It took me a while to come to the same conclusion, simply because I was always hesitant to risk playing the No True Scotsman card, but in the end it became too clear that opposing freedom of reproductive choice (and lifestyle freedom, really) is entirely antithetical to feminism. To be anti-choice and “feminist” is like believing in some innate inferiority of black people while claiming to uphold notions of racial equality.

I always said you could be pro-life when it came to yourself and your body but that’s just not the case for 99.9% of people who consider themselves “pro-life”.

And jeebus h. christ, if you have had an abortion and you regret it, THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOUR EXPERIENCE IS THE SAME FOR EVERY WOMAN. Sheesh.

Sounds about right to me, especially since they are only “pro-life” from conception until birth.  After that they don’t give a shit and you are fair game.

Uh, Lil Sam, I hate to break it to you, but those aren’t “living beings” we are talking about, they are potential living beings.  A very different thing entirely.  When the pro-lifers show as much concern for children after birth as they do before, I will start to take their claims halfway seriously.

I think Lil Sam is just making a joke about someone misspelling “feminist” as “faminist,” as in “famine-ist.”

What if, like a tiny minority of anti-abortion people, you focus your pro-life impulses on providing real support to pregnant women and children, and have no interest in overturning Roe vs. Wade? Although I suppose then you really wouldn’t be anti-choice, but sort of . . . I don’t know, “choice tolerant”?

Liz212, I wish that were more of a reality. In an ideal world, every woman would have somewhere to go to be housed and helped with her pregnancy without being coerced or pressured into continuing it.

As a young college student, I have fairly regular thoughts about what I would do if the contraceptives failed and I ended up pregnant. In my case, mom has already told me that she would honor and support my choice. If I wanted to abort, she would go with me and hold my hand. If I wanted to give birth, she would help me get on my feet and raise a child. I have options that I suspect that vast majority of young women simply don’t have. There are plenty of women who abort not necessarily because they don’t want a child, but because they don’t have anyone to help them through what is invariably a difficult and expensive process - so why not cater to their needs? This rings especially true during an economic crisis.

“you focus your pro-life impulses on providing real support to pregnant women and children, and have no interest in overturning Roe vs. Wade?”

This is, by definition, a pro-choice stance, though.

Jessica said it all. You can be as pro-life with your own body as you like, and still be a feminist. You cease to be a feminist when you want to limit the choices of other women.

Lil Sam makes me pine for Rugged in Montana.

Lil Sam, it’s basic—-if you don’t consider women people deserving of basic rights, or what you might call “living beings”, then it’s impossible to be a feminist.  It’s tautological.

Liz, then you aren’t “pro-life”, and you have every right not to have an abortion so long as you don’t want the law to demote women to second class citizens forced to give birth against their wills.

Although I suppose then you really wouldn’t be anti-choice, but sort of . . . I don’t know, “choice tolerant”?

What Amanda said, plus this: the “pro-life” movement won’t have you if you’re not willing to put at least some restrictions on abortion, and if we’re speaking about most anti-abortion groups, major restrictions on abortion, and potentially on birth control as well. It’s not the pro-choice side that will reject you, as long as you’re actually choice-tolerant—it’s the other side who won’t have you.

I believe strongly that there are no pro-life feminist activists, but I know a few folks who are deeply pro-life (anti-death-penalty, no abortion in case of rape or incest, pacifistic foreign policy) who are also essentially feminist (consider women to be human beings).

These individuals are, however, not part of any particular movement and quite rare.

How do they vote, Punditus? Because that’s a pretty telling determiner of where they stand.

I know one such person who votes pro-choice because of the panoply of abortion-reducing measures that the pro-choice side takes ex. birth control, healthcare, etc.

Incertus—generally Dem due to death penalty/war issues, occasionally Repub due to abortion issues.  Often express frustration with lack of available candidates.

I know one such person who votes pro-choice because of the panoply of abortion-reducing measures that the pro-choice side takes ex. birth control, healthcare, etc.

I had a student in a first year comp class this term come to that conclusion about abortion on his own. He did it in the context of a discussion about PGD and in vitro fertilization—he came to the conclusion that if a couple used PGD in order to have a genetic disease-free child, that would reduce abortions, and that was the important thing. I’m appealing to his pragmatism, and it’s working.

