Since this particular area of my blog is devoted to exploring my thoughts as a pro-choice activist, I decided to write a few posts about how to respond to anti-choice arguments. The reasons why I'm dividing these responses into different posts is because 1) there are many arguments to address, and 2) I want to categorize them. Essentially, I think the only way anyone should be arguing from a pro-choice viewpoint is through the bodily autonomy argument (which I'll explain in a moment). This blog post will be to discuss bodily autonomy, and all anti-choice arguments that don't pertain to it. My next post, Part 2, addresses anti-choice arguments against bodily autonomy, specifically.
I've posted before why bodily autonomy is the single strongest argument in support of abortion rights (you can read that prior post here), but I'll begin by explaining it briefly. The bodily autonomy argument was originally made famous by Judith Jarvis Thomson's In Defense of Abortion, in which she presented the vital question of whether anyone should be required to allow someone else to live off of their bodies if that person will otherwise die. She compared the abortion scenario to someone being manually hooked up to a famous violin player who needed to stay connected for ten months in order to live. Should a person be required to stay hooked up because saving the violinist's life is important, or should the person have a choice to stay hooked up or not? (I think the violinist scenario is a bit outdated, and there are other, more relevant comparisons that can, and probably should, be used, but I will detail all of that in the next post.)
The bodily autonomy argument, then, recognizes pregnancy as a zero sum game, in which either a pregnant woman's rights to her body are recognized or else a developing fetus's right to life is recognized. The key here is understanding that, because the pregnant woman and the developing fetus must share a body, both sets of rights cannot be simultaneously recognized by law -- either the woman or the fetus must cede their rights to the other. Either the woman owns her own body, or else the fetus does.
The argument for bodily autonomy stands with the woman. The argument says that the woman, alone, owns her body, and she therefore gets to decide whether or not an embryo or fetus gets to stay inside and live off of it. The implication is that denying a pregnant woman bodily autonomy is denying her ownership of herself, and reduces her to, first and foremost, life support for someone else. Further, there is no recognized "right" to use someone else's body against their will in this nation, and therefore a fetus's right to life does not include the right to live inside of and off of a woman's body if she doesn't want it there.
There are plenty of anti-choice responses to this argument, but, again, those will be addressed in Part 2. Also, please be aware that many of the anti-choice rebuttals to my arguments here are also addressed in Part 2.
As for this post ... well, plenty of people haven't heard of the bodily rights argument and argue about abortion from other, weaker positions. As I see it, arguments about abortion should always boil down to a woman's ownership of herself ... but that's not always how it goes. The following, then, is a list of anti-choice arguments that don't take bodily autonomy into consideration, and how to respond to them.
1) Abortion is immoral.
I would say that, under most circumstances, you want to be on the same page about arguing for the legality of abortion, not the morality of it. You could probably argue all day over whether abortion is moral or immoral in various circumstances, but it's usually a huge waste of time. What we really want to talk about is legality (whether abortion should remain legal). People can believe that abortion is immoral, but that doesn't have to affect others. What does affect others are attempts to criminalize abortion or make it inaccessible. Because that's actually happening all over the nation, it's what we want to address. So make sure your discussion isn't centered around morality -- be clear that it's about legality, and be sure the anti-choicer addresses whether or not they want abortion to remain legal.
The legality of something can not -- and should never -- be based on someone's interpretation of morality. (And if anyone tries to tell you that laws are, in fact, based on morality, remind them that rights are, most of the time, based on the best ways to protect everyone's rights simultaneously; for example, some people find grilling beef to be offensive and immoral because of their personal religious beliefs, but that doesn't mean that we should then make it illegal for anyone to exercise their right to barbecue in their backyards. Rather, we make sure that people who think it's immoral to eat beef have a right not to, while, at the same time, people who do want to eat beef have the right to do that, too.)
If someone says that they want abortion to be legal, but just want to argue why they don't agree with it personally, I'd say to not waste your time (unless that's a conversation you want to engage in). If they admit that they want abortion to be illegal, proceed with that and ask them why.
2) Abortion shouldn't be legal because it goes against what God wants.
