Why "Choosing Life" is a False Choice

When President Obama appeared last week at Notre Dame, he called for greater understanding on both sides of the abortion divide. While his nuanced approach deserves appreciation, what bothers me about the continued dissection of this issue is that it is not honest at its root.

The decision to "choose life" is simply a false choice. The recent Gallup Poll, for example, asked people if they were pro-life or pro-choice. But such a dichotomy is not only polarizing -- it offers "choice-less" options. As a mother, grandmother, and advocate of women's issues, I refuse to be labeled "pro-choice" or "pro-life." I am both, and I suspect the same of the majority of Americans. Let's not parse words; to be pro-choice is also to be pro-life -- it's just a matter of which life you're discussing: the fetus in the womb or the woman carrying it.

Being pro-choice or pro-life is a false distinction created by fear, and it is not founded on the moral high ground it clams to hold. Instead, the division of the abortion issue into two divergent camps is based on cultural anxieties regarding motherhood.

Before we go any further, allow me to offer my mothering bonafides: I have five children, including an adopted son, and seven grandkids. I cut my teeth in the '70s and '80s working on the issues of childcare and early childhood education. As it turned out, one of our children had special needs, and I became a Montessori teacher so I could take him to a school that would enhance his potential.

The most important issue for me has always been how women and men participate in work, family, and community. I have always believed that to be "for women" is to be for families -- including men -- no matter how often conservatives paint feminists as anti-male.

Nothing has validated my feelings on this issue more than my experience in the past decade working to get more women into leadership alongside men (an avenue, by the way, which will transform our nation by bringing all of our resources to the table). Connie Buchanan, the former Associate Dean of Harvard Divinity School, was the most influential voice to me on this topic. As she wrote in her book, Choosing to Lead, despite the enormous gains we have made in the last twenty-five years, "the cultural ideal of women in America is that of wife and mother."

I have personally witnessed this "cultural ideal" keeping women out of power, from the political landscape to the corporate arena. As co-founder of Take Our Daughters to Work Day, I heard over and over the same question from girls visiting the workplace: " Can I have a family and work here, too?" In my current role at The White House Project, as we train thousands of women to lead in civic and political life in America, I hear the same tune again as women continue to question female politicians about work and family.

So what does this have to do with being pro-life or pro-choice? Essentially, it forms the crux of the entire abortion debate.

As Kristen Luker said in her 1984 book, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, real concern about abortion has to do with whether women will stop choosing motherhood if we have other choices. Although the mantra of the pro-choice movement is prevention and not abortion, and though focus has been on the myriad ways women and men can use contraception, the rabid opposition to abortion continues. Interestingly, during the Clinton administration, abortions decreased, while under George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, both "pro-life" presidents, abortions increased.

What if the immense amount of energy and money, the anger and divisiveness that go into the "pro-life" movement were to go toward movements that help men choose fatherhood, and help communities support families through abundant childcare? As a former preschool teacher, I know children prefer being with groups of other children and learning together, and that working with children alongside other adults (what amounts to tribal ways of raising children) is far superior to isolated nuclear families.

Fortunately, this is the direction Obama took in his address at Notre Dame. He encouraged respectful dialogue and policies that care for and support women and their children. When hecklers in the audience stood and shouted hateful epithets, the audience drowned them out, retorting with Obama's campaign slogan, "Yes, we can."

That is what it truly means to "choose life."

Comments

[youvegot2bekidding]

Underdoggiestyle sums up what the anti-choice movement is all about pretty clearly, (while masquerading as pro-choice). I post his comments below, buried in a previous thread, as the typical judgemental, punitve mindset that belongs to those who harangue and try to control women.


"The more I think about it, I don't think anyone should get what essentially amounts to a "get out of jail free" card in the SPECIFIC CASES where they haven't excercised precaution or preventative measures. I think it's hard to defend any person, who has control of a situation but has demonstrated an inability to excercise all preventative options -- their choices -- at the very beginning."

"But If you behave and act responsibly and still end up the facing unintended consequences, then taking a Pro Choice stance makes perfect sense. You've earned it."

[Underdoggiestyle]

At the risk of sounding defensive, please don't attempt to smear and vilify me nor mischaracterize my statements by starting a new post simply because I am a male.

While we may disagree that my opinions are some kind of veiled threats about specifically controlling women, it seems unfair to selectively highlight my opinion without also conceding that within that very thread discussion, "commonsenselives" is essentially saying the same thing, and is a woman, and is also pro-choice. Picking a fight and highlighting the male while ignoring the female with the same opinion was not fair.

youvegot2b­ekidding..­. I'm on your side. I'm not the American Taliban. I am pro-choice. But I find aspects of the issue to be very complicated and refuse to reduce it to simplicity.

[commonsenselives]

Sorry hon, go back and read my posts again.