I think we’re using the terms wrong, to begin with. “Pro-life” is a misleading term. It’s been weaseled to define a religious movement which treats women as incubators, punishing them for having sex by forcing them through pregnancy and childbirth. By using the term “pro-life” the movement infers its moral superiority, when in fact it is anything but. “Pro-life” SHOULD mean exactly that: anti-death penalty, pro-healthcare, pro-education, pro-environment, pro-QUALITY-of-life. It should NOT mean “pro-the life I choose FOR YOU.”

These women aren’t “pro-life,” they’re anti-choice. They are against women having the choice to have an abortion or carry to term; they are against women having the choice of contraception, the correct information to choose the best contraception FOR THEM, affordable health care which will facilitate the CHOICE of contraception; they are against women having sex they personally don’t like or with a partner of whom they don’t approve.

Being “anti-choice” is an anti-feminist position because it refuses a woman’s bodily autonomy. It reduces her to an object. It is also the true definition of what the proponents actually are.

They call themselves “pro-life feminists,” I call them bald-faced liars. Potato, potahto.

What if, like a tiny minority of anti-abortion people, you focus your pro-life impulses on providing real support to pregnant women and children, and have no interest in overturning Roe vs. Wade?

There appears to be nothing in that situation which trips the qualifier in the original post (of “Insofar as “pro-life” is generally just a euphemism for someone who supports forced childbirth.”  Thus manifests the difference between “anti-choice” and “pro-life.”  Both terms get applied to the same set of political beliefs, but there are some discrepencies when one looks at who actually qualifies as what, based on the definitions and who’s splitting hairs on those definitions.

I would define pro-life as “supporting live birth as the result of all conceived pregnancies” and anti-choice as “opposing the use of fertility control to manipulate the consequences of sexual activity,” since they tend to attack contraception as well.  With this definition it is possible to be pro-life and pro-choice, by making it more feasable and less burdensome for women to choose motherhood without forcing them to do so.  It is also possible to be anti-choice without being pro-life, for example by attacking contraception use/availability and thus causing more pregnancies to occur in sexually active women who are likely to terminate them, or when opposing abortion in lifethreatening previability pregnancies or in late-term pregnancies where the fetus has died.

Of course anyone who’s antiabortion will call themselves pro-life, and to a large extent they define the term to be synonymous with anti-abortion and/or anti-choice, hence the position conveyed in the original post.

To be effectively pro-life is a whole different ball game from being ideologically pro-life.  The anti-abortion movement as it stands generally avoids true effectiveness at reducing the abortion rate in favor of registering their disapproval of it into the legal code and making emotionally satisfying attacks at a personal level: they chase after paper illegality and shout abuse at individual women on their way into the clinics.  There is little acknowledgment given of the fact that illegal abortions happen where abortion isn’t legal, and I suspect that for some of them such abortions would not be a tragedy so much as a good excuse to display misogyny by tormenting the women who have them (a much more accessible entertainment when one can throw them in prison, watch them die from sepsis, force them into childbirth and sometimes poverty, or perhaps even take away their existing children under the pretext of child abuse or unfit parenting). 

Other times preventing abortions takes a backseat to punishing women for sexual activity or for not wanting children.  Regardless, they practically always focus solely on limiting the supply rather than addressing the demand, and when they do address the demand it takes the form of pressure to live by their standards, either by “choosing life” (crisis pregnancy centers that bully and misinform more than they educate or support) or by abstaining from sex, which is itself a significant lifestyle concession that they demand in return for the “luxury” of avoiding an unwanted pregnancy.

I think it should be possible to grab back some of the political and moral capital from the anti-choicers by putting some feminist focus on supporting women who want to continue with their pregnancy but can’t because of economic factors.  This is good politics (ie shows that feminists aren’t “anti-life”, “pro-abortion”, whatever) and just plain good, since it promotes women’s choices.

A while back in the UK there was some half-arsed controversy about a Catholic Church somewhere offering money to women to not have an abortion.  I just thought - fair play, if money is all that is stopping a woman continuing her pregnancy, give her the damn money.  I know their motives were anti-abortion, but in that case, their wants coincided with the wants/needs of some women, and I didn’t think that should be controversial. 

