antipersonhood

Table of Contents

Directories

Preface

1. Philosophy of Ethics

2. Paradigms of Choice

3. Fallibility of Empathy

4. Fallacy of Bodily Autonomy

5. Value of Futures Like Ours

6. Parallels with Feminism

7. Exploitation of Women

8. Humanity as an Inviolable End

9. Incongruity of Right to Refuse

10. Consistent Life Ethic

11. Family Planning

12. Unsubstantiated Claims

13. Efficacy of Laws

14. Uncertainty of Personhood

15. Fetal Personhood

Links to crisis support for pregnancy, parenting, and post-abortion

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thoughts from a pro-life activist

Our strongest secular claim against elective abortion is this: it is a human rights violation – namely, a violation of the right to life and the right to be free from abusive violence. But when pro-life advocates conflate opposition to abortion with rejection of transgenderism, they undermine the very framework that makes this claim persuasive. To understand why, we must examine the three common comparisons: both are sexual, both are medical, both are harm.

Both are sexual. Some reject transitioning because it departs from natural law, treating it as a sexual or moral deviation. When pro-lifers equate abortion to transitioning on these grounds, they shift abortion from a human rights issue to one of sexual morality. In doing so, they suggest that opposition to abortion is based on personal or cultural values rather than universal ethical principles. In a pluralistic society, moral codes cannot be legislated wholesale. So if abortion and transitioning are framed as equally self-determined acts of consenting adults, we lose our ability to argue that abortion is a grave injustice – not just a private vice. We risk confirming the narrative that we’re trying to control others’ sexual behavior, not defend human rights.

Both are medical. It’s true that both abortion and transitioning occur in medical settings. But when we emphasize this, we again remove abortion from a rights-based framework and place it in a health-based one. If both are “bad healthcare,” then abortion becomes a misguided medical choice, not a violent act. Transitioning may involve medical misjudgment or even malpractice – but it is not homicide. Abortion is the deliberate killing of a human person. Framing both as abuses of medicine obscures this essential distinction. We end up implying that abortion is simply poor treatment – not an act of lethal injustice – and reinforce the belief that we are just trying to restrict healthcare access, not stop mass killing.

Both are harm. Some forms of medical transition may potentially be harmful, particularly for children who cannot fully consent to irreversible procedures. Abortion is also harmful – it kills children. So why not group both as acts that harm the vulnerable? Because the harms are not the same. Transitioning may result in regret or bodily damage. Abortion results in brutal death. When we present them as equivalent, we dilute the moral urgency of abortion and suggest it, too, is just unfortunate or regrettable – not the systematic destruction of the most defenseless. Again, outsiders infer that we don’t actually believe abortion is the most pressing human rights crisis – we just find it morally distasteful.

We write as pro-life members and allies of the LGBTQIA+ community to express our concerns about hostility towards queer inclusion and queer people themselves in the pro-life movement. In particular, we are concerned about the recent trend of tying the pro-life movement to unrelated anti-trans politics.

Many of us have been very active in defending life, whether as writers, protestors, sidewalk counselors, or simply quieter, non-public pro-lifers, who work behind the scenes to provide logistical support to larger groups. We believe that the hostility towards queer inclusion is both harmful and counterproductive. This is the wrong way to encourage more people, and youth in particular, to see abortion as unthinkable and to build a culture of life. Gallup polling shows that more women (10%) than men (6%) identify as LGBTQ+. Polling by the Pew Research Center shows 5.1% of Americans aged 18-29 identify as transgender or non-binary, compared to a national average of 1.6%. Fifty-two percent of 18- 29-year-olds personally know a transgender person. A 2025 Gallup article determines that women and youth are, broadly speaking, more likely to affirm queerness than men and older people, upon comparing Gallup Polling data from 1997 to 2025.

To attack queerness, when the demographics, most likely to self-identify as pro-choice (younger people, socially liberal or left-leaning people, women and LGBTQ+ people themselves, according to Gallup polling and the Public Religion Research Institute) are much more queer-affirming than the average member of the public, is a strategy perfectly calibrated to drive them towards the pro-choice movement and to close them off from considering pro-life arguments. It will alienate them from resources and drive them away from pro-life organizations that would help them keep their babies.

