On this National Sanctity of Human Life Day (which is one of those last-minute proclamations that George W. Bush is pushing through while nobody is paying attention to him), I went to the Pioneer Square Park to observe Oregon Right to Life’s anti-abortion rally and the counter-rally organised by Radical Women/Freedom Socialist Party.
Well, the rally was pretty big. I think there were a thousand people or two, which may not seem that large to some, but I haven’t personally been to many rallies that are so big in Portland. I walked around the square, reading and taking pictures of the signs people were holding, as it has become my personal anthropological research project to survey political rhetoric at political rallies. Some slogans I found on banners and signs that appear to have been provided by the organisers are:
“Stop Abortion Now”
“We Are Women Hurt by Abortion / We Are Silent No More”
“A Pregnant Woman Needs Support Not Abortion”
“Pro-Choice is No Choice for the Unborn”
“As a Former Fetus I Oppose Abortion”
“Women Deserve Better than Abortion”
“Vote Pro-Life”
“Abortion Stops a Beating Heart”
“I Regret My Abortion”
In addition, I saw many homemade signs that participants brought:
“Abortion is a Failure of Love”
“Peace in the Womb”
“Peace Begins in the Womb”
“Right to Choose? Or Right to Be Used?”
“Abortion is the Leading Cause of Death!”
“Human Life at Conception = Biology, Not Opinion”
“Abortion Kills Children”
“Love’s Choice is Life”
“A Person’s a Person No Matter How Small – Dr. Suess”
“Planned Parenthood Kills Babies”
“Adoption Not Abortion”
“How Can You Not Love a Baby”
“Margaret Sanger was a Racist”
I make the distinction between the two types of signs, because I assume that the statewide “pro-life” group, which is an affiliate of National Right to Life Committee, uses focus groups and marketing techniques to pick slogans that prove to be most effective, while individual participants basically put on their signs what each person feels is important or witty. In other words, if homemade signs are a window into abortion opponents’ psyche, professionally produced signs show what messages appeal to a wide audience.
Looking at the list of official slogans, the pattern should be obvious: the blatant co-optation of feminist rhetoric and sentiment in defense of women, which is employed to advance a political goal that deprives women of their constitutional right. As one speaker at the rally said: “we must defend our right to choose life” by prohibiting abortion. Apparently, the coupling of social conservativism with the public display of compassion (“compassionate conservativism”!) is still effective, or else they would not be using it in their signs.
In the meantime, here are some of the signs I found on Radical Women’s side:
“We Will Not Lose the Right to Choose”
“General Strike for Queer Rights”
“Not the Church, Not the State, Women Must Choose Their Fate”
“Pro-Life Bigots Stay Away! Abortion Rights are Here to Stay”
“Keep Abortion Legal!!”
I’m pro-choice, so I happen to agree with these positions–but I find these signs to be too legalistic and archaic almost, lacking persuasive power. At least, it offers nothing to the woman who was holding the sign “I Regret My Abortion” on the other side of the street. While the “pro-life” side is co-opting compassionate faux-feminist rhetoric to court supporters, the real feminists are failing to attract women who are not already “one of us.”
Pro-choice feminists tend to think of the abortion debate in strictly legalistic terms: the question is simply whether or not the State should stop women from choosing abortion. One could justify abortion rights on the basis of individual’s right to privacy or even on the basis of gender equality (i.e. no undue burden on one sex over another), but the bottom line is: there will be greater tragedies and injustices unless abortion is made available legally, regardless of how we might personally feel about it.
Some feminists oppose abortion on moral grounds, but does not believe that the State should enforce her morality on others, either on principle (i.e. State must remain neutral on the matter of morality), or because, as I wrote above, prohibiting abortion would lead to greater tragedies. Many feminists also recognise that abortion is not desirable, even as they support women’s legal right to have one, and work toward reducing the need for it. These stances do not make someone “pro-life,” because, in pro-choice feminists’ construction, being “pro-life” is not about supporting life, but about opposing the legal option of abortion.
But many people do not share these strictly legalistic definitions of “pro-choice” and “pro-life.” When thinking about abortion, many people–especially women–do not just think of just a woman and her body; they think about a woman and the fetus, and it offends them when feminists suggest that a fetus is just “lump of cells”–they agree with “it’s not a choice, it’s a baby.” And they feel sympathetic when they see “I Regret My Abortion” and “Women are Hurt by Abortion.”
The “pro-life” political movement has kept the meaning of “pro-life” deliberately ambiguous, and it is working to their advantage. Who isn’t for “life” after all? 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.
Perhaps what we need is a true feminist “pro-life” movement, which is concerned about women as well as (although not necessarily to the same degree) their fetuses, and for that reason works to end abortion, not by prohibiting it, but by combating unwanted pregnancies, poverty, prejudices toward and lack of publicly funded care for people with disabilities, sexual assault, etc. There certainly seems to be an opening for it. Sure, Feminists for Life already exists, but its positions are no different from traditional “pro-life” groups that employ superficially pro-women rhetoric: it focuses on making abortion unavailable through legal changes, rather than addressing economic and social conditions that make so many abortions necessary.
Pro-choice feminists would insist that such “feminist pro-life” movement is in fact pro-choice, and they are of course technically correct. But wouldn’t we make better pro-lifers than the “pro-lifers” themselves?
“Perhaps what we need is a true feminist “pro-life†movement, which is concerned about women as well as (although not necessarily to the same degree) their fetuses, and for that reason works to end abortion, not by prohibiting it, but by combating unwanted pregnancies, poverty, prejudices toward and lack of publicly funded care for people with disabilities, sexual assault, etc.”
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.
Comment by Ettina — January 19, 2009 @ 4:46 pm
Emi,
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.
Comment by Terri Murphy — January 25, 2009 @ 7:39 pm
Hello Ettina and Terri – thanks for your comments. Below is a response for Terri.
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.
Comment by emigrl — January 26, 2009 @ 10:29 pm
Re: Feminists for Life, you say: “it focuses on making abortion unavailable through legal changes, rather than addressing economic and social conditions that make so many abortions necessary.”
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.
Comment by Jen R — February 7, 2009 @ 2:19 pm
Right on, Emi. As a vegan, I have compassion even for very small sentient beings, but I am also a feminist and don’t understand why so many pro-life folks are opposed to ALL abortion (except that which threatens the woman’s life). I’ve a friend who is like, “In the U.S. it is a lame excuse that anti-abortion is taking away women’s rights,” but then he doesn’t care at all about fully-grown animals and once complained to me that allowing farmed animals to live outside of crates and cages would harm the economy. To me that is just a religious/fundamentalist standpoint.
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. :)
Comment by Louche — January 6, 2010 @ 12:51 pm
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