If, given a truly free choice, a woman would want the baby she is carrying, then let’s do what we can to support that choice - free healthcare, help with housing and baby expenditure, help with childcare.  That is, I think, feminist and truly pro-life.

PS In case it needs to be said, this is all said on the basis of an absolute and concrete belief in the right to free access to abortion should that be woman’s choice.

It is important to reject their framing—they aren’t “pro-life,” not really.

We shouldn’t call them “pro-life” because it confuses people like Sam who don’t actually think about things (and I’m sure that’s their intention).  Almost everyone is pro-life.  I love life.  However, I consider life to begin at viability and the vast majority of abortions are done before the fetus is viable.  In the case of later abortions where the fetus may or may not be a person, I certainly don’t support mandatory organ donation to save a life in any case.  Sam, go and donate one of your kidneys and set up a schedule to donate blood as often as you can, and on top of that, make laws to force everyone to do it.  Then maybe you can tell those few women who have late-term abortions for non-health reasons that they have to lend out their womb to save a life and you’ll be slightly less of a hypocrite.  You’ll still be wrong, but at least you’ll be consistent.  Anti-choice people are not pro-life any more than the rest of us.  They simply want to use laws to control people’s bodies.  I voluntarily donate blood regularly, so I’ve done more to save actual human lives than most anti-choice people.

The pricks are on the move. They’ve shown up in my hometown to cause trouble. Seems the locals weren’t very impressed…

http://www.theage.com.au/national/angry-locals-scuffle-with-abortion-protesters-20090331-9i5o.html

The idea of a pro-life feminist is so ridiculous, that I didn’t get the title of the post at first.  I read it like “Gangsta for life.”

I think we’re using the terms wrong, to begin with. “Pro-life” is a misleading term. It’s been weaseled to define a religious movement which treats women as incubators, punishing them for having sex by forcing them through pregnancy and childbirth.  ... snip ... “Pro-life” SHOULD mean exactly that: anti-death penalty, pro-healthcare, pro-education, pro-environment, pro-QUALITY-of-life. It should NOT mean “pro-the life I choose FOR YOU.”

Keori, that is why I call them “anti-abortion”. It’s more accurate, more objective. The idea that they really care about life is simply wrong. They appear to care about embryos and fetuses. In general I agree with the assertion that what they really care about is a traditionalist attitude toward women and sexuality, but feel that since this has to be proved to people, I should not make this assertion in my very language.

My best friend considers herself pro-life.  Based on the fairly ginger conversations we’ve had about the topic (I was, after all, a clinic escort through and after college), I would complicate that term a little in her case—she’s focused not on criminalization but on a cultural change that would make abortion widely disapproved-of in ways that would make women not want to choose it.  That is, she feels strongly that women should control their own bodies, but she wants them to not want to have abortions.  She’ll vote for pro-choice politicians and accepts that in most cases, the politicians who share her gender politics in other ways will be pro-choice.

Because she is a feminist.  Without question.  This is someone who thinks that everyone, men and women, should read Arlie Hochschild’s The Second Shift before getting married.  Who once told a boyfriend that if they were going to get married, he could still be a surgeon, but they wouldn’t have any children because she would not share parenting with someone who worked surgeon’s hours.  She is in fact one of the most interesting feminists I know.  And she’s an evangelical Christian who has deep moral problems with abortion.

So, yes, if you say “pro-life means wanting forced childbirth,” then you define my friend out of being pro-life and she’s allowed to be a feminist.  But, as a feminist myself, I’d rather take her at her word and take her beliefs seriously.  I still disagree with them, but I can’t comfortably dismiss them.

Laura, the fact that your friend will vote pro-choice puts her out of the typical forced-gestationists’ camp.  She wants women to choose to carry the pregnancy to term, she doesn’t want to force them to carry them to term.

That makes her pro-choice, even if she disapproves mightily of the choice to have an abortion and wants to change the world so women don’t make that choice.  She wants to make the world better for women so they see abortion as the worse of two options.

She’s pro-choice.  Can’t be a feminist and disagree on giving women bodily autonomy and full human rights.

That is, she feels strongly that women should control their own bodies, but she wants them to not want to have abortions.