The pro-life movement frequently opposes access to PrEP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis) and trans-affirming hormone replacement therapy while explicitly opposing LGBTQ+ identities, further cementing this alienation and helping pro-abortion groups such as Planned Parenthood falsely portray themselves as queer allies by selling these medications. And additionally, broader narratives are circulating that attempt to associate trans people with acts of mass violence that have been actively pushed since the murder of Charlie Kirk, with the mass shooting at The Parochial School at Annunciation Catholic Church also often cited to justify them. These are similar to misleading narratives pushed in the 1990s that attempted to associate pro-lifers with such acts because of the murders of abortion providers, later repopularized after the murder of George Tiller. These narratives are dangerous and have no benefit and are contradicted by the Gun Violence Archive’s data. James Densley, the Violence Prevention Project at Hamline University’s co-founder and deputy director, states that trans people comprise at most 0.1% of mass shooters from January 2013 to September 2025 despite comprising an estimated 1.6% of the US population, making trans people 16 times less likely to perform a mass shooting than a typical American.

Furthermore, affirmation of queer identity, if anything, naturally fits into a life-affirming culture, as such affirmation substantially reduces suicide rates. Greta R. Beaur and colleagues published a 2015 study in the BMC Public Health journal, which studied 380 Canadian transgender people over the age of 16, showing that high levels versus low levels of social support were significantly associated with reductions in suicidal ideation and attempts. The estimated reductions were around 10 cases of suicidal ideation per 100 trans persons. This study estimated that high levels of social support prevented 22 suicide attempts for every 100 trans people who were considering suicide. Also, lower anti-trans prejudice overall was significantly associated with a potential prevention of 16 cases of ideation per 100 trans persons and a further prevention of 20 suicide attempts per 100 trans persons considering suicide. Similar results were found among a sample of about 26,000 LGBTQ+ youth aged 13-24 in The Trevor Project’s 2019 national survey, where transgender people’s rates of suicidal ideation and attempts are shown to go down significantly following gender-affirming medical care and regret rates are below 1%. We also strongly suspect, despite no research on the topic that is known to the authors of this letter, that transphobia worsening gender dysphoria among pregnant transgender men and non-binary people may cause larger numbers of them to have abortions.

In addition to trans people, discrimination against intersex people, including those diagnosed with Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome and 45,X/46,XY mosaicism, bleeds into their destruction in utero. A 2011 systematic review published in the Genetics in Medicine journal by Kwon Chan Jeon and colleagues states that a diagnosis of Klinefelter syndrome leads to average abortion rates of around 61 per 100 intersex babies (estimates ranging from 44 to 85 per 100), with Turner syndrome, Klinefelter syndrome and 45,X/46,XY mosaicism listed as “main factors associated with parental decisions to terminate an affected pregnancy,” compared to around 21 out of 100 babies being aborted in general and compared to around 40 out of 100 children in unwanted pregnancies as reported in a 2016 study. This is due to the dehumanisation of intersex persons as abnormal: in the 2011 systematic review, some sources “identified that the fear of abnormal development among children would more likely lead parents to elect pregnancy termination.” An end to this and the eugenic screening of intersex embryos is a demand of Europe’s largest intersex rights organization, Organisation Intersex International Europe (OII Europe).

Our opposition to abortion comes solely out of concern for the protection of unborn human beings from the violence of abortion, not out of any wish to uphold traditional gender roles. There is a current and pervasive trend in the pro-life movement of linking issues surrounding abortion to transgender issues, so the topic deserves special attention and calls for specific scrutiny. Our strongest secular claim against elective abortion is this: it is a human rights violation. But when pro-life advocates conflate opposition to abortion with rejection of transitioning, they undermine the very framework that makes this claim persuasive. To understand why, we must examine the three common comparisons made:

Claim 1: Both are sexual. Some reject transitioning because it departs from (real or perceived) natural law, treating it as a sexual or moral deviation. When pro-lifers equate abortion to transitioning on these grounds, they shift abortion from a human rights issue to one of sexual morality.

Claim 2: Both are medical malpractice. Both abortion and transitioning indeed occur in medical settings, but when we emphasize this, we again remove abortion from a rights-based framework and place it in a health-based one.

Claim 3: Both are harmful. All medical procedures, including gender-affirming procedures, come with a risk of harm and abortion directly causes harm to the preborn. But when we present these circumstances as equivalent, we dilute the moral urgency of abortion and suggest it, too, is just unfortunate or potentially regrettable – not the systematic destruction of the most defenseless.

