I think we need to leave reasons out of it. Because it’s a decision best left to a woman and her doctor. I realize that the mushy supporters think that there are good and bad reasons, but it’s not about what *they* think of it.

I think that’s what Rika meant. At least, that’s how I read it.

To La Lubu, I’ve used most of those arguments against pro-lifers before. I think it’s a good way to get them thinking. At the same time, though, I think it gives people the idea that as long as we fix these social problems that affect women, abortion wouldn’t need to be legal anymore. It seems like people believe that if something is deemed unnecessary, then it doesn’t matter if it’s outlawed. That’s why you have people who are “socially pro-life,” people who believe abortion can and should be outlawed once our society becomes more mommy friendly. Look at the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act. Whoever wrote that said over and over that the procedure is unnecessary and not taught in any medical school in the country, so why is there a ban in the first place? And most people don’t seem to care that there is a ban on the procedure, and I think part of the reason is because people think as long as there’s a life exception, banning the procedure has no negative effect on women. I think it’s important to remember to tell these people that no amount of social progress is going to make every woman want to be pregnant at some point in her life and that we still need legal protection against people compromising our human right to control our own bodies. Women’s freedom has to be the center of the pro-choice argument, or else it just gets lost and nobody feels the need to legally protect it.

That’s what I would say to my mom, at least, if I could go back in time, instead of just making a dumb face while I tried to think it over.

So I think maybe in addition to emphasizing a woman’s right to choose, we should also be emphasizing that we should trust that women are making the right decision for themselves for the right reasons, not just because they’re irresponsible sluts who got themselves pregnant.

I think we need to leave reasons out of it. Because it’s a decision best left to a woman and her doctor. I realize that the mushy supporters think that there are good and bad reasons, but it’s not about what *they* think of it.

But I don’t think these pro-choicers would if they knew the implications of these laws.

and

“Well, I think women should have the right to abortion, but I don’t think they should be able to use it as a form of birth control.”

We can always arm ourselves with the objective record. Statistics are on our side. Over half the women seeking abortions were using birth control. Improving access to and information about birth control can and does lower the abortion rate. Women give various reasons for wanting abortion, including lack of money to raise a child, or inability to balance existing responsibilities for other children (or other family responsibilities) with having another child. Some express concern about being a single parent, and want to wait until they are in a committed relationship before pursuing parenthood.

So, salient questions to ask our opposition would include:

1. why they are unwilling to increase access to or affordability of birth control, thus lowering the abortion rate,

2. why they are unwilling to increase access to affordable housing, child care, health care, and flextime on the job to make the possible choice of parenthood more accessible,

3. why they are unwilling to address and correct the pre-existing sexism that gives mothers lower wages, a lower likelihood of being hired in the first place, a “mommy track” to keep them from having access to the kind of flextime, flex benefits, etc. to ease the artificial burdens of parenthood (sorry folks, lack of flexible work hours isn’t an inherent burden of parenthood), not to mention the sexism inherent in assuming that mothers should bear the lion’s share of the “work/family balance”,

4. why they continue to demonize single mothers, instead of praising us as the ones who “chose life”. Part of the reason there are fewer abortions these days as in years past is because of other changes to the legal landscape, like Title IX and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. Abortion was more attractive to women when we could be legally prevented from working or obtaining even the most basic education due to being pregnant. Want fewer women to have abortions? Why not advocate stepping up the availability (and affordability) of child care (including extended hours—some women need child care before 8AM, or after 6PM, as workplaces and educational opportunities don’t always follow the 8-5 typical scenario). Hmm?

5. we can ask if adoption is such a “loving choice”, why more fertile married couples aren’t taking the plunge and conceiving a child for the express purpose of giving the child up for adoption to an infertile couple? If it is so easy to give away a child, why aren’t more people who can, doing so? Perhaps it is because most women find adoption more painful than abortion. We can ask our opposition why they want to talk about “post-abortion syndrome”, yet not want to discuss the lifelong depression suffered by women who gave away, or were coerced into giving away, their child. (It may also behoove us to remind single white women that back in the day, they didn’t often have the choice to keep their child—their child was taken from them at birth never to be seen again, regardless of their wishes.)

6. we can ask our opposition what their beef is regarding comprehensive sex education for young people, considering its massive effect on lowering the abortion rate for young women. We can ask why young people shouldn’t be taught that masturbation is a healthy part of sexuality, like Dr. Jocelyn Elders recommended (and was fired for in a gross example of clutch-the-pearls).

7. we can always bring up history. Actual, bona-fide history that demonstrates that yes, folks actually were having sex outside of marriage even before the ‘sexual revolution’. We can even bring up the fact that the accepted practice of dealing with unwed fatherhood didn’t just involve shotgun weddings, but socially-condoned abandonment and denial of fatherhood. “It wasn’t me” was the expression dujour back in the day.

It’s obvious to us that women should have the choice to terminate her pregnancy if she so desires, hence the name “pro-choice.” But then there are people who think, “what if the woman is doing it because…” and they think that there are some circumstances where they think that a woman is making the choice for the wrong reason. For example, I once asked my mom on her thoughts on abortion, and she said something like, “Well, I think women should have the right to abortion, but I don’t think they should be able to use it as a form of birth control.” I was about 15 at the time, I think, so I was kind of thinking that that was obvious, but how would you enforce such a thing? Now I know that you don’t really HAVE to enforce it, because how many women are thinking, “well I should be using birth control…but if I get pregnant I’ll just get an abortion!” Some people want women to be able to get an abortion, but only if its for the “right” reasons.

So I think maybe in addition to emphasizing a woman’s right to choose, we should also be emphasizing that we should trust that women are making the right decision for themselves for the right reasons, not just because they’re irresponsible sluts who got themselves pregnant. Despite the arguments about whether a fetus should be considered a person or not, I think most people would prefer not to have to abort a fetus, whether we consider it a person with rights or not.

We already teach kids that abortion is a last resort, and something that should be avoided, right? So why can’t people just trust that abortions ARE being used as a last resort? I think that might get some people over on our side.

I think it may be fair for a lot (not all) of the people who shy away from the pro-choice label to shy away from it because, frankly, a lot of them favor increasing miscellaneous bad faith restrictions on abortion short of a ban. They are not pro-choice because they are trying to reduce the number of choices and the number of people who get to make them, but just short of a Huckabee-dream ban.

That’s true. But then there are those people who say they’re pro-choice, support parental consent/notification laws and “partial-birth abortion” bans, see nothing particularly wrong with laws requiring women seeking abortion to look at an ultrasound picture of their embryo, but don’t realize that these laws are there in order to eventually achieve an all-out ban on abortion. So there are those pro-choicers who, with their vote and support, reduce the number of choices without really meaning to. I talked about Eric Alterman before, and he said that most Americans are pro-choice but support some laws restricting it. But I don’t think these pro-choicers would if they knew the implications of these laws.

What Sullivan really wants to do with the article is to reclaim a Christian evangelical faith that has conveniently and seemingly necessarily been associated with conservative political positions, for herself as a liberal–positions that are informed more by patriarchal interest than by the Christian values she feels she stands for.

I think Sullivan’s intentions are worthy. I think her policy ideas for implementing those intentions are horrible crap that’s part of the bending-over-backwards to make conservatives happy that got us where we are today.

That’s the biggest part of the problem people have with her. Her goals sound all wonderful and noble (and they are) but her ideas for getting to those goals suck. Bad.

For myself, I call myself a radical evangelical Christian exactly because I’m pro-choice and a liberal.