Anti-Choicers Still Just Want to Control Women's Sex Lives

 For those of us who have come of age as feminists in the past few decades, the opposition to abortion we’ve encountered has virtually always centered on the life of the (choose one) fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus. In the not so distant past, however, anti-choice rhetoric came from a very different place. Up until the latter half of the twentieth century, arguments against abortion focused primarily not on the notion of saving an innocent life, but on enforcing traditional gender roles for women.

Historically, abortion—as well as all forms of contraception—was typically seen as an evil not out of concern for the unborn, but rather out of the belief that allowing women to separate sex from child-bearing would lead to a complete collapse of womanly morality, allowing women to have sex willy-nilly for no other reason but pleasure. In other words, contraception and abortion would allow women the same sexual freedom enjoyed by men. There also was a widely accepted view that any woman who wished to avoid motherhood was inherently some kind of deviant; shunning the “natural” role of mother was viewed as a serious gender transgression. And of course, no attempt to maintain gender roles has ever been merely about preserving tradition for the sake of it, but rather about upholding the patriarchy. Social and economic equality are virtually impossible for women whose lives are circumscribed by compulsory motherhood.

After the gains won by feminists in the 1960s and 70s, however, it has been increasingly difficult to garner widespread support for any stance based blatantly and openly on the notion that women should fulfill their “natural” roles by staying home and serving as submissive wives and dutiful mothers. And so the anti-choice movement has gradually—and effectively—changed its strategy. Instead of talking about deviant, promiscuous women, the anti-choice movement today speaks about saving babies—indeed, a much more palatable goal in the 21^st century than the subjugation of women. From fetal pain bills to personhood amendments, the proliferation of anti-choice legislation we’ve witnessed in the past few months serves as frightening evidence of just how effective this line of anti-choice argument has been.

Unfortunately, many of us who wish to defend reproductive freedom fall into the trap of bending to counter these arguments on their own level. When anti-choicers talk about saving babies, an extremely common pro-choice response is to talk about the horrible life of the child born into poverty if abortion were not an option. But there are a few problems with engaging in this line of argument. First, when we start talking about the suffering of children born into poverty, what is this saying about the women living in poverty—disproportionately women of color—who do choose motherhood? Obviously, no one wants to see children living in dire economic circumstances. But we walk a line dangerously close to eugenics if we argue that the solution is abortion rather than arguing for the improvement of the socioeconomic conditions that place so many women in poverty to begin with. It can of course be useful to point out the hypocrisy of conservatives who would claim to care so deeply about saving fetuses, but who then refuse to support any kind of social welfare programs to support babies once they’ve been born. And we can’t deny that poverty—and the already limited ability to care for already-existing children—is a factor in many women’s abortion decisions. But we must be careful not to speak about abortion and poverty in ways that shame poor mothers. Any dialogue about reproductive justice must also include the right of a woman to be a mother, regardless of her class position.