The requirement to have an abortion to make it as an actress may not be explicit, but that doesn’t make it any less real – the stories of Milano, Jamil and Williams demonstrate as much. Hollywood is one of those industries where motherhood and pregnancy are poison to a woman’s career. The studios have ingeniously managed to hide their exploitation of women under the very mantle of women’s rights.
It is mind-blowing to think that an entire human grew, from scratch, inside a woman. But let’s be cautious about our language. If we put motherhood on too much of a pedestal, we run the risk of telling women that maybe they should steer clear. Maybe they’re not quite able to take on the awesome burden of motherhood. Maybe they’re not quite up to the task of being Supermamma just yet. Maybe they should stay as a normal woman: not pregnant.
‘I think it’s important to showcase the different types of people who agree with you. Especially when – and I know this is true in Ireland, probably more so than in the US, but for both countries – the prolife perspective is seen as a religious issue, and it’s seen here, the prolife movement, as very white and conservative’
In November, the Atlantic published an article by Caitlin Flanagan entitled ‘The Dishonesty of the Abortion Debate: Why we need to face the best arguments from the other side’. We think that this has led to a discussion that it is worth drawing attention to.
To pro-choice people who have read or heard about the Ohio measure: we (and by we I mean ‘most pro-lifers’) hate this stuff too.
Some pro-choice people may not think that the unborn baby is a human being with equal rights. But others may completely accept that the unborn baby is a living human but still think abortion is an acceptable choice, because they believe the right to bodily autonomy of the woman is more important than the right to life of the baby. It’s really important to clarify which type of pro-choice person you’re talking to.
Our friends at Students for Life Ireland have been running a this series of blog posts for awhile now. In each post a different young person explains why they oppose abortion. Several authors talked about the lives of siblings with life limiting conditions who died shortly after they were born. We are posting links to these stories here.