Abortion is the defining human rights issue of our time. If we want to persuade others of this, we must stop distracting people by conflating it with concerns over transgender affirmation. Public-facing pro-life leaders should resist the urge to bundle these issues together because doing so does tangible harm and alienates potential pro-life allies. It reinforces false narratives about our movement’s intentions and weakens the clarity of our moral witness. We must let abortion stand alone so that others can finally see it for what it is and act accordingly.

Against this backdrop, we want pro-life leaders and organizations to publicly commit to the following specific actions:

Cease promoting anti-trans, anti-intersex and anti-gay narratives in the pro-life movement. We do not wish to see pro-lifers speak of homosexuality as unnatural/sinful/illegitimate, or of marriage as only between a man and a woman. We do not wish to see pro-lifers speak of transition, whether medical or social, as intrinsically harmful; of transness, in any form, as being a mental disorder or a potential danger to cis women; or of intersex people as freaks or aberrations. We do not ask that conservative views on sexuality are never expressed, only those that attack queerness

Publicly state that LGBTQ+ people are fully welcome in the pro-life movement and that they do not have to hide their queerness when doing pro-life activism.

Commit to intentionally and equally platforming queer pro-life voices.

Commit to not intentionally misgendering anyone, regardless of whether they are pro-life or not. Specifically, we ask that you use the names and pronouns that people want you to use, rather than any former names or pronouns they may have gone by in the past. This includes not intentionally using they/them pronouns to avoid using someone’s explicitly stated pronouns, and it also includes using they/them pronouns for people who wish to be referred to in this way.

Publicly call out the dehumanizing and discriminatory narrative that queer people are groomers, pedophiles, terrorists, deviants or the like, and speak out explicitly against any attempts to define queerness as pornographic, such as those expressed in Project 2025.

Signed,

Dane Rogers (he/him)

Elise Ketch (she/her)

Abigail Scott (she/her)

Sarah Terzo (she/her)

Paityn J. Bowen (he/they)

Miles Bedlan (he/him)

Add your signature at the link below!

For the past 2 years, I have been lowkey working with The Center for Medical Progress and David Daleiden on a documentary about the tragedy of Clementine Kearns and her family. Clementine was 5 months gestation when her mother was coerced into a traumatizing later abortion at the Cherry Hill Women's Center in New Jersey, and then through her medical documents it was revealed that she was actually born alive at the age of viability and harvested for organs for research experiments. You'll have to see it to believe it.

Oh cool, I think you read my zine, and thanks for giving it a chance! The zine is only an introduction to ideas and not a full argument in itself, so if you've already been introduced to all of these ideas as a leftist, good on ya. I know many leftists who honestly haven't given the issue much consideration, and they are the target audience for the zine. Sorry that you were insulted; this zine was not made for you. You seem to be ready for more advanced analysis. Also, when you say "pre-term" I think you mean "pre-viable"; if you think it's okay to kill premies at will, we need to have an additional discussion.

It appears that you define personhood by sentience — so, in your view, moral worth is a sliding scale based upon one's ability to produce observable evidence of sentience, and the more one produces, the more valuable one is. In your view, fish have personhood, but they aren't equal to you in such a way that killing them or doing deliberate violence against them is unjustified. That tells me that we are defining "person" differently, not just personhood — to me, a person is a being equal to you and I, in such a way that killing them can only be justified by extraordinary circumstances, such as self-defense or risk indicated beyond duty. From what you said, it appears to me that you think a being can be a person and yet still be killed as a means to an ordinary end, such as sustenance and lifestyle. To me, that category of being is "subpersons" — beings who deserve our magnanimity, but not our equal rights. I'm interpreting your perspective this way partly from the assumption that you don't think it's justified to kill me to eat or to meet your goals, because I have some evident "preference" (self-consciousness) that I'd like to not be killed.

