Alternet has published the article of a woman who claims to have been an anti-abortion activist in her teenaged years.
She writes:
What conversation can be had when only one question is considered pertinent? I was a chaste, Christian, small-town, pro-life teenager from a happy home with two parents. My most exciting experiences were church camping trips. At sixteen, I had never even kissed a boy. Nothing had ever happened to me to suggest other questions were relevant in the abortion debate. I was sure of my views and sure my experiences provided enough information with which to make an informed decision about what was right for all women everywhere.
(...)
But I had the total peace of mind that only comes from a worldview with no shades of gray.
Aw yes, the mark of "intellectual sophistication"-- the ability to have "moral shades of grey".
College showed me that life is full of gray.
As if that means that there is no black and white.
See here's the thing: feminists make like legalized abortion is a black and white issue. They can admit that there is a wide range of opinion on the morality of abortion in given circumstances.
But DO NOT QUESTION THE NECESSITY OF LEGALIZED ABORTION.
It's shades of grey for anything-- except for their own dogmas.
She lists all of those side issues regarding the morality of abortion-- like poverty, misogyny, sin, etc.
But she is judging an act-- that of killing an innocent unborn child-- by basing it PURELY on the outcome, and NOT on the nature of the act itself; and she is also judging it by second-guessing the motives of pro-lifers.
This article is not a dispassionate examination of why she abandoned a belief she once held. She did not ask: does the unborn child deserve legal rights? She said: gee, illegal abortion would lead to undesired consequences, therefore it's automatically morally wrong. Based on the fact that some women are poor, some pregnancies may be inconvenient and a threat to health (though RARELY), she said: these are inconvenient outcomes that justify taking a life. The inconveniences of a women outweight the unborn child.
She did not say: while the outcome of an unplanned pregnancy may be undesired, is it morally right to take away the life of an unborn child? Is the nature of the act itself moral?
I think this one problem with the "anti-abortion" rhetoric. It focuses on an act, NOT on the person. She wrote "A fetus was a life. We opposed taking life. Case closed."
A "life" is an abstract thing in this day and age. Sad but true. You do not matter if you are a life. You matter if you are a person, if you have RIGHTS.
We have to assert not an abstract right to life, but the personhood of the fetus and the fact that he deserves equality. This is why I strongly prefer the phrase "fetal rights" instead of "pro-life". It avoids such disingenuous rhetorical statements as:
Come to think of it, if this isn't a genuinely pro-life position, I don't know what is.
"Pro-life" is a phrase that is so open to interpretation, poor-choicers try to reclaim it by trying to make it mean something else OTHER THAN attributing the right to life to an unborn child.
If we begin using "Fetal Rights" or "unborn rights" then they cannot avoid that subject any longer.
