Anti-Choice=Anti-Woman

But don’t you tell an anti-choicer that!

Funny story, I once told a not-quite-decided-but-mostly-anti-choice woman that anti-choice=anti-woman and she was outraged. How dare I?! And you know, I refused to even engage in dialogue. Was that the best tactic? Probably not. Would I act differently if the situation came up again? I hope so.

Let’s poke a few holes in the anti-choice rhetoric that claims to be anything but misogynistic fascism.

“I’m not anti-woman, I’m pro-life!”
Nope. You’re pro-tiny cluster of cells used to punish ‘sluts’ for daring to have non-procreative sex. If you were really pro-life you’d be pro-wanted-life. You’d be pro-contraception (and you almost never are). You’d be out adopting and fostering the children you push so hard to have born and then abandon. You’d be pro-social supports that allow women to have children when and if they want to. And Hell, if you were ethically consistent, you’d damn well be vegan.

“I’m not anti-woman, I’m pro-woman! I’m saving women from evil abortion doctors!”
There’s a strange perception–or perhaps it’s simply propaganda–among some anti-choicers that abortion doctors are actively recruiting young women to ply their craft upon. That abortion is this grand money-making scheme (when, of course, we know that abortion providers are fucking heros who literally put their lives on the line every single day for your right and mine to bodily autonomy). That abortion providers are tricking and manipulating women into aborting wanted fetuses. Nothing could be further from the truth. And what a paternalistic view to take. Those poor, dumb wimmins couldn’t possibly know what an abortion is. I must save them! Giving women that little credit sure as Hell sounds anti-woman to me. And let’s not pretend that an anti-choicer claiming to be pro-woman could ever be anything but the bleakest of irony.

“I’m not anti-woman! I’m pro-fetus! Fetuses have rights!”
Uh, no. They don’t. Legally, they do not. Ethically, they do not. Fetuses are clusters of cells that depend entirely upon a woman’s continued consent to develop into human babies. The focus on fetuses is a misdirect. A way to exert control over women’s bodies and sexuality without being (so) overt. A way to shame women who have sex. A way to punish women who have sex, without ever admitting the real motivation. If you truly cared about fetuses–and the babies they become–you would only support wanted pregnancies. If a woman is having an abortion it’s because she–for whatever reason–doesn’t feel like she can or should become a mother right now. Trust her. If you do not trust women to know what’s best for themselves, you are anti-woman. Period.

“I’m not anti-woman! I’m _________.”
I’ll repeat myself, to make sure you heard me: If you do not trust women to know what’s best for themselves, you are anti-woman. If you think you get a say in what a woman does with the contents of her uterus, you are anti-woman. If you think God commands you to save fetuses, you are anti-woman, and so is your religion. If you think abortion is okay in cases of rape and incest only, you are anti-woman. If you think there is any reason other than coercion that makes abortion wrong or bad, you are anti-woman.

And because it’s so important, I’ll reiterate it: The only wrong reason for an abortion is coercion.