The United States is a secular nation, so anyone arguing about the legality of abortion in terms of their personal religious views should be reminded of that. There are many, many different religions in this country that believe many, many different things. Many people, too, do not believe in any god or holy book at all. Further, the United States Constitution forbids creating laws based on one set of religious beliefs, and this is to preserve religious freedom (if I have to follow a law based on your religion, then my own freedom of religion is being violated; the same would be true if you had to follow a law based on someone else's religion).
Every citizen is free to follow whatever religious rules they want to. But they cannot force those rules onto other people, and they therefore need a better reason for making abortion illegal.
Pertaining to this argument, I would avoid getting into debates about what the Bible (or Koran, or any religious book) says on the matter of abortion. You'll likely go back and forth all day, and because these books are so easily interpreted in any way one wants, not to mention the fact that they contradict themselves quite often, you'll likely get nowhere. Stick to the fact that a person's religious beliefs should not affect on the rights of others, and this, therefore, is not a justifiable reason to criminalize abortion.
3) Abortion shouldn't be legal because it's murder. We don't allow the murder of other people, so why should we allow the murder of babies in the womb?
The problem here is that anti-choicers have successfully painted abortion as "murder," making the issue entirely about taking the life of a baby and not at all about a woman choosing to end the state of being pregnant. Abortion, when viewed from another perspective, is a form of self-defense that usually results in the death of an embryo or fetus.
From the perspective of bodily autonomy, abortion is easily recognizable as, simply, the termination of a pregnancy. In this situation, there is a condition happening inside the body of a pregnant woman that she does not want to happen, and so she terminates that condition, that pregnant state. The natural consequence of that is usually the death of the embryo or fetus because it cannot survive without the woman's body. She removes it, and it subsequently dies.
Because, though, anti-choicers have been so successful at framing abortion as "murder," people think of abortion as violently ending the life of a baby, and they don't see it as any different than killing a newborn. They think about pictures of dead babies. They think about women gruesomely and vindictively killing their children and can't understand why the procedure is legal. But when you understand that it's not about killing a baby, but about ending a pregnancy (which does happen to result in a death), it's easier to see that abortion is more comparable to self-defense than it is to murder.
In short, remind this anti-choicer about the huge differences between murder and self-defense, and the difference between maliciously killing someone and allowing the death of an embryo or fetus (again, a natural consequence of abortion) because a woman has chosen to remove it from her body. Also, it's important to remember that bodily autonomy must be respected even when another life hangs in the balance. Women do have a constitutional right to remove a pregnancy from their bodies -- and to say that they shouldn't suggests that their bodies don't really belong to them, but rather to a developing fetus or to the government (who would enforce such a law).
4) Abortion shouldn't be legal because the unborn are human beings who have a right to life.
Anti-choicers love to talk about the Constitution, inalienable rights, and every person's right to life. What they forget (or otherwise don't think about) is that such a right to life isn't guaranteed at the expense of someone else. I have a right to life, but I cannot demand that someone else donate a kidney or blood or any other part of their bodies to me, even if I need it to survive.
We cannot demand bodily support from our parents when we are adults, when we're children, or when we're babies. A fetus in the womb, similarly, cannot demand bodily support, even if it cannot otherwise survive. Therefore, suggesting that a fetus has a right to a woman's body isn't promoting human rights for a fetus, but rather special rights that no other human being has.
When dealing with this question, again, stick to bodily autonomy and a woman's legal right to deny the use of her body to anyone -- even growing fetuses. I recommend avoiding getting caught up in whether the fetus is human or a person, or whether it's the proverbial "blob of cells." The main point is that, even if we categorize a fetus as a human deserving of human rights, it still doesn't have a right to force someone into bodily servitude for the sake of its survival.
No one has that "right."
(Sometimes, an anti-choicer will respond by claiming that women have a special obligation to keep the fetus alive, or that fetuses have a special right to use a woman's body because they're in their "natural" state. These claims are addressed in Part 2.)
5) Abortion shouldn't be legal because science says that life begins at conception.
First of all ... scientific evidence is murky, at best, in terms of trying to define when life begins. But if you're arguing this from a bodily autonomy perspective, it doesn't even matter. Any living, human person still doesn't have a right to use someone's body for survival against their will.