To answer your question directly: yes, I do eat meat, because I don't understand animals to be persons. I don't support animal rights, but I do support animal welfare. So I do have strong concerns about factory farming and other obvious abuses of animals, and I recognize that by continuing to eat meat I am complicit in these abuses. Ultimately, my reasons for continuing to eat meat are extremely similar to yours: I don't know how to survive without it (which may in part be due to my resistance to putting in effort to learn how; I digress.) So, I completely understand your reasoning there. However, I know many pro-lifers who believe that to be consistent, one must be vegan (check out Vegans for Preborn Rights). And I get that there's no ethical consumption under capitalism etc, but as leftists, aren't we committed to prefiguring a better world? We must find balance between surviving a flawed world and not losing our humanity in the process, or giving up on the struggle for a more humane society. (Also, I'm sorry you've struggled with suicide. I've been there, and it's healthy that self-preservation is a priority for you now; let's just make sure it's not at the expense of committing human rights violations.)

I'd like to call a few things to your attention. First, that it's the fourth stage of genocide to deny the humanity of a group by equating them with animals. Sure, you think there's adequate, sane reason to equate fetuses and fish; they're functionally comparable in a temporal sense, right? To challenge this claim, I'd ask you to learn more about polyvagal theory and refine your theory of mind. When your mammalian brain goes offline temporarily in survival situations and you respond from your reptilian brain, are you no more valuable than a lizard? Is it justified for me to kill you when your brain is temporarily functioning in a way comparable to a reptile?

Second, can you defend that evident self-consciousness is actually a morally significant criterion for personhood? Read my selected highlights from essay 2 in this post, "The Moral Insignificance of Self-consciousness".

Personally I like the Marquette method where you measure your hormone levels to determine when you're ovulating. I use it with the Mira monitor since it gives more specific measurements but most people use Clearblue. This method is very objective, downside is there is a recurring cost to buy measurement sticks, but it's worth it for me since I want to monitor my PCOS. I personally didn't like the Creighton or symptothermal method where you track cervical mucus and body temperature since I didn't have clear patterns, but some women do and it works great for them at no cost.

I personally also have very positive experiences with periods of abstinence (while married) and think women should always feel confident about being able to make that choice even if there's both religious and secular societal pressure to "put out" when partnered. A man is never owed sex if the woman feels seriously unprepared for the costs of pregnancy or otherwise unsafe during sex, and a good partner should be open-minded about finding other ways to express intimacy until she is ready.

It's hard to find nonreligious blogs... the pro-life athiest to religious pipeline is real. But here's some of my favorites that value secular arguments and evidence:

@fetalbat

@not-your-average-prolifer

@egalitarianchica

I wouldn't say that birth control is unethical, but I would say it might be immoral. Ethics are rules for everybody about what we should or should not do, while morals are more like a personal code of conduct. I don't think that birth control is a human rights violation, such as abortion, so we shouldn't outlaw it; but I do think it's not morally neutral, so we should each carefully consider if using it is in alignment with our values.

"The baby is not a stranger because you share 50% of your DNA with them"

I do not think me sharing DNA with someone makes then less of a stranger. And i do not think someone should be forced into extreme body modification because of a stranger.

This kinda falls into "blood is blood" and the "sacred nuclear family" and idk man, its just wrong. I do not think the is a sacred duty of the woman or the man to parent a child, this is why adoption exist.

Eh, first of all, fuck the domestic infant adoption industry. Selling babies isn't the radical take you want it to be.

And okay, fair, the non-stranger point on it's own isn't a complete argument. You probably don't owe people you're related to your body just because you share DNA.

But I think the point still stands that analogies which compare prenatal offspring to strangers fall flat. The blood relationship is distinct from a stranger with whom you have no relation; you can be estranged from family, but that doesn't make them biological or metaphysical strangers in relation to you.

This is such a great question, and you're right, it's very serious. Personally, I use spermicide sponges and condoms at the same time, along with the Billings Method to avoid my fertile window. Because like you, I hate fucking hormonal birth control, and IUDs cause pre-implantation abortions (you have that all correct). Good on you for trying to remain consistent, though. I'm sorry getting sterilized is so hard in your country, it makes me so mad that it's so strictly regulated compared to abortion, which ends a life.

It's so rare to meet another non-fundie, secular-based PLer, even if you yourself are catholic (I think, correct me if I'm wrong). I know people will naturally argue from the morals derived from the religion they ascribe to, as religion itself is an ideology/philosophy, but the issue with assigning religious terminology along to your arguments is that they turn them null to a non-Christian crowd. No matter how logical, reasonable, and sensical you are being, the very moment "God" or "Jesus" is uttered, people will automatically think you're a christofascist theocrat and stop listening, which tbf is actually true for too big a number of PL activists. This is ESPECIALLY true for those with religious trauma. The most pro-abortion (self-titled) advocates out there tend to be those with the most traumatic backgrounds with religion, in America at least. Just knowing you're prolife, and they will cut you off as a trauma response. 

