Do you have any thoughts on abortion? Anon pls
Hi anonymous! Yes I have many thoughts about abortion.
I think that abortion has to move beyond a moral framework for any sort of meaningful and positive change to occur. Much of the messaging and language around abortion is focused on portraying it as an inherently moralistic decision, which I really think is not true, and this is honestly happening on both sides. Conservative groups push the message that abortion is murder, that a fetus is a person and has a soul, that it's heartless, etc. Meanwhile, one of the major strategies of mainstream abortion activism is this emphasis on personal stories and narratives, on trying to evoke sympathy and pathos. I'm of the opinion that personal narratives don't work unless you have an actual connection to the person you're trying to convince with it (for the most part. i'm sure there are people that this tactic does reach, but statistically it is a really ineffective strategy.) These personal narratives are also often about traumatic experiences, which further reinforces the narrative that an abortion can never really be wanted, only needed. They also turn abortion into an "I" issue rather than "we." It presents abortion as a case by case basis, something that can be allowed if certain parameters are met, rather than a medical procedure that happens for any number of reasons.
I get that abortion is an inherently fraught subject, and I understand that people have all sorts of feelings about it. I'm not saying that I think a woman who finds out she has to have an abortion (for say, like, an ectopic pregnancy) isn't allowed to be sad about it. But we need to get to a place where that sadness as well as public response is about her feelings on the matter and not the fact that a fetus was aborted in general.
I think that we also need to broaden the discussions we are having from simply about a woman's right to an abortion to a broader understanding of what reproductive justice looks like. This encompasses all aspects of reproduction, and allows us to talk about greater sociopolitical structures that affect reproductive "decisions".
gracieabrams
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