Of course, legalizing abortion won’t have an adequate effect on its own. It needs to go hand in hand with a number of woman-friendly policies, like access to education, access to contraception, and the general empowerment of women in society.

I don’t pretend to have an answer about what should be pushed for in a country with such entrenched patriarchy, but I’m split on the rape/incest exception thing, because I think it’s just another way to shame and punish women.

What would be the best way to go in Nigeria, with regards to legalisation in your opinion Jill? The way I see it, a rape and incest exemption would be more likely to pass than than anything more liberal and could be considered the best bet since then at least some women would have access to the services, but that would legally enshrine the idea of forced pregnancy as being an acceptable medical form of slut-bashing and make it harder to bring in more liberal legislation later.

If a rape and incest exception is all they can get through, then I support a rape and incest exception. My view, though, is that pushing for the ultimate goal is almost always a better tactic than taking baby steps — it shifts the whole dialogue left, which is good. I think the marriage equality movement in the United States is a good example. Instead of taking “baby steps” and focusing on civil unions, they went straight for marriage, and now civil unions is the moderate position — something that would have been unthinkable 10 years ago. I’d like to see pro-choice advocates do something similar.

I can’t see anyway to bring around the Catholics on this. Education, sure, but if pleasing God is more important than the facts not even that’d help. /musing on futility

but it’s almost impossible to say that to people who believe that as soon as the sperm touches the egg, human life has been created.

i’m not really saying there’s an actual solution to this.

just mentioning underlining division here.

First, you have to get past equating a fetus and a baby. Baby killing is wrong, plain and simple. So is killing elderly people. But a fetus is not an old man, and it’s not a baby. So any argument that starts with “the life of the baby” or “the life of the child” is dishonest.

A rape exception would be meaningless for them.

I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but it can’t be said too often: women should be allowed to have abortions, even when they aren’t raped, and even when their health is not at risk.

At the heart of the anti-choice movement is the idea that motherhood is the punishment for the sin of having sex. Most people who think this way are happy to grant exceptions for rape and health, because most people aren’t sadists. But legislation that takes the right to an abortion away still takes away women’s control over their own bodies and their own sexuality, even when there are limited exceptions.