I am a mother to two children. I have always wanted to be a mother, so abortion was never something I had to consider — but I have always been pro-choice because I support women’s rights. Any mother could tell you of the significant physical and emotional burden of carrying a baby to term, not to mention the act of giving birth. It’s an experience that carries more intimacy and vulnerability than the act that precedes it. I cannot imagine being forced to go through the birth process without having a choice in the matter, any more than I can imagine being forced into sex without consent.
The discussion surrounding abortion often focuses on the concept of morality from a religious perspective, or whether or not the fetus has legal rights. How about focusing on the issue from the position of what is acceptable and compassionate to the individual? It is the woman in question that lives with the painful decision to have a baby or not. Being forced to give birth to assuage other people’s consciences while doing damage to one’s self is tantamount to abuse. We as women deserve better.
Lisa Sumlak, Calgary.
It’s in part because of this view that ProWomanProLife was started. I strongly believe in women’s rights, and I am strongly against abortion. This is not a zero-sum game, that one side (the fetus) has rights and the other side (the woman) doesn’t, or vice versa. The two do not need to compete.
In fact, our culture is quite strange in putting this idea forward–I can only assume we’ve been told it so long that that we believe it to be true. But how are the mother’s rights trampled if she gives birth? Could that birth not be viewed as an extension of her rights? Is there something empowering about abortion? What might that action do to the woman and her state of mind, her ability to choose in the future?
I do disagree with this letter, but that’s not my point with this post. My point is that we simply aren’t very creative in considering abortion and women’s rights today, and we’ve accepted a worldview that may or may not hold water. We need to be asking a lot of questions, and if I could meet the author of this letter, I’d hope we could have a considerate discussion of all these things.
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The pro-choice mindset is based on the separation of sexual relations and pregnancy. Somehow women shouldn’t have to bear children if they didn’t intend to get pregnant.
Is that not like saying one should be allowed to drink and drive, but not take responsibility for a possible accident because one didn’t intend to get into it?
Getting pregnant is seen as something that is unfair on women; but maturity means accepting the consequences of one’s actions. Abortion is our default cop-out position.
“I cannot imagine being forced to go through the birth process without having a choice in the matter, any more than I can imagine being forced into sex without consent.”
Being forced into an abortion is perhaps a scenario Ms. Sumlak has never contemplated. Even by the most conservative estimates, ten thousand or so women suffer coerced abortion every year in Canada. We as women absolutely do deserve better.
I agree completely with the view of the letter writer about the emotional and physical burdens of pregnancy. The thought of being forced to bring a pregnancy to term is also something that I could almost compare to rape as well.
I have in the past thought that pro-life people don’t give enough importance to what it means to go through pregnancy and birth. Yes, of course, it is better to endure pregnancy than to kill someone. In the same way, you could say it was better to endure rape than to kill someone (although there is not a direct comparison there).
What I have come to realize is missing is the concept that pregnancy is, in and of itself, a uniquely feminine and empowering thing, in a way that even the “thing that precedes it” is not. Yes, it is extremely intimate, yes it is physically and emotionally demanding, but things that have high value tend to be like that.
Why is it that a woman’s uniquely feminine capability of creating new human beings from her very flesh is seen as inherently burdensome? Why do we look on a pregnancy following rape, for example, as an additional punishment of the woman instead of the one positive thing that comes out of it?
Our society seems to be organized around the idea that pregnancy, childbirth and raising children are interferences to a normal life. They are almost seen as a sort of “hobby” that someone may choose to indulge in for a few years. Those who can arrange it may take some time off from “real” work, just as they may take a sabbatical to study or to sail around the world. Those who can’t just have to fit it in like any other avocation.
Obviously, this not only has a disproportionate impact on women – it also disparages something immensely important that only women can do.
When we pretend that sex has no connection with pregnancy, then we apply a male model of sexuality to women and if a woman is unsuccessful in preventing an unplanned pregnancy, we require her to “fix” her difference from the male by “terminating” her pregnancy or to otherwise “pay” for it with poverty and single motherhood. If we were to apply a female model of sexuality, we would require any man that engages in sex with a woman to be prepared to dedicate himself to any possible pregnancy, planned or not, no matter what measures they were taking to prevent it, just as a woman must unless she kills her baby.
This is what I don’t get.
“I cannot imagine being forced to go through the birth process without having a choice in the matter, any more than I can imagine being forced into sex without consent.”