The problem here is this: she believes women should control their own bodies provided SHE is okay with THEIR decision.
I’m sorry, but I don’t think someone who believes women should be allowed to choose only insofar as their decisions don’t squish her out qualifies as a feminist. When you consider yourself a feminist and you declare very earnestly that women should be able to choose whatever is best for them, but “please please please I want them to make a decision I’m comfortable with”, you really need to seriously examine your attitude and stop weaseling out of the complex and uncomfortable issues.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t know your friend and I certainly believe that she’s sincere in her general feminist beliefs, but I also believe that she hasn’t fully examined this issue from a feminist perspective. Now, I can certainly appreciate the cognitive dissonance created by the clash between her general feminist outlook and her religious beliefs, but I’m afraid she’ll have to ultimately choose one or the other.

Also, I have to say the following really makes me uncomfortable:
she’s focused not on criminalization but on a cultural change that would make abortion widely disapproved-of in ways that would make women not want to choose it.

This sort of attitude certainly strikes me as extremely anti-feminist. Besides, does she honestly believe that stigmatizing abortion (and therefore women who choose to abort) even more than it already is is seriously going to achieve anything positive for women? Yay, shame and self-hatred for everyone, ladies! Backalley abortions are on the house…

I would complicate that term a little in her case—she’s focused not on criminalization but on a cultural change that would make abortion widely disapproved-of in ways that would make women not want to choose it.

I don’t think your friend has thought everything through, frankly.  How would “making abortion widely disapproved-of” solve anything at all?  All you end up doing is socially shunning someone who made a difficult decision and making her life harder, but still not as hard as it would have been if she’d had the child.

I guess my question to your friend would be, “What if your 16-year-old sister got pregnant and had an abortion that you only found out about afterwards?  Do you tell your parents to kick her out of the house?  Do you refuse to speak to her at the dinner table ever again?  Do you boycott all holidays that she’s going to be at?  Do you take every opportunity to tell her what a bad decision she made and steer every single conversation with her to the fact that she should never have had an abortion?  What is your plan to make your sister so miserable about her abortion that she’ll never choose that way again?”

I suspect a lot of mumbling and hand-waving once she realizes she can’t just abstractly talk about putting social pressure on women she doesn’t know and has to explain how she would treat women she does know personally, but it sounds like she’s honest enough to at least think about it.

I agree with Mnemosyme here: it would certainly help if she could relate to a flesh-and-blood person and imagine her being in that situation instead of retreating behind the faceless “women who abort”.

She should also be reminded that even in situations where seeking an abortion can lead to prison sentences or death, women still choose to abort. So believing more finger-wagging and shaming would make a difference strikes me as extremely naive at best.

That is, she feels strongly that women should control their own bodies, but she wants them to not want to have abortions.

*ahem* Ms. Essie is a woman, and I totally support her choice as a woman to control her own body. She can choose to carry any pregnancies she has to term and create a beautiful, wonderful baby to enrich her life and society, or she can choose to be a selfish, evil, sluttish whore and murder that perfect angelic baby in cold blood because she didn’t want to lose her perfect figure! Either way. It’s her choice. I support her in that choice fully, 100 percent. *ahem*

That kind of “feminism”? Seriously, with friends like that, we don’t need enemies.

Someone needs to remind your friend that “feminism” is about trusting women to do the right thing. Women don’t abort pregnancies because they like drinking the blood of infants, or because they’re stupid or lied to. Women abort pregnancies because they have a really good reason to and they’ve considered all the options and this is the best one for them. Socially shaming a woman for making the best medical choice for their life is incredibly pointless.

Would you shame someone for, say, having a questionable-but-probably-benign mole removed? Or would you assume that they knew what they were fucking doing with their body?

(Sorry, I know it’s not “you” we’re talking about, so this is just a general “you”.)

Because she is a feminist.  Without question. 

I do question whether someone is really on board with feminism if she embraces the idea that childbirth is the only way to redeem yourself from being a sexual woman, which is the heart and soul of unease with abortion.  That said, I know a lot of firmly pro-choice feminists who still have major double sexual standards, so your friend isn’t alone exactly, she’s just manifesting it differently.  But I wouldn’t say that it’s anti-feminist so much as a hang-up.