6) Abortion should be illegal because I was almost aborted, and I'm glad I'm alive.
A good place to start with this one is to remind this person that if they'd been aborted, they would not exist and wouldn't even be aware of the debate, but be cautious with this (especially if the person is religious and doesn't believe in simple nonexistence for people). It can be really difficult for some people to think about their own nonexistence.
But the point, however, is that it doesn't matter how thankful someone is for their life, or even how much they desire life for themselves and others. These feelings don't give them the right to strip other people of bodily autonomy. These anti-choicers may feel glad that their mother decided not to have an abortion, but the fact of the matter is that they were never entitled to their mother's body. She made a choice, and it happened to be a choice they are now happy about, but that does not invalidate the fact that it was still a choice that she was entitled to.
Feeling upset about almost having been aborted does not justify legally barring other women from their rights to their bodies.
7) Abortion should be illegal because I know someone who survived abortion and it's horrific to think that they may not be alive right now.
I saw a video not to long ago that featured a woman addressing a room full of anti-choice activists. She presented to them a story about how her mother tried to abort her, but she wound up surviving the incident. Many people found this to be a very powerful story in support of criminalizing abortion, because they felt it put a name and a face on the idea of an aborted baby. Since then, I've heard people argue about others who survived an abortion experience, as though these stories are useful evidence as to why abortion should be illegal.
The response, however, is very similar to arguing with someone who was almost aborted -- that is, one's feelings about an abortion that happened or almost happened to themselves or someone else doesn't invalidate a woman's ownership of her body, and doesn't negate that she still has a choice in whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term.
Again, personal feelings do not (and should not) dictate legislation regarding others' rights.
8) Abortion shouldn't be legal because women will regret it.
People regret lots of things. Sometimes we're happy with our personal decisions, and sometimes we aren't. The answer is not for the government to interfere with said personal choices and make our decisions for us. Support for such a view is patronizing, and feeds into the notion that politicians -- particularly male politicians -- know what's best for women better than women themselves do. It's rhetoric that supports the notion that women can't be trusted to make their own decisions because the outcome could be bad (we don't do that with men's decisions).
Further, the "regret" rhetoric ignores the very real fact that most women do not actually regret their abortions. You can read more about that here, or read about my own, personal abortion experience that I certainly did not regret here.
It's true that some women regret having abortions, but I do want to point out that much of the time, these women were coerced into having an abortion -- the decision wasn't really theirs. Being pro-choice is all about supporting choice in whether women continue pregnancies. Women shouldn't be coerced in either direction, and when they are, regret and remorse are likely outcomes. But even though there do exist women who make a decision that they wind up regretting is definitely not a good enough excuse to bar all women from making that decision.
9) Abortion shouldn't be legal because it's unsafe.
There is so much misinformation about abortion, but surely one of the most prevalent untruths is that abortion is an unsafe procedure that often leaves women broken and sterile, puts them at higher risk for certain cancers, and generally carries a huge mountain of risks that outweigh any benefits. If you are arguing with an anti-choice person who claims to be on the side of women (or, as has become recently popular, claims that making abortion illegal would be better for women than allowing them to access abortions), you will most certainly hear these assumptions come up.
The fact is that abortion is a common, safe procedure that can usually be completed through outpatient visits. Most women don't even need to take time off of work after having an abortion. It's rather easy to hide from the world the fact that a woman had an abortion because, generally speaking, there is usually no hospitalization, no severe recovery time, and no lasting complications. Like all medical procedures, abortion carries some risk, but studies show that said risk of complication is extremely low.
But even though abortion -- as, again, do all medical procedures -- carries a small amount of risk, do you know what carries significantly more risk to a woman? Completing a pregnancy. It is well documented that pregnancy carries more risk than abortion, with complications ranging from pretty insignificant to very severe (my own pregnancy left me with two incurable physical illnesses, and during pregnancy my body began to literally shut down -- my abortion, on the other hand, left me feeling healthy and energetic the day after the procedure, and I have had no lasting consequences).
Again, all medical procedures and conditions -- including abortion and pregnancy -- involve some risk. It's our job as individuals to weigh those risks and decide what's right for us. So, once again, (mostly untrue) claims that abortion is unsafe are not a legitimate reason to make abortion illegal.
