Revolution #255, January 8, 2012
Should a Woman Feel Sad About Her Abortion?
Fuck No!
There is absolutely nothing wrong, tragic, unfortunate, or sad about a woman choosing to get an abortion. Nothing.
Why?
Because being forced to have a child against your will is enslavement. Period.
Why else?
Because fetuses are NOT babies. Fetuses have the potential to become babies, but until they are born they have no independent social or biological existence. They are a subordinate part of a woman’s body. Any state, religious, or family intervention which forces—or even pressures—a woman into subordinating her life, dreams, and health to incubating that fetus against her will is completely unjust and illegitimate. It is immoral and it is enslaving.
But what about her responsibility? If she didn’t want a baby, shouldn’t she have thought of that before she “opened her legs”?
This argument is wrong on at least four levels. First, this suggests that it is wrong for women to have sex and that they must be punished for doing so (while applying a totally different standard to men). Second, this approach treats children—who should be wanted and well cared for—like nothing more than a punishment to women. Third, this ignores the fact that getting an abortion when one is not ready or eager to have a child is taking responsibility. Finally, this ignores the fact that it is the very Christian fascists who are criminalizing abortion who are responsible for denying increasing numbers of women access to birth control and sex education (which makes it enormously harder for them to protect themselves from pregnancy during sex in the first place).
But what about when a woman is raped? Or if she really wanted to have a baby but there is something wrong with the fetus or a danger to her own life? Doesn’t that make the abortion sad?
Again, fuck no!
If a woman is impregnated because of being raped, it is the rape that is the horrific crime—the abortion which prevents her from being forced to bear the child of her rapist is positive and liberating.
If a woman really wants a child but something goes wrong with the pregnancy, it is the medical problems that are the tragedy—the abortion that eliminates those dangers is positive and liberating.
Women are human beings, not incubators. A woman who cannot decide for herself when and whether she will have a child has no more freedom than a slave. Abortion is not something to apologize for, it is something to celebrate and defend. One in three women will have an abortion in her life; she is not wrong for doing so. It is time to declare loudly and boldly:
Abortion on Demand and Without Apology!!!
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