Joyce Fegan: Coining the term 'pro-life' was a masterstroke but it avoids the reality of abortion
In reality, the term 'pro-life' means anti-abortion, and it is totally unconnected to the reality of women — and indeed couples — who need or want abortions. Picture: Alamy/PA
What a world it would be if abortion were unnecessary. Let’s imagine what that might look like. Menstrual-cycle awareness — every person who menstruated, aged 10 and upwards, would know the length of their cycle, how to track it, when they ovulated, and how long that meant they would be fertile.
We wouldn’t use words like ‘the curse’ or mock women for ‘being on the rag’. There would be global respect for menstruation, that ‘monthly’ cycle that ensures our species. Menstrual products, the ones that suit your body best, would also be universally free.
Then there’s contraception to wrap around menstrual-cycle awareness, with the acknowledgment that no contraceptive is 100% effective.
We would be versed in all options, from condoms to the copper coil, and from the pill to the patch. All of society, not just the person who is responsibly managing the potential of their uterus, would know the percentage effectiveness of each device, which ones needs to be medically inserted, and the disadvantages, too.
And those who nonchalantly chant ‘abolish abortion’ would see their tax contributions fund both global menstrual-cycle awareness and contraception, if they are, of course, so dedicated to abolishing the medical procedure.
Support with practical measures all those who menstruate before placing yourself on the moral high ground.
The term ‘pro-life’ has been used since the 1970s by those opposing abortion. It was a victory in messaging, a marketing masterstroke. Those who supported the right to abortion responded with the term ‘pro-choice’. In the world of messaging, ‘pro-life’ packs a powerful punch, by assuming and asserting moral high ground.
Those who opposed abortion were better people, their tagline implied.
But it’s easily picked apart. 'Pro-life' for whom? For all? Protecting the life of both the foetus and the person who carries it? Or just the foetus? Surely to be pro-life means to be pro-life for all?
The cost of care falls flat on the shoulders of the individual family unit, be that a solo parent with no ‘village’ to speak of, or a family of four surrounded by a bosom of intergenerational support.
It’s also why abortion is not a women’s issue, although it has been framed as such. If you are a heterosexual middle-class couple with three young children, barely holding down two paying jobs — the kind of people who do everything right, and you find yourselves due an unplanned fourth child — is continuing with the pregnancy the sole issue of the woman, or does it affect the father, too?
If you find yourself in an extramarital relationship and your lover becomes pregnant, your secret about to be outed, does access to abortion remain a woman’s issue?
And this is bearing in mind that activists usually get people to vote in favour of abortion rights based on compassionate grounds, such as in the case of rape, foetal anomalies, or where the life of the mother is severely at risk.
Voters grant access based on ‘good abortions’.
If we only accept abortions on 'good' grounds, and are against abortions on ‘bad’ grounds, such as a contraceptive failure, then we are really just criminalising pleasure. The idea that humans only have sex to procreate is still doing the rounds.
How many of us believe in a woman’s right to have sex for pleasure without worrying about pregnancy?
How many of us believe in a man’s right to have sex for pleasure without worrying about pregnancy?
Is there a difference in who you permit pleasure to? And does the word ‘responsibility’ come to mind?
Responsibility brings us back to how to be really anti-abortion. The womb creates the future workforce. These wombs will create the workers that will fund your pension. Billions of hands will do the unpaid, undervalued work of nurturing those infant humans to maturity, affecting everything from reduced crime rates to resilient mental health.
How will we support those doing all of that reproductive labour on behalf of the whole?
Ali Pember, a UK-based perinatal psychotherapist, this week posted a “recipe for an unjust society” to her Instagram account.
She described it as to “force someone to have a baby, then fail to help that same person and baby to thrive”. Another ingredient was the reminder of how critical the early years of human development are, while in the same breath pressuring people back to the office, in the absence of “good-quality affordable childcare”.
Being anti-abortion is an uncomplicated, utopian ideology. Supporting a child to thrive in the real world is a vastly different debate, one that comes with putting our money where our mouth is. And it’s a debate not just for the US, but for us, too.
