Pro-choice needs to get its shit together.
Let’s own up to our beliefs.
Maybe I’m a black-and-white thinker. Maybe I’m utterly naive. Maybe I have no place to speak anymore to begin with, being over five years removed from the possession of an unwanted uterus. But the pro-choice movement drives me nuts.
Take it from a former pro-lifer — we will never get anywhere if we don’t acknowledge what exactly we’re okay with, and why we still think it’s okay.
The way I see it, we need to say it straight: Yeah, ending a tiny life is justified sometimes. Given that we take the tragedy of miscarriage seriously, is it not a blatant double standard to imply that an unwanted unborn of the same age is suddenly less than? Is our worth entirely dependent on other people’s perception of it? Are some blobs human and some blobs not-human? Seriously, people. Make up your minds!
I promise I’m pro-abortion; it’s just that we need to reckon with the cognitive dissonance here. Can we stop dancing around and finally think up a definition of “worthy of life” (or “alive” or “human enough to justify ruining other people’s lives by existing” or just “not okay to terminate”) that won’t go in one conservative ear and out the other?
Because as much as we don’t want to believe it (or maybe I really am naive), there are pro-life people out there on pure principle who don’t actually wake up every day and say, “I want to oppress women!”
Even if that’s ultimately, unconsciously the case half the time, they’re still going to call it a principle to your face. Heck, I believed this myself for many years — a unique genetic signature, no matter how small, is the first priority at all costs, oppressive (so utterly, disgustingly, unempathetically, goddamn oppressive) as it may be. So what do we say to that?
Well, I suppose we could start with, “Life for life’s sake shouldn’t mean anything. You’re gonna have to do better than just existing.”
Okay, neat. That makes sense, given that, on a similar note, we’re generally cool with euthanasia on this side of the aisle. Life needs to have some quality, dammit! (fun fact: my insufferable Catholic ass changed her mind about euthanasia when assigned an essay about Of Mice and Men in the eleventh grade. I was required to argue for it and ended up changing my own mind. Sorry if that spoiled anything. Anyway…)
Anyway, quality.
Clearly we can’t just stick to ‘other people said they love me (me being the fetal blob) and would be super sad if I got miscarried, therefore I deserve to live,’ since the whole ‘other people decide what I’m worth’ thing is kinda sorta exactly what happens to us in the LGBT community, no? Other people, generally overlapping quite a bit with pro-life people, decide we’re worth nothing. And we obviously don’t want that. Yay; double standards all around!
So quality.
What gives life “quality” these days, anyway? I dunno; how about “the ability to experience happiness, whether alone or with assistance, so long as it doesn’t cost the assistance more happiness than is experienced?” Because there’s nothing concrete to be happy about if you haven’t even been born yet, right?
I guess if both sides are okay with our wanted lil’ zygote friends not technically meeting this criteria, because obviously we can all agree to not lay a finger on those, then…yeah. Wanted pregnancies can ‘bring the happiness’ instead of ‘experiencing the happiness’ or something. Bringing other people happiness is sufficient but not necessary to keep on existing (or living, if that’s your cup of terminology tea), I guess.
I would feel a lot better if we knew it was painless (someone with science, please enlighten me!), but that’s frankly why I’m okay with ending unborn babies, and why, in my not-so-humble rant of an opinion, we should start being more frank about it.
But, again, who am I to proselytize? I haven’t been able to bear unborn things in half a decade.