You do take a judgemental tone and its not your or my place or anyone else's place to judge.

I did thank you for not resorting to straw man BS, but you asked a question and I answered it.

You wanted a defense for women who are irresponsible, and they don't need to defend themselves to ANYONE. No one 'earns' a pro-choice stance, it is given to us by right.

I don't necessarily agree with 'youvegot2­bekidding' that you're one of those guys wanting to control women, but you do come off as sanctimonious in your posts. Kindly get off your high horse.

[sshala]

Pro-lifers ultimately want to proclaim (and control others' lives) without verifiable evidence, that life begins at conception. I've never heard the pro-life argument taken to the next step. Exactly how do 'pro-lifers' expect criminalizing abortion to work? Exactly how do they plan to enforce the protection of an unborn child?

How would they enact laws to deal with the difference between accidental or purposeful miscarriage? And what would they do about a woman who endangers her pregnancy? Wouldn't that be the same as child abuse? What about Sarah Palin who, with leaking amniotic fluid and irregular contractions, chose to travel over 10 hours to her home hospital rather than seek immediate medical attention?

If a pro-lifer wants to leave the issue with only putting doctors in jail and give a pass to women who seek abortions or intentionally miscarry or attempt to miscarry, they are not serious about protecting pre-term life. And if they do wish to impose such laws to fully protect the pre-term, how do they plan to enforce them? They will have set the stage for potentially enormous abuse of women's civil rights

[SeaBlood]

If anti-abortion folks think that abortion is murder, it doesn't help to say "I am pro-choice." Nobody has the choice to murder. You must show them that abortion is NOT murder. Of course, if you enjoy screaming at each other till you're red in the face, you can continue to do what you're doing. But, instead, you can tell them that to call an embryo a human life is a RELIGIOUS belief. Not every religion has the same belief, and you are allowed to not believe what some other religion preaches.We have religious freedom in this land.

[jckapla]

It's not a religious argument at all.

It is not the pro-life movement's obligation to prove a fetus is a human life, it is the pro-choice movements obligation to prove that it isn't.

As a nation, we should not say, "There"s something in the bushes! Shoot it!"... when it comes to defining life and the rights to abort. We should say, "Since we don't know for sure if it's a hunter or not, let's hold off shooting for a minute."

Unless it can be proven that a fetus is not a human life, we must err on the side of caution.

[SeaBlood]

I don't want to waste your time or my time on the subject. But let me say this: It is a religious belief to think that a clump of cells has a soul. I happen to think it doesn't have a soul, just like I think that the tonsils that my doctor removed from my throat have no soul. You can continue to light candles in church for the soul of an embryo that was lost, but that does not make it a being with a soul.

[LeftRight]

So wait, as SeaBlood just said, my daughter just had an apendectomy. That's simply a mass of cells, just like the fetus that is aborted. Quite a bit larger, actually.... So how is THAT less important than some other mass of cells??

I'm sorry, but until it can survive outside the womb, even if only with technology, it isn't human life!! It is at most a symbiotic life form!

[BKLN]

Are you PRO-CHOICE or ANTI-CHOICE?

THAT is the question. This has been painfully obvious all along but unfortunately has been missed by every major proponent of choice for the duration of this debate. Even this article is acting in half-measures by failing to articulate this clear dichotomy in plain language.

EVERYONE is PRO-LIFE. The question at hand is about CHOICE.

[jckapla]

HA! That's funny. If you believe that, you are a fool.

Do you really think the an industry that makes hundreds of millions off abortion every year really doesn't want to be performing them? Come on.

Does this person sound pro-"life", pro-"choice", or pro-abortion to you?

"The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it."

Margaret Sanger, Founder of Planned Parenthood: The Woman Rebel, Volume I, Number 1. Reprinted in Woman and the New Race. New York: Brentanos Publishers, 1922.

[commonsenselives]

"Margaret Sanger, Founder of Planned Parenthood: The Woman Rebel, Volume I, Number 1. Reprinted in Woman and the New Race. New York: Brentanos Publishers, 1922."

Maybe you should use a more recent quote to denigrate a place that offers almost every kind of service for women's health, not just abortion. They are called "Planned Parenthood" because they allow women to PLAN when they will have a child. This is a good thing, not a bad one.

BTW, that quote is pro infantcide (SP), not pro abortion. An infant is born and is surviving outside the womb. A fetus/embryo is not either.

[LeftRight]

The industry that makes hundreds of millions off abortions??????? You mean like Planned Parenthood (which performs more abortions than any other organization) providing them FOR FREE IN MOST CASES??????

[Underdoggiestyle]

..
I AM PRO-CHOICE BUT I HAVE A QUESTION:

Q: Pro-choice assumes that women reserve the right to make their own reproductive choices. So, if this is all about personal responsibility, shouldn't the woman excercise her decision, her choice, PRIOR to getting impregnated? Shouldn't responsibility PRIOR to the actual impregnation be emphasized?