Lil Sam makes me pine for Rugged in Montana.

He’s the next Atanarujat.

Being pro-life and pro-choice are not mutually exclusive.  In fact, being pro-choice and anti-abortion are not mutually exclusive.  There are more than just 2 sides on this issue, and I’ve gone through most of them.  As a teenager, I thought that women in general usually shouldn’t have abortions, but that it’s not the government’s place to butt in.  I still considered myself pro-choice, because I didn’t want the government to force it anyone.  Since we have the right to free speech, I thought that if I have an opinion, it’s my duty to convince others that I’m right, rather than use the government to force my views onto everyone.  My theory was that if I’m right, getting others to think about it will show them that I’m right.  And if I’m wrong, I’ll discover that in my attempts to convince others, as long as I remain willing to listen.  And it worked for me.  I have changed my mind about thinking that abortion is generally wrong.  But I was still pro-choice while being anti-abortion.  This is similar to my views on marijuana and other drugs.  I don’t think that people should use them, but I don’t think it’s the government’s place to ban drug use (at least not for marijuana).

Then I got to a stage where I thought that I probably would never choose an abortion for myself, but since I don’t know other women, I can’t really judge what’s best for them.  I can give them my opinion if I ask for it, but there’s no way that I’m more qualified to know what’s best for them more than they know what’s best for themselves.

Currently, I don’t believe any abortion before viability is immoral at all.  This is when the cast majority of abortions occur.  I’ll admit that I’m not thrilled with the idea of late-term abortions (I know they are rare), but I’m less thrilled with the idea of a woman being legally forced to lend out her womb, even if the fetus is a person by then.  Even though it’s a choice that I wouldn’t make personally, I would never judge a woman who makes the choice to have a late-term abortion.  I know that women don’t just make these choices frivolously.

My point is, all of these viewpoints are pro-choice.  Even people who think all abortion is wrong can be pro-choice.  The issue is not about whether or not people value life; it’s about whether they want to government to make choices for us.  Someone can still be a feminist even if she thinks all abortion is wrong, as long as she values a woman’s right to make her own choice over preventing her from doing something that might be immoral.

Regarding the question of Ms. Clawson’s freind, may I just state that, with people, politics and social movements, it is always possible to find the example that can prove whatever you wish to prove. People think in all kinds of ways, and some of the stranger ways of thinking may even be correct. Nevertheless I would tend to question whether someone who believes that women should be legally prevented from having abortions, which is, in my mind the definition of “pro-life”, could really be called a feminist.

I always said you could be pro-life when it came to yourself and your body

That’s being pro-choice.

Pro-CHOICE refers to the legal CHOICE of whether to continue a pregnancy. If someone agitates or votes for that right to be protected, they are pro choice. If they agitate or vote for that right to be limited or removed, they are anti-choice, the dishonest euphemism for which is “pro-life”.

I keep making a pest of myself in these discussions, but I have a REAL distaste for the whole “I’m pro-choice but personally pro-life” types.

WHO THE FUCK CARES. The whole point is that it’s a private matter. The fact that people who declare that they would NEVER have an abortion themselves but support the legal institution—it really comes off as “I’m a better person than you sluts but at least I’m gracious about it and don’t want to spoil your slutty fun.”

No. If you’re squicked out by abortion, and you feel that it’s murder, then I’m sorry but you should be against legalized abortion just like you should be against legalized murder. I mean, that’s just baseline morality. I feel marriage equality is important, but I’m not willing to just sit on my ass and hope it works out for the best. And if you don’t feel that abortion is murder, then you need to stop pretending like it is by making sure that everyone knows that you would never have an abortion. Because… [eyebrow raise] ... you know….

If you wouldn’t have an abortion because you really like kids and you would be completely over the moon to have any child at any stage in your life with any sort of disability no matter how financially impossible it would be to raise that child, then it doesn’t matter that you would never have an abortion in any discussion about abortion. If I’m happy to prepare something with tofu in it, that doesn’t mean I’m a vegetarian.

Returning to the question of my friend: Here’s what she did when confronted with “a flesh-and-blood person” who needed an abortion.  She asked me if Planned Parenthood was the best place to go under the circumstances.

