I just saw another one of those infuriating, holier-than-thou “It’s a child, not a choice” bumperstickers in the grocery store parking lot an hour ago. And that got me to thinking:
If it’s not a choice, if there is no choice available in continuing a pregnancy, that means it’s enforced. That the woman, the thinking, feeling, human being with a life, is now enslaved to her uterus. Continuously, unceasingly, for 40 weeks. No matter the cost to her health, her family, her education, her career, or her future. If there is no choice, it’s a punishment, as @fandomsandfeminism eloquently pointed out. If it’s not a choice, it’s slavery.
Men get to have non-procreative sex without consequence. Men are not enslaved for 10 months while another living being parasitically feeds on them. Men are not punished for exercising their right to bodily autonomy. Men are not shamed and made to listen to medically inaccurate bullshit and forced to travel for hundreds of miles, sometimes twice in three days, for wanting at least the rights given to a corpse.
Limiting and outlawing abortion is about punishing women for having sex for the pleasure of it. Period. Because if it weren’t, then these so-called “pro-lifers” would really BE pro- the lives of the women involved. They would be insisting on expansive, science-based, free, easily accessible sexual education. They would make sure birth control (because that’s what prophylactics do, they CONTROL WHEN YOU GIVE BIRTH) would be easily available and free. They would push for prenatal care, and inexpensive quality child care available to everyone, and paternal leave, and eliminating the “mommy track.” They would push for adoption by gay couples.
But “pro-lifers,” particularly the really religious ones, don’t do any of that, do they? They’re not even all that “pro-fetus,” because it’s hard to get prenatal care if you’re poor. No, “pro-lifers” are all about making pregnancy, childbirth, and child-rearing into punishments for women who have sex.
If it’s not a choice, it’s slavery.