That's my question. Please don't go off on a tangent. Please do not argue about extreme scenarios such as rape, condom malfunction or the effects of alcohol, all of which affect someone's level of control.
I'm talking about essentially benign sexual scenarios where both the man and the woman are free to make lucid decision making.

Again, I am pro-choice. But this aspect confounds me a bit. I just would like to know. Thanks...

[commonsenselives]

Allow me to answer your question.

A condom malfunction is NOT an 'extreme' circumstance. Birth control methods FAIL all the time. A woman and a man can be responsible about BC but still end up pregnant and unable to adequately take care of a child. Should those responsible adults be forced to change their entire lives due to an accident? Contrary to popular belief, pregnancy is risky business, way more so than an abortion. And if two people are engaged in "essentially benign sexual scenarios", they probably don't want to have a child, just a good time.

So yes, we often exercise our CHOICE prior to getting pregnant by accident.

What it all boils down to though is this: The government has no right to come into ANYBODY'S bedroom, doctor's office or church. It is a decision between a woman, her doctor and her God. Everyone needs to calm down and quit trying to impose their idea of morality on someone else, regardless of their position.

[Underdoggiestyle]

..
Pardon my use of the term "extreme" as it was left over from a previously thought out sentence. That word should've been excluded from my quesion.

But i did clarify that I was inquiring regarding cases where aspects of mutual (male and female) control are, in one way or another, absent: rape, condom malfunction, alcohol. in any of those particular cases, I'll concede that abortion may be a consideration.

As a male, I take an essentially libertarian stance on abortion. I am (arguably) not affected by the decision. However it does seem to me that IF the onus is ultimately on the woman to make the decision, she should take as many precautions as necessary prior to actual impregnation as possible. In the cases where that has not happened, where the woman was essentially careless or did not make attempts before and during sex to act in a responsible way, then I think it makes it harder to make clear, argumentative cases for advocating abortion.

[LeftRight]

You're right, and I have no problem with ensuring that women have easy access to information and birth control (in various forms....) before they have sex and get pregnant.

However, sometimes those fail, and abortion needs to be available just in case.

The biggest problem that I see with it is that the same people who are "pro-life" are ALSO anti-birth control!!

[babaann]

The debate is about Choice or No Choice.

[SeaBlood]

The people that shout "Pro Life! Pro Life!" are really saying that they think abortion is murder. To battle such a mind set, we must show that abortion is NOT murder. Until we do, people will not change their thinking. It must be shown that one clump of cells is no different than any other clump of cells, regardless of what the clump may develop into, be it a human, a chicken or a cabbage plant . They ALL are alive. Life is all around us.

[ariveria]

THERE IS NO RIGHT TO LIFE

WITHOUT THE RIGHT TO HEALTH CARE

the so called right to life or not right to life but right to birth.

[VoteLibertarian]

Maybe we should just abort, that'll save the planet.

[Arion]

Why can't each woman decide for herself? That's the American way. Pro lifers say because a fetus is a human life or unborn child. They are entitled to hold such opinions, but in fact statements like those are merely personal opinion without historical, cultural or legal foundation.

[copestir]

I agree. This debate needs to end now. This is not a question of pro-choice vs pro-life. The question to be asked of each woman is," are you ready to be a parent or give birth to a child?" That decision is for every woman to decide for themselves. Each woman can and should be able to decide for themselves their future without being given such a cultural gap to ponder.
This is a private matter and one not to be held up to debate. This is one for each and only each woman to decide. It is not a political issues but a private personal one.
The religious right needs to respect women rather than control them

[jckapla]

You are right. There is no consensus in or out of the scientific, philosophical, or any other community, about when human life begins.

But it is not the pro-life movement's obligation to prove a fetus is a human life, it is the pro-choice movements obligation to prove that it isn't.

As a nation, we should not say, "There"s something in the bushes! Shoot it!"... when it comes to defining life and the rights to abort. We should say, "Since we don't know for sure if it's a hunter or not, let's hold off shooting for a minute."

Unless it can be proven that a fetus is not a human life, we must err on the side of caution.

[LeftRight]

It is NOT the obligation of the pro-choice crowd to prove that those cells aren't human life! If that were the case, then since I was concieved on July 4, 1978, I should have been able to buy cigarettes on July 4, 1996. However, I didn't turn 18 until more than 40 weeks later, in April of 1997! Therefore I was not legally a person until I was BORN!!!

If you want to show that I was a human being BEFORE I was born, then YOU have the burden of proof!!!!

[jillsond]

Excellent article, from a woman who apparently cares about womens' health rights, and the quality of life for the children born to women. To WOMEN. Not to men. (Excepting those men who are completely involved in the child's development.

