Dear Pro-Life Movement,
As of today, I am officially revoking your rights to the term “pro-life.” You may no longer use this term as it is inaccurate in describing your cause. Henceforth, you shall be called “pro-birth” or, more accurately, “anti-abortion.”
This is because, upon closer examination of your philosophies in light of the recent Susan G. Komen for the Cure kerfuffle, you are not truly in favor of life; you just want to end abortion.
I do not dispute that in concept that is a laudable goal, but your single-minded, myopic pursuit of this goal has blinded you to larger issues and made you the foremost foe of women’s rights in this country.
Let me offer as an aside a bit of full disclosure: I am the result of an unwanted, unplanned pregnancy. Had the winds of fate blown in a slightly different direction, I would not exist. What I say is not said at all lightly or without a great deal of thought, so don’t be so quick to dismiss me as a liberal loony who seeks to perpetuate a “culture of death” in this country. That is a gross over-simplification of me personally, and of the pro-choice opposition.
But then, that’s what you folks truck in: you take a very complex topic and reduce it (and anyone you disagree with) to a simplistic version of itself to better support your arguments and, by extension, your end goal of ending safe, legal abortion in the US.
In your world, the instant a woman conceives, she is nothing more than an incubator for a potential human being, and all her rights to control her own life and her own body are now forfeit in service to a collection of cells — living matter, yes, but not yet a life. You would assert your personal morality over a perfect stranger, regardless of her circumstances, and force her to bring another life into a world that is increasingly incapable of supporting the 6.8 billion people already on it.
Your rationale for co-opting another person’s life is that all life is sacred, but your argument is flawed because it first completely disregards one very important life: the mother’s.
At its most extreme, the anti-abortion movement would eliminate abortion as an option under any circumstances, including rape (according to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network, an estimated five percent of rape victims conceive as a result of the attack), incest, or when the mother’s own life is threatened should she attempt to carry the fetus to term. There is a callous indifference to how the potential life (baby) would impact the actual life (mother), physically, psychologically, emotionally, financially — all that matters is that the mother pops out a child in nine months, fallout be damned, up to and including the mother’s own death.
Once that child enters the world? Well, good luck to it, because the anti-abortion movement no longer cares. You aren’t there to help the mother find work (and the accompanying daycare) to pay for her child’s basic necessities (and the accompanying daycare). You aren’t there to fight for the woman’s ability to receive government assistance should she need it — indeed, many anti-abortion politicians also rail against the very “entitlement programs” people forced into parenthood might need to support their child. You aren’t around to push for more funding for schools, or to chip in for the kid’s college fund, or to support expanded health care programs that ensure the child will have adequate medical care. You’ve all moved on and you’re off to save the next “unborn American.”
That’s what I don’t get: why you fight so hard to make sure a child enters the world but not at all to ensure a quality of life for the child (or its mother) once it’s born. Why does your crusade end at the birth? Where are the daily angry protests outside of our seats of power that throw up roadblock after roadblock to make life if not easy, then at least fair for mother and child alike? Where are the people screaming at public officials who vote against funding for safety net programs that benefit families while shoving in their faces graphic pictures of starving children living in the streets?
I don’t see that. I don’t hear about it.
I hear you telling women to keep their legs closed, shaming them as sluts for daring to engage in sexual activity outside of marriage for recreational (non-procreative) reasons — because, in your minds, any woman who finds herself with an unwanted child cannot possibly be the victim of rape; cannot be a woman whose frail form cannot successfully carry a child to term; cannot be a wife who, despite her care and caution, became pregnant before she and her partner were psychologically, emotionally, and financially ready for a child, if indeed they ever wanted one.
I hear you berating women for not using birth control while heedless to the fact that every single method of birth control, including sterilization, has a chance of failing; a report published in Family Planning Perspectives indicated that 25 percent of all unintended pregnancies (which account for half of all births in the US) happened despite contraception use — a fact you sometimes use to argue against contraception and non-abstinence-only sex education altogether, even though worldwide studies have proven that ready availability of contraception and comprehensive sex education greatly reduces unwanted pregnancies and, by extension, abortions.
I hear you demonizing organizations like Planned Parenthood as an “abortion industry” and a “murder-for-hire business” because all of three percent of their activities are abortion services. Not 99 percent as US Senator Jon Kyl once asserted, before he was called out on flagrant his lie — THREE PERCENT. I hear you trying to financially strangle Planned Parenthood while showing no concern about how killing this organization would negatively impact the tens of thousands of women in this country who rely on them for basic women’s health services…like cancer screenings.
Life is an ongoing event. It is a spectrum of experiences. It has a beginning and an end and, if one is fortunate, an extremely long middle. When you accept this and expand your sacred crusade accordingly, so that it does not end after the first nine months, I’ll let you call yourselves “pro-life” again.
Until then? Truth in advertising, people. Truth in advertising.
