Get the Woman-Haters Outta There, Once and For All

A SYTYCB Entry

Anyone who supports a woman’s right to make her own reproductive choices acknowledges that there is no right way for everyone.  As Jos pointed out this week, there are many, many reasons for having an abortion and for being pro-choice.  It will only help the cause of reproductive freedom if we recognize that there are also many, many reasons for being anti-choice.  The more we sort them out, the better chance we have at addressing them.

Many in the disability rights movement fear an ableist culture that encourages women to have children as long as they’re not the wrong kind of children.  (This fear is particularly strong here in Germany on both sides of the political spectrum.)  Many in the feminist movement have similar fears when they hear about sex-selective abortion in India and China that favors females over males.  Many in the adoption rights movement feel conflicted about any argument about what a woman “should do” in a given scenario.  As someone with a disability I have a 50% chance of passing on to my children, I share many of these anti-choicers’ concerns.  Just not the conclusion they come to.

In order to build an open, tolerant society, reproductive freedom must be an inalienable right, ensuring that no woman will ever be pressured by her culture to choose one way or the other.  But despite this crucial difference, I can engage with the anti-choicers in these movements because for them, the debate is truly about the dangers of valuing some people over others, eugenics and population control.  It is not about a dark, degrading view of women in general.

But for Todd Akin and his ilk, it is.  With his statement this week, he betrayed an insidious misogyny that’s run rampant in the anti-choice movement for decades and that’s gotta be called out for what it is.  Anyone who believes that women should not be allowed to have birth control, that the female body deflects unwanted pregnancy, that victims of abuse and assault need to see the silver lining, or that only women who have been victims deserve reproductive freedom and that women who have consensual sex should be punished with the consequences is not arguing about valuing human life.  They are arguing about controlling women, devaluing them.  Period.

With his statement, Akin has brought reproductive freedom to the fore of this election, highlighting the GOP’s platform that commits to ban abortion with no exceptions.  According to the platform committee chair, Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia, this is “affirming our respect for human life.”  No one can respect human life when they side with politicians that dehumanize half of the population, and McDonnell himself has failed to call on Akin to step down.  Any anti-choice activists who sincerely believe the debate is about fighting eugenics must debunk and purge their movement of this putrid tradition of patriarchy once and for all if they want anyone to respect them enough to engage with them.