10) Abortion shouldn't be legal because too many women use it as a form of birth control.
Going back to the bodily rights argument, women get to make the decision to end a pregnancy for whatever reason they want -- the body in question belongs to them, and they don't have to justify why they're choosing to not allow a full-length pregnancy to occur inside of it. The reasons why a woman gets an abortion are nobody else's business, and choosing abortion for "convenience" (a key term for anti-choicers) isn't an invalid reason. It's not up to anyone else to decide that it is, either. Abortion is a woman's constitutional right, so someone deciding they don't like some women's reasons for obtaining one is not a legitimate reason to make it illegal.
But let's dig deeper on this one. What is the definition of birth control? Really, it's taking control so as to prevent giving birth. In this way, all abortions, regardless of why women seek them, are a form of birth control. All forms of birth control involve women taking their reproductive lives into their own hands because they don't want to be pregnant, and this can include abortion. So let's not accuse some women of using abortion as birth control and treat that as a negative thing, because, at their core, all abortions are truly a form of birth control.
With this argument, then, try to not get caught up in differentiating between women who have "legitimate" reasons for getting an abortion and those who don't. At the end of the day, it's the woman's business why she has an abortion and no one else's. People don't get to pass judgment on someone else's personal medical choices and then say said judgment is a good reason for banning those choices.
11) Abortion shouldn't be legal because the men involved often don't get a say in the life or death of their own children.
I've heard anti-choicers speak up about men who don't get a say in abortion as though that, in and of itself, is a good reason to make the procedure illegal. I've heard about men who wanted the baby and were devastated by abortion, as well as men who feel cheated because the woman chose not to abort and then he wound up financially supporting a child he didn't consent to.
These arguments, in reality, come from men who feel out of control of a situation and desperately want that control. But let me explain why they can't have it, through the bodily rights argument.
If men could carry a pregnancy in their own bodies, and take on the physical risks and complications for themselves, then they would be welcome to do that. However, they cannot, which means that the woman must take on these bodily risks by herself -- and, therefore, the decision of whether to abort is also hers to decide by herself (support and input from others is sometimes welcome, but should never be required). No person should be allowed to force a woman to use her body for life support for a baby. Similarly, no one can force a woman to abort a pregnancy happening in her body. Either choice would be a huge violation of personal autonomy. Biology has placed women with a great amount of power over life and death when it comes to pregnancy, and men cannot claim ownership of women's bodies just so they can have some of that power.
Also, it's faulty to equate financial support with bodily support. Financial support -- which is what child support is -- is something that both men and women have to take responsibility for once a child enters the world. That's not strictly a "man" thing. Bodily support, however, isn't required of any parent. Nobody can force a mother or a father to donate blood, a kidney, or any part of their bodies for their dying child. The reason why this is the case -- why parents can be forced to feed, clothe, and shelter their children but cannot be forced to give up their bodies -- is because of a recognized difference between property rights and personal, bodily rights. Because we all have bodily autonomy, it's never expected that we share our bodies with anyone -- even our children.
Anti-choicers often respond to this argument -- that men have no control over women's bodies, and therefore cannot control abortion -- by claiming that women already handed that control over when they chose to have sex. (This "don't have sex" argument is very common, and will be fully addressed in Part 2.) It's interesting, though, how that rhetoric is never turned around; if you can tell a woman that she loses her rights to her own body just because she consented to sex, why would you not, also, tell a man that he loses his rights to not financially support a possible child just because he consented to sex? Some men get very bent out of shape when they become financially responsible for a baby they didn't want -- they think he should have a choice in that matter. Still, on the other hand, they also get bent out of shape when a woman wants to exercise bodily rights -- not property rights, bodily rights -- without a man's consent. They think she shouldn't have a choice in that matter.
It smells like a double standard. Honestly, if "you lose your rights once you have sex" is good enough to take away women's personal bodily rights, it's definitely good enough to take away (some of) men's property rights. But there always seems to be an assumption that men's property rights are more sacred than women's bodily rights.
12) Abortion should be illegal because we could be allowing the next Einstein or the next Mozart or the next great world leader to be aborted.