Forced to go through the birth process. In this society, it’s almost like the choice to have a baby is made AFTER the pregnancy test comes back positive.
If, as a society, we were to make abortion less easily available, we would NOT be forcing women to go through with the birth process. The birth process is a natural and predictable consequence of sexual activity.
Ladies! Sex causes babies! If a baby would be the absolute worst thing to happen at this moment in your life, then it isn’t worth it to sleep with him.
As the author of the above quoted letter published in today’s National Post, I would like to weigh in on the discussion surrounding my opinion.
This letter was meant to convey that the pivotal point regarding Women’s Rights is choice. This means the choice to choose whether to have a family, to be sexually intimate at all and to not suffer coercion in ANY sense.
I wrote of giving birth as an intimate experience (akin to sex, yet more so as in my opinion there is nothing more intimate than feeling a baby move inside you). I also did this to explain that while people view pregnancy separately from sex or as a simple by-product – it’s really an extension of that intimate moment. Telling a woman she has to consent to one but not the other is where rights are trampled. My point about pregnancy and birth being emotionally and physically demanding was not to detract from the value of giving birth, but to point out that it is an immense undertaking – and something that should never be forced onto anyone.
Birth is empowering, for those women who choose to have a child. For those who have had choice taken from them, what is empowering to one woman can become a violation for another.
What empowers us as women is the ability to choose for ourselves. What we deserve is to make informed decisions in our own lives with the support and respect from our peers.
I am sorry to think that the meaning of my letter was missed among the fear that I was glorifying abortion.
Lisa, I’m glad you’re here.
I like most of what you say, especially this part:
What empowers us as women is the ability to choose for ourselves. What we deserve is to make informed decisions in our own lives with the support and respect from our peers.
Yes! Absolutely.
And I agree with you that birth is empowering. But what I fear has become a prevalent theme in our society is the belief that sex is empowering, but pregnancy, birth, and children are a nuisance that are best avoided. That belief sets women up for failure, as, even with the best efforts to avoid conception, babies follow sex as winter follows summer.
But here is where I have a problem with choice, when abortion is a choice that is on the table.
We are too cavalier about it. You can’t get around the fact that an abortion kills a human being. And we dance around that fact in our country like it doesn’t matter that a human dies every time a woman aborts.
Abortion is a nasty choice. A woman with an unwanted pregnancy has three choices in front of her: she can parent a child she’s not ready for; she can give up her child; or she can have it killed. Bad choices all, and she has to choose one.
But abortion is quite regularly offered as a quick and easy fix to a problem pregnancy. And I don’t think that empowers any woman.
Lisa, you missed the point that many of us were trying to make. And that is that sex and babies are connected logically. To say that you can have one and not the other, because it infringes on your rights, is saying that you object to the course of nature.
Women get pregnant because of sex, men don’t. Isn’t this what you find unfair? but life isn’t fair – is this news? How fair is it to the child that he/she gets killed because someone else decides their rights trump another’s?
Thanks, Lisa, for weighing in here.
I’m with Mary and Melissa on this, so I need not repeat their points. I do also question this:
“What empowers us as women is the ability to choose for ourselves. What we deserve is to make informed decisions in our own lives with the support and respect from our peers.”
Some things are not a choice, and we rightly don’t view them as such. This idea of what does constitute a choice is ever evolving in our culture around us. But I think what I’m trying to say is what kind of culture views this particular choice as empowering?
I would try to make the opposite case: that choosing immoral actions actually enslaves us. And thus, women are choosing to enslave ourselves when we choose abortion. Certainly, the choice is there. But no one would claim it’s empowering to be able to choose to do drugs, or some other such negative event.
I am still thinking this concept through, but I suppose it comes down to the question of what freedom means.
Freedom is, by the way, one of the values I hold most dear in this life. So this gets into tricky philosophical territory. I’d be glad if someone could help me further articulate my thoughts.
Glad you joined in, Lisa.
I guess I just have a question. What do you mean when you say, “[Pregnancy]’s really an extension of that intimate moment [sex]. Telling a woman she has to consent to one but not the other is where rights are trampled.”
I mean, I think you’ve actually touched on something that irks me; that is, referring to pregnancy as a consequence (bi-product) of sex. And I do think the two are viewed as separate much of the time.
But if pregnancy is the extension of a consensual, intimate moment, is the pregnancy not therefore consented to also?