Why am I pro-choice? Because I don’t want a complete stranger telling me to do with my body. Because I don’t want to tell a complete stranger what to do with hers. Because I know that the decision about whether to have a child is too precious and important to be made by anyone other than the woman that is pregnant. Because I don’t think that there is only one right way or right time to become a mother. Because every child should be a wanted one.
Why am I pro-choice? Because of my friends that were able to graduate college. Because of the thousands of women, voices on the other end of the phone, that were able to leave troubled relationships and take care of their sons and daughters and choose how to end much-wanted pregnancies in a way that gave their fatally ill unborn children a measure of dignity, and themselves a measure of peace.
Why am I pro-choice? Because of Dr. David Gunn, Dr. John Britton, James Barrett, Shannon Lowney, Lee Ann Nichols, Robert Sanderson, Dr. Barnett Slepian, and Dr. George Tiller. Because hundreds of clinic directors and staff that have endured threats and attacks and harassment. Because no one should have to wear a bulletproof vest to work.
Why am I pro-choice? Because I can’t imagine being any other way.
Dear Ms. Erdreich,
Last night I watched you talk on CSPAN about your new book, Generation Roe, and the topic of abortion in general. I found you to be sincere, intelligent and extremely fair towards the many million of Americans who find abortion to be the taking of an innocent human life without due process of law.
Having said that, I find your suggestion that abortion has nothing to do with birth control to be absurd and self-serving. Millions of healthy women with financial means and terrific support systems choose to have abortions simply because they don’t want another child. It’s simply not convenient for them. Abortion on demand is just another birth control measure.
And what about sex-selection abortions (which I am sure you will deny ever occur)? A true feminist would be disturbed by the fact that women tend to abort female fetuses more frequently than their male counterparts. Of course, since you don’t believe the unborn have any rights the born are bound to respect, you should not object to a woman killing her unborn child for any reason whatsoever or not reason at all.
Regardless of whether abortion is legal or not, any mother who would destroy her own offspring – in the womb or out – proves that she is unfit to be a mother. I can’t imagine a more callous, selfish act.
The reason you can be pro-abortion with an apparently clear conscience is because the living being that you are killing cannot speak for himself. Remember the movie “If the Walls Could Talk?” I would like to see someone make a movie titled”If the Fetuses Could Talk?” I am quite sure they would oppose abortion.
The grandest delusion of all is when you claim that you are aborting the child because ‘every child should be a wanted one.” In other words, you are suggesting, apparently with a straight face, that you favor abortion because it’s good for the aborted fetus. This ludicrous argument turns the abortion debate on its ethical head. Not only does it suggest that it is not immoral to abort an unwanted child, it asserts that it is immoral to let him live. What a vile rationalization for the taking of a human life., a rationalization, by the way, that would apply equally to children already born who are unwanted. In other words, if, as you suggest, it is better not to be alive than it is to be alive and unwanted, there are a passel of children we should immediately euthanize. As if no unwanted child has ever gone on to have a happy and productive life.
Of all of the things you can claim as a life’s cause, I can’t imagine a more repugnant one that ensuring that millions of pre-born children are denied the right to live.
I do agree with one thing you said, however: “Why am I pro-choice? Because I can’t imagine being any other way.”
You are pro-choice because your parents were pro-choice, your friends are pro choice and it is ingrained in you to be pro-choice. You are a “liberal” and you must be pro-choice.
But if you paused for just a moment of unbiased reflection you would recognize that the true liberal position would be to expand civil rights to the weakest and most vulnerable among us; to those of us who cannot speak for themselves; in short, to unborn children.
Many of your statements appear to be based on assumptions, rather than reality. For instance, I do not deny that sex-selective abortions “ever occur.” On the contrary, I am aware that such procedures do take place around the world. My comments on sex-selective abortion are specific to the United States, where study after study has shown that this is not an issue, yet politicians and anti-choice activists continue to argue the contrary.
The majority of abortions in the U.S. – 88% – are performed within the first twelve weeks. Gender can not be determined until the 20th week or later. So to say that sex-selective abortion is a problem in the U.S., when the majority of abortions are done before gender is determined, is patently false. Indeed, studies have shown that of the reasons women cite for having abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy, gender is not a factor.
I favor abortion rights because I believe that women are the only ones that should be deciding whether they are able to bear and raise a child. That is not a decision that I feel comfortable making for someone else, nor is it a decision that I would want anyone making for me.