The first point to make here is that, even though some aborted embryos and fetuses may, in fact, could have grown up to be wonderful, talented human beings who greatly contributed to the world ... they also may have grown up to be horrible people who inflicted great suffering on the world. We don't know, nor can we ever know, the life paths that a now non-existent person would have taken, so I don't see the point in bringing it up. Any chance there was of a positive outcome could be countered with the chance of a negative one. So it's really a moot point.
Again, though, arguing from the bodily rights argument means that it doesn't matter who the fetus would have become, it's still a woman's choice whether to allow it to gestate inside of her body or not. Arguments like this one, that center around the baby and completely forget about the woman involved, should be brought back to that point.
13) Abortion shouldn't be legal because that allows people to have sex without consequences.
Not everyone agrees that sex without consequences is a bad thing. Why does sex need to be accompanied by consequences?
The mentality here is based on the idea that people who have lots of sex (particularly, women who have lots of sex) are immoral and need to be reigned in (and better controlled). It's based on the idea that sex should serve only certain purposes (usually, people with this mentality think that the main purpose of sex should be reproduction, and therefore all sex should be "open to life," as they say). It's based on the idea that sexual activity should be strictly controlled and confined to monogamous relationships (even though people in monogamous relationships often have consequence-free sex and abortions, too -- this fact is often forgotten), and that sex outside of these confines should carry a "consequence" or at least great risk, and be punished in some way. This is why these people want abortion to be illegal, and also why they want to outlaw sexual acts such as sodomy.
Interestingly, the idea that sex should have consequences rose, in part, from techniques that world religions used to gain control over populations. These religions were able to take something that was such a natural human desire that they knew most people could not or would not stay away from it for long -- sex -- and demonize it. If they could convince the general population that sex was sinful, but then offer a solution to that through religious "forgiveness," they'd certainly have a never ending supply of "customers." Through demonizing sex, these religions were able to, as they say, "break your leg so they could sell you a crutch." (This is a very generalized version of humans' complicated relationship with sex and religion throughout history, but you get the idea.)
This mentality also stems from the fact that modern societies were formed on the foundation of inheritance by birthright -- that is, people tended to rule societies, as well as gain and keep wealth, through familial lineage. People tended to become kings because their fathers before them were also kings. People tended to own property and wealth because their fathers before them owned that property and wealth. And when new power was acquired, it was passed on to sons (and sometimes daughters, if there were no sons and they were lucky enough to still inherit and not be overthrown). Therefore, it became imperative for men (men with power and wealth, especially), to control women's sexuality. It's really easy to know whether a woman mothered a child -- she carries it in her body for nearly a year, after all. Before DNA testing, however, it was much more difficult to know whether a man fathered a child -- unless, of course, the sexual activity of the woman he was with was closely monitored and controlled. The idea of owning women and their bodies became important in terms of maintaining societies that relied on birthright inheritance.
We are still seeing the resulting mentality in today's societies and cultures. Some men feel entitled to exclusive access to women's bodies, and feel very out of control when women have free sex with whomever they please (especially when a woman's chosen sex partners do not include them). Such men may have a desire to see abortion criminalized today because that would reign in a woman's sexual freedom (if she cannot access reproductive health care such as contraception and, if needed, abortion, enjoying a free sex life becomes very risky for a woman, and she's more inclined to adhere to the patriarchal tradition of finding one man and having sex with only him, out of necessity).
But I digress.
The key thing to remember, as I mentioned above, is that laws are not based on a personal interpretation of morality. Just because some people think that sex should have consequences does not mean that sex necessarily should have consequences, or that, by extension, abortion should be outlawed.
The above list is not exhaustive -- there are certainly many more anti-choice arguments you'll come across -- but this does cover the most common ones. Many others that you'll encounter are closely related to the ones above, too, so if you understand the arguments I listed above, and how to respond to them, you'll be fine in a debate with an anti-choicer.
The main thing to remember is that you want to keep the conversation focused on legality and bodily rights, and make sure the anti-choice person is in the position of answering why they think that a legal ban on women's bodily rights is justified.
Many times, once you've successfully done this, you will hear anti-choice arguments that attempt to take down the bodily rights argument. I've detailed responses to those in Part 2.
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