our bodies. The decision marks the first time in history that the U.S. Supreme Court has taken away a fundamental right.
This is, for sure, a woman’s issue, AND it’s also a poor people’s issue and an anti-racist issue, and an LGB issue and a TGNC issue and a youth issue. Did you know:
Abortion was legal in America until right after the Civil War.
Abortion is a safe and routine part of reproductive health care. It is actually safer than childbirth. (study)
Approximately 25% of women in the U.S. will choose to have an abortion before the age of 45. (Guttmacher Institute)
Medical abortions generally cost between $600 and $800. In clinic abortions cost between $800-$2,000. (Planned Parenthood)
Being denied abortion has serious implications for the children born of unwanted pregnancy, as well as for the existing children in the family. (Turnaway Study)
Currently, 58% of women between the ages of 13 and 44 live in a state that is hostile or extremely hostile to abortion rights. Ohio is classified as extremely hostile to abortion rights.
A Youth Issue
Women aged 15–19 have the highest unintended pregnancy rate of any age-group. (Guttmacher)
An Economic Issue
Women experience higher rates of poverty than men. In 2018, 12.9 percent of women lived in poverty compared with 10.6 percent of men. Nearly 10 million women lived in deep poverty, defined as falling below 50 percent of the federal poverty line. (American Progress)
Women living in poverty have a rate of unintended pregnancy five times higher than those with middle or high incomes.
Women who carried an unwanted pregnancy to term have four times greater odds of living below the Federal Poverty Level (FPL). (research)
Poor people are less able to access abortions because of cost and logistical reasons. (Brookings Institute)
An Anti-Racist Issue
Making abortion illegal paves the way for the government to question ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages and still births. Since communities of color are already over policed, the questioning (and potential arrests and imprisonment) for miscarriages and still born babies would impact people of color at higher rates than white women. Further, poor people and people of color have less access to quality prenatal care, which places them at higher risk of something going wrong during their pregnancy. This means that poor people along with women of color could be at higher risk for miscarriages and stillbirths and therefore, under an anti-abortion surveillance state, at greater risk of arrest and/or imprisonment. (CDC, CBS News, CDC)
The unintended pregnancy rate for non-Hispanic black women in 2011 was more than double that of non-Hispanic white women. (Guttmacher)
The chance of a Black woman dying in the US due to complications relating to pregnancy or childbirth is 2 to 3 times more than a White woman in the US—a disparity large enough to cause the national maternal mortality rate to increase at a steady rate. Challenges influencing this problem include implicit racial bias within the healthcare system that causes negligence, a lack of standardized healthcare to provide quality care in all parts of the US, and the stress caused by systemic racism and its effect on Black female bodies. (Joli Hunt)
A TGNC Issue
Data is hard to come by, but we know that Transgender and Non Conforming people absolutely get pregnant and also have abortions. (Now Face North)
I’ve tried to use inclusive language here, and also, much of the science and data is specifically geared toward “women” so that is the language I’ve used in those instances.
“I believe it is important to name misogyny, not just for my own teenage daughters, who must navigate a dangerous landscape in which they are sexualized and punished in equal measure, but more widely. Philosopher Kate Manne defines misogyny not only as hatred of women, but also about “controlling, policing, punishing, and exiling the ‘bad’ women who challenge male dominance.” I believe we do not use the term often enough, instead dancing around the many ways that girls and women are chronically disadvantaged and damaged in systems that benefit men. We shy away from naming men’s contempt for women, and for female bodies, that feeds harmful policies and practices, from obstetric violence to sexual assault to forced pregnancy and motherhood.” Monica J. Casper, Ph.D.