Consider what a woman goes through when she finds herself pregnant and faced with the heart-breaking decision to abort. And please keep in mind, sometimes these pregnancies are not always accidental.

In most cases, women have to work throughout their pregnancy. In every case, women need access to thorough health care. Prenatal care is essential. They need plenty of rest, a peaceful atmosphere for themselves and their developing baby. They need constant support from a partner, because pregnancy can be a very vulnerable time, with hormones raging and the nesting/fears for her developing fetus/ concerns about her partner's willingness to stay and help raise this future child. Pregnant women are constantly changing, gaining weight, and need plenty of fresh air and exercise. Then the choices need to be made about the birth, how it will be paid for(insurance is not available to all pregnant women) the untold expenses involved in preparing for a baby.

I'll venture to say women had men involved in getting them pregnant. I'll also venture to say that most women who chose to abort are single, and would face single-parenthood. But the pro-lifers don't want to look at these issues. They want to dem onize, criticize, humiliate .

[youvegot2bekidding]

My answer is the fetus becomes a life when the mother decides she will carry it. Before that, the fetus is a collection of nerves and tissues. There is no consciousness, no identity - only the potential.
Why aren't the anti-choice people protesting outside fertility clinics - they have all kinds of embryos in storage. Why aren't they protesting the concept of birth control? The potential for so many more lives not realized. (That's why the Catholic church is against birth control - and masturbation, for men anyway). Why aren't they protesting war, Guantanamo, the death penalty...
Because this is about controlling women.

[VoteLibertarian]

"There is no consciousness, no identity"--this is true for a little while, agreed, but it makes me think you've never seen a unltrasound. At one point is their an indentity?

[treboi]

Just as you made the point that a fetus is not a baby, an embryo is not a fetus.

[Underdoggiestyle]

..
I am pro-choice but i disagree with this argument.

Embryos and fetus are "stages" of development...

Embryo=> Fetus=> Baby=> Child=> Teen=> Adult.

[marxmarv]

Actually, the Church is against masturbation for men because horny men can be made to believe just about anything in order to get their wick wet.

[jckapla]

Hey youvegot2b­ekidding..­.

You've Got To Be Kidding Me!

A fetus magically becomes a human life when a mother decides she will carry it? HA!

Please keep making absurd comments like that. It really helps our cause.

[youvegot2bekidding]

Your cause ---- controlling womens' bodies.

Where are the 'pro-lifers' at anti-war rallies, are they protesting the death sentence, genocide, honor killings?

An embryo is a parastic collection of nerves and tissue. It has no life on it's own - it has no life without the mother. Only if she chooses to carry it will it eventually become life.

[NoToGOP08]

Well said Ms. Wilson. To be pro-life means also to be antiwar, anti death penalty, and respectful of all life of every species that is precious to this earth. My pro-life friends always seem to stop short at the war and death penalty argument.

[melpol]

My private survey tells me that deer hunters, gun owners, bible thumpers and Sadists are against abortion 10 to one. Some confessed to me that they enjoy to watch the female figure blow up until it busts. My private survey also tells me that animal lovers,and Atheists are pro choice 10 to one. Some confessed to me that they enjoy letting a woman decide how to handle their pregnancy. I side with the animal lovers and Atheists.

[mollymac]

wonderfully stated.! I totally agree!

[MOregon]

Part 2

There has got to be a third way, as many are stating it. A lot has to do with restorative rather than punitive ways of thinking and we need to work together where we are able to reduce the number of abortions drastically.

Kudos to those working to abolish capital punishment, who work for peace by opposing war through active non-violence, and who live intentionally to build up community without excluding, and tend to the poor. They are truly believably pro-life.

Why shouldn't this extend to the MOST vulnerable - the ones without a voice?

Perhaps we are not meant to work to see our ways of imposition come to pass, but to be faithful to the greatest truths inside us while ever striving to love and respect one another. Maybe in this way, hearts and minds do change.

[skippyB]

Pregnant women can be vulnerable. My grandmother died while miscarrying and it destroyed our family with ramifications that continue on through generations. She had no voice. Her born children were vulnerable and precious, as was she. I would never take away her voice.

[Lorianne]

What does your grandmother's miscarriage have to do with abortion?
Did she wish to abort?

People die everyday of all sorts of things and always have.
Abortion has not changed that
Better medical care and safety has reduced early death compared to earlier eras.

[Malkin71]

IS IT LIFE?

If you took it out of the woman's womb....would it live? If so, then it's God's will and it's life....and there is no problem with removing it....

Either way, as long as it's inside the woman, her life is the primary one....the secondary life, the parasitic life form, is not...

It's her CHOICE.

[mollymac]

Correct and well spoken.