(Image by Jakub Kopczyński from Pixabay)

A common trope about the abortion debate is that the debate is fought between one side which focuses exclusively on the woman and ignores the baby, and the other side which does the opposite. As a result, each side regularly accuses the other side of ignoring the woman/baby (or perhaps only referring to the baby with dehumanising language such as a foetus).

The typical pro-life defence to these accusations is to protest that of course we care about women. We believe, in the words of Frederica Mathewes-Green, that ‘No woman wants an abortion like she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion like an animal caught in a trap wants to gnaw off its own leg.’ We care about women so much that we want to offer them more than abortion. We want to build a society where women can achieve everything they want to achieve without resort to abortion.

The point of this blog is not to mount the typical pro-life defence. It’s not that I don’t believe the above; I do. I just think that it misses the point. While it’s perfectly good and laudable to focus on how to reduce the demand for abortion by reducing the impact pregnancy and parenting has on women, focusing solely on this as a response to the accusation that the pro-life movement ignores the woman shows little to no understanding of what pro-choice people mean when they make this accusation. Specifically, pro-choice people don’t think it’s good, or even acceptable, that women so often feel abortion is their only option any more than pro-life people do. They simply think that, even in a socio-economic utopia where no one ever wants an abortion, abortion should still be available. So I am not going to rush to pro-lifers’ defence when it comes to the accusation that we ignore women in the abortion debate. Quite frankly, pro-choice people’s criticism is often valid. Their grievance is legitimate.

What is the point that pro-life activists often miss here? It’s that there is a fundamental difference between trying to make life easier for someone whose rights are being trampled on, and refusing to address the question of whether the right that is being trampled on exists in the first place. As an analogy, consider the right to private property. Most people believe that people’s right to property should be protected, which is why we have laws that prohibit burglary. Now, someone might argue that we should put in place a social insurance fund to compensate people whose homes were broken into and whose property was stolen, and we should also have strong social protection policies that boost incomes and thereby reduce any incentive to commit burglary in the first place. So far so good. There are arguments for and against these ideas, and they are reasonable to propose and discuss. However, it’s quite another thing to propose these ideas as reasons to abolish property rights altogether.

Imagine how frustrating it would seem if every time you tried to point out to a particular person that it’s a good idea for society at large to recognise and protect property rights, they simply refused to engage on the question of whether property rights exist, and instead repeated their proposals for social insurance funds and social protection payments. Imagine how frustrating it would seem if these people failed to even mention property rights any time they discussed their proposals, and you were the one who had to point out, every time, that their proposals ignored the existence of property owners and their rights. 

I think this is probably how pro-choice people feel when pro-life people never even raise, let alone address, the question of how women fit into the abortion debate. We sound so tone-deaf when we only ever refer to women as an afterthought, and only after we have been challenged by our pro-choice interlocutors. We miss the point that pro-choice people are making when we constantly bypass the question of whether women actually have the right to control their bodies, and merely focus on how women should never wish to exercise control over their bodies via abortion.

I’m far from blameless here. I used to do the standard pro-life thing of explaining my pro-life convictions based exclusively on the right to life of the baby. The right to life was the beginning, middle and end of my pro-life pitch. It was only after I heard a pro-choice campaigner describe the question of third trimester abortions, in an almost throw-away comment, as a balance of rights issue, that I rethought, and eventually reframed, my entire position. Yup – a pro-choice campaigner was the first person I ever heard frame the abortion debate as a balance of rights debate.

I happen to think that a woman has a right to bodily autonomy, but that that right is limited during pregnancy (and potentially other, less likely, situations, eg, if she has a conjoined twin). However, this means that abortion belongs squarely in the balance of rights territory. The abortion debate is not about asserting the rights of the unborn only, and then figuring out how to ensure that protecting this right has the smallest possible impact on women after the fact. The debate is about determining whether the unborn has rights and also figuring out how to balance that right with the woman’s competing right to bodily autonomy. Someone has to lose out here. The baby loses their right to life, or the woman loses her right to not be pregnant. There is no secret option C.

Given all the above, the pro-life movement should do a few things very differently:

  1. Learn bodily rights arguments. We have a lot of posts on bodily autonomy. We recommend starting with the Conjoined Twins argument and then taking a deeper dive. There is no excuse for pro-life advocates in 2023 to be so far behind on this important aspect of the abortion debate.
  2. Learn how the maternity system works. Every day I meet pro-life people who are completely ignorant of how maternity care in Ireland and internationally actually works. There are so many misconceptions and misunderstandings about the impact pregnancy and maternity care can have on women. It’s time to get informed. Expecting Better, by Emily Oster, is a great read, and https://evidencebasedbirth.com/ is a really helpful resource with the current literature on everything pregnancy and delivery-related.
  3. Refer to women, early and often, when debating abortion. I explicitly frame the abortion question as a balance of rights question from the get-go. This works for me, but this may not be your style. I do recommend, however, referring to women as soon as possible when discussing abortion. If you’re having a conversation that seems to be starting off on the rights of the baby, it’s a good idea to say something like ‘I’d just like to pause for a second and note that right now we’re talking about the right to life of the baby. As such, we’re not talking about the woman or how to balance her rights with the rights of her baby right now, and I’m totally happy to focus on the baby’s rights for now, but I am very happy to also talk about the woman’s rights at some point too as I think that’s a very important consideration also, and I’m sure you agree with me on that’.
  4. Get involved in supporting women. There are many practical initiatives you can undertake to support women, whether or not they are pregnant, whether or not they have kids. Find a cause that excites you and get stuck in.
  5. Virtue signal. Once you have found the cause that excites you, feel free to mention it!

We have good arguments on our side here. Let’s get ahead of this problem and stop giving pro-choicers an excuse to accuse us of ignoring women. We have nothing to lose by mentioning women in this debate, early and often, whenever we discuss abortion with friends and family.

Muireann