“You might also say that movement opposition to abortion is rooted in misogyny. True! Society sure does like policing women’s bodies! But again, not complete. Society likes policing a lot of people’s bodies. In the 19th century, when the US anti-abortion movement started, it was about policing women, and also … about policing immigrants …And also pretty much everyone who wasn’t a narrow slice of Northern/Western European. Trans identities weren’t understood in the same way in the 19th century, but both then and now the anti-abortion discourse has very much emphasized their view of abortion as “unnatural,” a framing also used by social conservatives against trans people and against a lot of other people and phenomena. In modern times, it’s intertwined strongly with misogyny, and also anti-Semitism and anti-secular-humanism, with racism…and with transphobia and queerphobia.” -Now Face North
Patriarchal, Racist History of Anti-Abortion Movement:
NPR article “Abortion Access is also part of racial justice”: After the Civil War, The American Medical Association fought to make abortion illegal in part to take childbirth out of the hands of women — midwives who helped with birth and abortion — and put it into the hands of white men who had appointed themselves experts. This delegitimized midwives striping them of their status and of their earnings.
There was also a worry that privileged white women were choosing to have smaller families. "White women were practicing what is known as voluntary motherhood and purposefully contracepting and aborting in order to keep their families to manageable size," Murray says. "And that's reducing the white birthrate."
The decline in white births created a panic that sounds eerily familiar to what we hear from Tucker Carlson on Fox News today. Murray shares that "The immigrant birth rate was swelling and the white birth rate was shrinking and [the white men in power] were deeply, deeply worried that 'America' was no longer going to look like 'America,'" So they banned abortions. in part, to make it harder for white women to have smaller families.
Intimate Partner Violence and Reproductive Justice
From Abortion Fund of Ohio: Reproductive coercion is an attempt to control someone’s reproductive health. Loss of reproductive autonomy – including lost access to abortion – can further tether someone to an abuser. Many survivors seek abortion care because remaining pregnant is not an option. Homicide is a leading cause of death for pregnant people – bans and restrictions on abortion care are clear-cut examples of state sanctioned violence.
Between 14-25% of folks seen at abortion clinics have experienced IPV in the past year.
Women who are denied abortion are more likely to stay tethered to abusive partners. (Turnaway study)
Hypocrisy of “Pro-(unborn)life” Movement
I don’t have the time or capacity to enumerate the ways in which the Christian, anti-abortion movement reeks of hypocrisy and misogyny. (This is not intended to capture the view of every anti-abortion person but paints broad strokes regarding the overall movement.) Here are just a few:
Protect unborn fetuses, do nothing to protect living school children. Protest, lobby, fight for lives of unborn fetus – refuse to adopt common sense gun safety measures that would protect living, breathing, loving school children.
“Republicans believe that governmental regulation of firearms is largely unconstitutional and therefore, most gun laws are an infringement on the individual’s rights to bear arms. The dominant point made by Republicans in this regard is that the Second Amendment gives the right to the individual to protect himself, his family, and his property.” (Pub Views) Emphasis mine.
Again, the anti-abortion, Republican party is more concerned with unborn beings than living children. They are historically against welfare, financial aid for childcare and universal healthcare.
“Conservatives have successfully deployed the term “pro-life” to cloak the underlying misogyny of anti-abortion legislation. We hear a great deal about their care for the fetus, but evidence shows that once a child is born, conservatives lose interest. States passing anti-abortion legislation have among the highest infant mortality rates in the country. In 2017, Alabama’s infant mortality rate was 7.4 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, twice that of Massachusetts, which had the fewest deaths”. (link) (CDC)
Many/most anti-abortion “pro-life” people are also pro-death penalty. (Platforms)
Most “pro-life” anti-abortionists make exceptions for killing when it comes to war and for self-defense, though they refuse to make any exceptions for abortion.
“The current Republican Party platform contains no exceptions for rape, incest, birth defect, or risks to the mother’s health, these issues are controversial even within the party, with some republicans believing in exceptions for these cases, and others holding a very firm pro-life stance.” (link)
Small government EXCEPT when it comes to uteruses. “The Republican Party has from the outset made public its commitment to the paramount nature of freedom and individual responsibility. This belief is said to be a fundamental principle to the party. Republicans believe in smaller government with fewer regulations.” (link)