Feminism vs Abortion

So I found this article at the Washington Post. Colleen Campbell is arguing the existence and validation of pro-life – or anti-abortion – feminists. The organization she cites is Feminists for Life , who believe “women deserve better choices” and that “no woman should be forced to choose between sacrificing her education and career plans and sacrificing her child.”

I feel so torn on this. For about a minute and half. And then I remember what would happen if I got pregnant. I would get an abortion. Just as fast as my little feet could carry me to a Planned Parenthood. But not because I don’t want a child to get in the way of my career plans – though that is applicable to me, it’s not the whole story. I would get an abortion because I don’t want kids. I have of course reinforced this plan of mine by the vigorous – you could say militant – use and monitoring of my birth control, but if something happened, I would get an abortion. And I believe that is a right that I am entitled to.

I think organizations like Feminists for Life sound so great because they’re right, in part. Women do deserve better choices, and women shouldn’t be forced to choose between a child and a career. But outlawing abortion only justifies a way of thinking that has been so harmful to women historically – that women are nothing more than uterus receptacles, good for one thing and one thing only. And women shouldn’t have the right to choose not to fulfill their “purpose.” This stereotype that all women “inherently” want children, and that abortion is a grueling and traumatic experience that every woman regrets is not only wrong but makes the women who don’t want children or who didn’t have horrible traumatic abortions feel like freaks. When Angie Jackson attempted to live tweet her abortion she received death threats and all kinds of insidious hatred from both her Twitter and her YouTube accounts. And Angie Jackson was doing abortion the “right” way – she was all ready a mother of a young child, and after a difficult first pregnancy her doctor advised her not to have another child. She was even using an IUD. She was still slut-shamed, still attacked with bible verses. And all because Jackson wasn’t ashamed of her abortion; she made a decision and didn’t regret it. As a woman, she broke the cardinal rule; she didn’t want a child, so she went ahead and didn’t have one.

bell hooks says it better than I ever could. In her book Feminism is for Everybody, she writes:&nbsp

“If feminism is a movement to end sexist oppression, and      depriving females of reproductive rights is a form of sexist oppression, then one cannot be anti-choice and be feminist. A woman can insist she would never choose to have an abortion while affirming her support of the right of women to choose and still be an advocate of feminist politics. She cannot be anti-abortion and an advocate of feminism.” (p. 6)

The point is, if an individual woman does not want to have an abortion, she doesn’t have to. But if an individual woman chooses to have an abortion, she can and should be able to. Anti-choice rhetoric, at it’s core, is about valuing the life of a fetus over the life of a grown woman, and valuing women as nothing more than baby-makers.

I would like to make one more point. What about the men? Consistently, women are the ones who are shamed and blamed for abortion or for not wanting children. But it takes two to make a baby. Men are not stigmatized for not wanting children; in fact, the “older bachelor” is a cherished and much-loved masculine stereotype in this country. There is no such thing as a “female bachelor.” What are we, then? Old maids? Spinsters? Old, sour women who are past their prime and have no use in our society. The old standby, of course, is lesbian. Elena Kagan is facing that battle right now; an older woman, unmarried, no kids…what else could she be except a lesbian who probably has secretly yearned for babies her whole life? If she was anything else – like a woman who despite sexual orientation simply chose not to have kids – she would be a freak of nature, and our society wouldn’t know how to deal with her.

Cross-posted at Blueberry Shake.