Why I am pro-choice and not “pro-life”

“We need to protect the rights of the unborn child” is a phrase I often hear from opponents of abortion.

There seems to be a problem with the way a “child” is defined.

Dictionary definitions of a child:

1. A person between birth and full growth

4. A human fetus

Aren't these 2 definitions mutually exclusive?

I reject definition 4. I wonder how long it has been part of the dictionary? My understanding is that you can't have an “unborn child”. A “child” has already been born. What they mean is an unborn fetus.

Actually, I may be wrong about the definition 4. It may actually be old. So old in fact it is completely out-of-date, from the time when pregnant women were deemed to be “with child”.

Using terms like “the unborn child” are overly emotive ways of playing with people's perceptions and trying to cement the notion that fetuses are in fact independent people with their own particular exclusive rights not tied to someone else's, and not just a collection of cells at a certain stage of advancement, incapable of survival in a self-sufficient fashion, or sentience, or action with meaningful outcomes (I don't count “kicking”).

In my humble opinion it is more important to protect people already in existence than fetuses that may or may not come to term. I would remind “pro-lifers” that disallowing abortions doesn't guarantee a fetus's successful transition into the world (or a mother's survival). It is a dreadful truth that many, many babies die very early in their lives. Even with the wonders of modern medicine the figures are around 0.5% for infant mortality rates in the UK/US for children under one year old.

We should focus on improving this. One of the best ways is to ensure that every born child is desperately wanted and loved by their parents.

Even most live animals are, I think, more important to protect than human fetuses (as I will discuss later). And I mean ethically, not just because of biodiversity.

The desire of religious people to be “pro-lifers” I think comes from a purely ideological angle. The idea that abortion is “murder” is a hateful tool employed by “pro-lifers” to beat down on women contemplating abortion who don't have much option considering their circumstances. It is also highly hypocritical, seeing as the self same people are often anti-contraception, which is a position which only leads to even more unwanted pregnancies.

This idea of punitively punishing an action, but encouraging that action to occur with your other policies, is something we have become familiar with from the religious right.

And the definition of murder is basically: unlawful, premeditated killing of another human being. So we are in foggy terrain at best with abortion conforming to this definition. Whether an unborn fetus counts in full as a human being (with all the other connotations that this definition also provides, as I described above for example, or the requisite being that the person is an individual: well as they're still inside the mother and connected via umbilical that's not clear to me) is pretty debatable. The chief point however, is that if the killing is not unlawful it can't be murder. As abortion is not unlawful within certain timeframes (e.g. 24 weeks into pregnancy), there is the answer.

Women provide their own strong arguments for the basic rights of bodily autonomy, which can't be ignored. One such argument I've heard is that statistically, abortion is safer than childbirth for women to undergo.

Maternal Mortality Rates (MMR)

As far as how often women die giving birth, the UK and US are not shining examples – with maternal mortality rates of 8 per 100000 live births in the UK and double that (16 per 100000) in the US. In certain countries, rates are as high as 1000, effectively meaning that women have a 1% chance of dying when they have a baby. What other activity do people routinely participate in with this massive risk involved? Only those extreme sports restricted to the real risk-takers is society. Not to mention the 9 months of pregnancy itself, you are guaranteed hours of unbearable pain, probable scarring or long term disfigurement, and a 1 in 100 chance of not making it through at all. But this is what we expect of women whenever they become pregnant.

As long as this is the case, the argument of “pro-lifer” will always be heavily impaired. From a risk-based approach (which is how we consciously and sub-consciously manage a lot of our important life decisions) the argument for the free availability of abortion services is extremely strong. Women are putting their lives on the line when they undergo childbirth and they should have every right to pull out of that commitment on a case-by-case basis.

Knowing that foetuses can't feel pain is the final nail in the coffin for the “pro-lifers”. From a moral, and ethical perspective, the case against free availability of abortion services for women is very weak. In fact, I can't see why abortion is not less ethically problematic than testing cosmetics on animals, which definitely can feel pain.

My next blog post will probably tackle an issue of Catholic fundamentalism and their outrageous claims in trying to blame “gay priests” for the woes in their church.