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’
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.
This is a particularly frustrating debate because it really is sort of a pointless disagreement. We are talking about scientific and medical terms, and there should be no disagreement. However, there often is, usually because neither pro-life nor pro-choice people actually understand the terms to describe human beings in the earliest stages of development.
It’s unfortunately the case that just because a person opposes abortion does not mean that opposition to abortion is a political priority for them. Hard as it may be to believe for many of us convinced pro-lifers, a person may oppose abortion but care far more about other political issues, and not be particularly inclined to vote on the the issue in politics. That’s why we’re not seeing the NI parties pay a political cost.
As a death penalty opponent, when I make arguments like this to supporters I’m trying to do two things: first I’m hoping that they’ll agree that that killing an innocent person is so terrible that even a small risk of it gives us reason to abolish capital punishment. I’m hoping to convince them that even if it was good to kill the worst criminals, it’s not worth killing the innocent to achieve it. But I’m also trying to do something a bit less straightforward. By inviting the person I’m talking to to think about the irreversibility, the terrible finality of death in the case of an innocent person, I’m hoping to make them less comfortable about imposing the death penalty even on the guilty.
