The Choice in Pro-Choice

From the Guardian:

When Ma Jihong became pregnant for a third time, she looked forward to expanding her family. So many neighbours had broken China‘s strict birth quotas she thought she could too.

But six months later she died in panic on an operating table after officials in Lijin, Shandong province, forced her into a late-term abortion, relatives have said.

Her eldest daughter, 14-year-old Yuyu, has not spoken since Ma’s death more than a week ago. Yanyan, aged four, cries for her mother but does not even know she is dead – relatives unsure how to break the news have pretended that Ma has left in search of work.

“We thought we had lost the child, but we did not know we had lost the mother,” a source close to Ma’s family, who asked not to be identified, said.

There is one of those “both sides” memes that has popped up among those people looking down on the abortion wars. It goes something like this: There is dishonesty in the labels that each side applies to themselves because being “pro” something good implies that the opposition is against it. Thus, it is incorrect to suggest that people who want access to abortion on demand are against life and incorrect to suggest that those who want to restrict access to abortion are against choice.

The reaction to this particular story supports half the meme. No one is supporting the Chinese policy of forced abortion. Those of us who are pro-choice are all too aware that reproductive health is still health, period, and that the only person who can reasonably make the choice to abort or not is the woman involved–with the counsel of whomever she chooses to involve. None of us have our health at stake.

We’re also aware that emotional health is still health, and that some kinds of stress can be particularly dangerous during pregnancy. Not only does supporting two lives with organs that are used to supporting one put a physical strain on a pregnant woman, leaving fewer resources to deal with additional strain, but emotional and environmental stresses are shared to an extent by the fetus. Insisting that we are able to choose for someone else which stresses they must be subject to or visit on their fetus is a recipe for what happened in Lijin. It won’t happen every time or even most of the time, but it is enough of a risk that it isn’t up to us to decide when it isn’t our life on the line.

Then there’s the other half of that meme, that those who are not pro-choice are not actually anti-choice. This story is a bit extreme counterexample, and it comes from outside the culture in which this debate is happening, so perhaps it isn’t fair to look to it or light here. On the other hand, we have plenty of examples from our own culture lately of restrictions on abortion that have nothing to do with the supposed informed choice initiatives of the past. More and more, the legislative landscape is littered with bills that will deny choice to any but the richest American women and will empower others to deny them even the choice of saving their own lives.

Maybe that’s why you don’t hear that meme as much as you did when abortion restrictions were simply an empty campaign promise. The falseness of the equivalence is much more apparent these days.

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The Choice in Pro-Choice
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8 thoughts on “The Choice in Pro-Choice

  1. 1

    When arguing about abortion, I found that most anti-abortion (I can’t call them pro-life) people were also vehemently anti-choice. Well, they would allow this: the choice you had in order to not become pregnant was to not have sex. At all. Ever.

    They were very much against contraceptives. They also tended to be against abortions for any reasons, even for young girls…because hey! That nine-year-old girl can totes carry twins to term! That’s what female bodies are designed to do!

    I will not call them pro-life because they do not live up to that name – if you’re pro-life, you must admit that women’s lives count too. If not, you’re a misogynist nit.

  2. ema
    2

    No one is supporting the Chinese policy of forced abortion.

    Except, of course, for all those who support/pass restrictive laws in this country. Their position, that women cannot be allowed to consent to medical procedures and need to be wards of the state, is equally supportive of forced births and terminations.

  3. 3

    Simple — the “anti-abortion” folks, every last one, is ANTI-WOMAN. They don’t care what happens to us, just that we can be used as baby factories. They want us to be punished for having sex, and don’t CARE if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.

    Funny thing, though. They don’t care much about the baby after it’s born, they support cutting off the social safety net (welfare, WIC, anything that helps the poor), and are quite willing to condemn women AND children to living in a cardboard box in a back alley. After all, the “slut” deserves it, she should have kept her legs closed!

    That attitude towards women, towards our health, and our bodies, makes me sick.

  4. wat
    4

    Except, of course, for all those who support/pass restrictive laws in this country. Their position, that women cannot be allowed to consent to medical procedures and need to be wards of the state, is equally supportive of forced births and terminations.

    Who?

  5. 6

    I don’t understand your post. “Pro-choice” means pro-leaving-the-choice-whether-to-carry-a-pregnancy-to-term-up-to-the-person-who-is-pregnant. Ma Jihong was not given this choice. The people who are currently trying to prevent women from having access to safe abortions in the United States may not be out to perform forced abortions on women (right now), but they still don’t want to give women the choice. Forced abortions or forced birth is irrelevant. Both actions take away the right of women to their own bodily autonomy and leave the door open for the state to make the opposite decision in this or that circumstance.

    “Pro-life” is not pro-life at all. Even in the narrow sense of life for embryos. If they really held that position, they would be funding research into preventing natural miscarriages and fighting for universal healthcare for pregnant women.There are far more foetal deaths due to miscarriage and inadequate prenatal care than from abortion.

  6. 7

    wat, I believe ema is referring to the fact that it’s not that different to decide women aren’t competent to choose abortions than to decide women aren’t competent to refuse them.

    Ibis3, I don’t think you’re disagreeing with anything I said.

  7. rob
    8

    one word: contraception.

    the rigorous use of contraception would eliminate unwanted pregnancies* and help curb population growth. the world just passed 7 billion inhabitants. it passed 6 billion in 1998.

    *contraception isn’t 100%.

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