It's because of this that pro-life is now disregarded as "religious moral panic" instead of an actual human rights movement. Of how refusing to perform, have, or even voicing anything against abortion is considered "religious objection" in my country. Being against elective feticide should not be on the same level as a muslim telling everyone to stop eating pork. But according to those fundies, it damn as well be, as they have admitted, when questioned, that "saving souls" and converting people are more important than saving lives. Which, goddamn, perhaps bc I'm an atheist, but if your belief system tells you to put it above actually saving living people then that's shit's goddamn heinous. I'm sorry if it comes across as me offending your beliefs, it's just theirs that scare me and most PCers. 

It's even more rare to find another sapphic PLer like me! I feel so incredibly lonely not only in my very PC country, but in every community I'm in. Unlike in the US with a bigger and more varied PL resistance, there's no equivalent of "Rainbow Pro-Life" or "Secular Pro-Life" here afaik. The only PL group in my area is openly religious and hostile to any non-christians. The PL movement as a whole, while you will receive a bunch of shifty eyes for being the black sheep or that dumb "atheists can't have morals" bs, to LGBT+, non-gender conforming people it's especially harsh. On the flipside, the LGBT community too is equally as brutal when they find out you're PL and cast you out. Which I understand, because of that rampant queerphobia and religious trauma mentioned earlier. Again, my frustration is towards those nutters for ruining this movement. There's so much I want to vent about, but don't feel comfortable openly sharing even as anon heh. I heard you were open to DMs, mind if we chat? If not, that's fine, but you mentioned in the previous post that you knew progressive PLers across the country, does that extend to foreign ones as well? Because the only progressive abortion group "closest" to where I live (Rehumanize Toronto) is inactive lol.

Hey anon, thanks for the kind words!

Yes I'm Catholic, but I'm a secularist because I believe strongly in separation of church and state (not that your faith shouldn't inform your politics, but that you can't use your faith to force others into your politics.) You're so right about pro-choice closed-mindedness often being a religious trauma response. And yeah, the people who use the anti-abortion cause just to try and prove the perversion of anything outside of their faith (or the conservative worldview) definitely hurt the movement.

I have my ideas about it which I've detailed here, but I don't want to get too much into it because I know Bea is stalking my pages, she's obsessed with me or something idk. I'm truly not even sure if she had an abortion. From what I could gather before I blocked her, she tried to overdose on oregano oil or some other herbal abortifacient to kill her baby during a pregnancy scare in which her partner encouraged her to consider abortion. It then either worked, or she had a miscarriage coincidentally, or she never actually was pregnant. She told many versions of the story in the year between it happening and her flipping, so I'm not certain if she actually induced an abortion or if she just convinced herself that she did. The sad part is that she's now touting the most intellectually impoverished takes on personhood, mainly that your vulnerability determines your moral status. This is plainly might-makes-right, and I lament that someone I considered as intellegent as Bea would stoop to that argument. Denial and grief are incredibly powerful.

First, may I just say that I think it's really stupid that you have to get approval from a psychiatrist to get sterilized but not to have an abortion. I watched a TED talk years ago that really impacted my thinking on this. I'm sorry you're having to jump through such hoops just to have control over your reproduction. Sterilization is where I lean fully pro-choice/bodily autonomy/repro justice. I just think it's something the government shouldn't have so much say in, and we shouldn't question people who don't want to reproduce like they're insane or haven't thought their decisions through. Maybe something like a waiting period makes sense, but finding a psychiatrist is a deliberate hurdle.

And you know what? I bet the abortion industry is partly behind the difficulty to get sterilized. With more sterilized people, they lose their cash crop. They WANT us to "breed" because they want to sell more procedures. It's repeat income, unlike sterilization procedures. So in a way, good for you getting sterilized, stick it to the industry.

So yeah, to answer your question: I usually just look up psychiatrists on psychologytoday.com. If you're trying to get sterilized, I'd recommend avoiding any therapists who list religion as a specialty. If I learn of any places you can go to look for reproductive health psychiatrists specifically, I'll update this post. Good luck!