I’m definitely pro-choice, and I know this is one of those things that cannot be legislated directly. But I also care about sentient beings, not to mention abortion is not at all fun!

I, too, would like to see a truly feminist pro-life movement. :)

I’m not sure where you got that impression, but that’s the exact opposite of what Feminists for Life does. Its biggest initiative, for instance, is the College Outreach Program. In this program, they go to college campuses and help pro-life and pro-choice groups work together to identify what resources exist to help pregnant and parenting students, and then publicize those resources and work to improve the areas that are lacking.

I can’t think when I’ve ever heard of FFL working on “making abortion unavailable through legal changes,” though it’s possible I missed something.

Right now, I’m working on founding a group that would sort of be at the intersection of the consistent life ethic movement and the reproductive justice movement. (Ettina, if you’re still reading, you’d probably like it!) “Combating unwanted pregnancies, poverty, prejudices toward and lack of publicly funded care for people with disabilities, sexual assault, etc.” fits right into its mission.

I am not suggesting that pro-choice activists should engage with Oregon Right to Life or any of the violent pro-life protesters you are describing. But not everyone who attended the rally were violent or anti-women. There are many women who can be brought to our side, but we are losing them by labeling them “anti-women,” violent, and uncompassionate, giving ourselves excuse not to reach out to them.

I am also not suggesting that we should “bring the debate to the emotional level of the rightwing.” But I disagree that we can treat the abortion debate as a “medical” issue alone (or rather, I disagree that medicine is amoral and apolitical).

Some of us, perhaps including you, Terri, do not view fetus as having any moral status, and therefore assume that there is no moral dimension to abortion. However, it is not up to science or medicine to determine what conditions has to be met for a being to possess moral status: it is a moral and political judgment. In other words, when you state that “abortion is a medical procedure, nothing more,” you are in fact committing to a particular moral position. Here, I agree with Austin Dacey who argues in The Secular Conscience that pro-choice feminists’ refusal to acknowledge their moral judgment has enabled the right-wing to dominate and monopolise moral discourse over abortion.

Reasonable people can disagree over whether or not fetus has the moral status worthy of our consideration, but pro-choice feminists often jump to the conclusion that unless one shares their exact same moral conviction (i.e. fetus has no moral status), she is part of the right-wing. However, this is not the case–and furthermore, it pushes many women away from the pro-choice camp, making it easier for the right-wing to recruit them to advance its anti-woman agenda.

Once the abortion debate is properly understood as a dilemma of competing moral positions that reasonable people, including feminists, can disagree over, we can then begin to work toward common goals among feminists who call themselves pro-choice and those who call themselves pro-life. When bona fide pro-life feminists are separated from the rest of the “pro-life” camp, misogynist “pro-lifers” will be exposed simply as misogynists and hypocrites who are only pretending to value life in order to constrain and control women’s sexuality and their roles in the society.

I was happy to learn you attended the counter protest to Oregon Right to Life on January 18th called by the Reproductive Rights Action Coalition, a coalition spearheaded by Radical Women.

I do have some opposing thoughts on some of your observations from that day. I think that the picket signs we brought out had bold statements on them. You were right to say that they lacked persuasive power to the women on the other side of the street but we were not there to persuade or engage with Oregon Right to Life. We were there to show opposition to their position and their audacity to enter Portland’s living room with their anti-woman agenda.

The Reproductive Rights Action Coalition organized the counter protest in a week and a half and had nowhere near the amount of money Oregon Right to Life did to bus people in from across the state. Perhaps if the coalition had more time, more people would have attended and could have spoken to the very personal stories of friends and family lost to botched, back alley abortions or to the hardship of raising children without adequate support from state agencies.

I think trying to bring the debate to the emotional level of the rightwing is the wrong strategy though. The anti-abortion crew has no ground scientifically to walk on in regards to their position they merely operate on a moralistic stance. Morality muddles the entire argument when in reality abortion is a medical procedure, nothing more.

The Reproductive Rights Action Coalition did not experience any of the “compassionate conservatism” you write about regardless of the supposed “pro-woman” language the right wing has co-opted. The obvious example of this was the dismembered fetus sign held by one violent right-to-lifer that tried to break our lines apart. Another sign being displayed by the rightwing said “gays spread disease”. The Oregon Right to Life rally attendees also tried to prevent us from having a counter-protest, they broke our lines, they pushed a woman carrying her child, they shoved, kicked, elbowed and screamed obscenities at us. We experienced no compassion from these people whatsoever.

I agree that creating a society which breaks women free from the economic and social conditions that often lead to abortion is incredibly important. Even in a society that has economic and social resources accessible to all women, there will still need to be access to safe and legal abortion. Women should have the basic right to decide what happens to our bodies. Oregon Right to Life is not working to create the sort of society where egalitarian human relations reign and women’s biology is no longer their destiny. Radical Women however is working to create such a society.

Terri Murphy,
Radical Women.

Exactly.
Oh, and by the way, I’m so glad to see a pro-choice feminist recognize that not all pro-life people are misogynists.

“It is easy to point to the hypocrisy of their support for the death penalty-loving, war-mongering administration as they scream “right to life,” or their opposition to comprehensive sex education that could reduce the number of abortions that have to be performed, but I worry that the debate is framed to favour the anti-abortion side.”

For me, there’s no such hypocrisy. I’m a pacifist, pro-life feminist who thinks the death penalty is barbaric. (And I’m proud to say that my country, Canada, does not have the death penalty.) I think everyone’s life has value, even if others don’t see it.