And that’s why to me it’s complicated—because I’d consider it a pro-choice act, and because what I know of her views is consistent with something I personally would identify as “reluctantly and partially pro-choice.”  That is, that she would probably put some legal limits on abortion that I oppose.  And she wants it to be a choice women just don’t make.  But she is not in favor of criminalization or other people making choices for women.  Does she want women to make for themselves the choice she prefers?  Yes.  But she doesn’t want to get there through patriarchy or coercion.

I will not pretend to fully understand her thinking on this one.  But, you know, until I was friends with her, I would have said exactly what you all have said in response to my attempt to explain the contradictions she poses for me.  I didn’t used to say “anti-choicer,” I just said “anti.”  I don’t know that I knew anyone who was opposed to abortion.  When my friend told me she was, it was something she likened to coming out of the closet.  My take is that she faces a dilemma.  She believes that abortion is the taking of a meaningful human life.  She’s against that.  But she is also opposed to punishing women for being sexual.  She is opposed to shaming.  She believes—and works to make real in her own life—that women should have as much autonomy and respect as men.  Bringing those beliefs to terms with each other isn’t easy and I’m not sure it can be done.  So, you know, is it the most coherent, non-dissonant part of her worldview?  No.  But that’s precisely because it’s not simple.

If, given a truly free choice, a woman would want the baby she is carrying, then let’s do what we can to support that choice - free healthcare, help with housing and baby expenditure, help with childcare.  That is, I think, feminist and truly pro-life.

But…but…but…that’s how we end up with WELFARE QUEENS!!!

Originally, AIDC and other forms of welfare were supposed to allow a mother to stay home and raise her child/ren, b/c that was her “best place”.  In the 80s, as the myth of the single-income ‘Leave it to Beaver’ family meme gave way to the Yuppie DINK meme, there began to be a lot of resentment that poor women could “just stay home” with their children instead of working, like good, moral middle-class women had to.  If middle class women can’t afford to stay home with the kids, it’s not fair for those slutty poor women to get to stay home with their baybeez on the dole!!!

So, welfare reform and limited benefits for women with dependent children.

Does that make the abortion rate go up?  You better believe it.  Economics is a huge force when it comes to how many children you decide to have.

Lil Sam, it’s basic—-if you don’t consider women people deserving of basic rights, or what you might call “living beings”, then it’s impossible to be a feminist.  It’s tautological.

Ahem - there’s a flaw in your logic there, Amanda.  Feminism is the belief in equal rights between the genders; if they consider that no-one should have the right to abort (because, you know, it murders all the itty bitty babies that God loves), this is still compatible with a belief in equal rights.  The fact that disputing a right to abortion only really affects the half of the human race with wombs is a matter of happenstance, rather than necessarily misogyny.

People who lop the foreskins off their babies for religious reasons are not necessarily anti-male, despite the fact that they’re only mutilating the male babies.

So it’s not tautological, since it’s based on assuming a right to abortion (or, wider, a right to bodily autonomy for either sex) as a basic civil right.  They don’t necessarily consider it a basic right when balanced against what they take to be murdering babies.

Sorry - make that “So it’s not tautological, since a claim that it is tautological is based on a right to abortion (or, wider, a right to bodily autonomy for either sex) necessarily being a basic civil right.”

Must… resist…. urge…. argue…. circumcision… derail…

Insofar as “w” is generally just a euphemism for “x”, the answer is no.  There is no such thing as a “y”, anymore than there’s such thing as a “z”.

Yep.

I agree with Ponygirl, who the fuck cares. The fact that you friend thinks she has any say in what other women should do with any mass of cells upon or in their person is just narcissistic. Boo-hoo! Watch me spend hours thinking about somebody else’s moral dilemna which I made up! Which is the problem with the whole judeo-xtian-islamist mindset. It’s the idea that one set of people can tell another set of people what to do with their bodies on behalf of what they think some skygod thinks.

Thank goodness ru486 is rendering this moot for those women who can afford it. Of course, that means there are other women who don’t have access either from economics or from ignorance. Having said that, I knew a young woman who had had two abortions already. She lived in an ethnic neighborhood whose ethnics frowned upon abortion, so her local doctor would perform D & C’s… for endometriosis. Yep, that’s what it would say on the billing form.