The moral underpinning of the pro life movement has nothing to do with punishing women. It is an affirmation of the simple and obvious fact that the right of human beings to be alive without fear of being murdered is the basic human right.
No one has the right to kill another human being for any reason other than self-defense. Self defense is itself limited to situations where the threat is real and imminent, something a reasonable person would see as genuine.
This right to life is the basic human right. Every person, from conception to natural death, has a right to be alive without fear of being murdered by someone else.
That is the “right” to life.
The legal application of this right to life can get complex and fraught when you are talking about pregnant women and their unborn babies. Pro life people sometimes seem to have a hard time admitting the simple fact that pregnancy and childbirth can kill women. They come up with some of the most twisted bits of illogic I’ve ever heard to avoid the conundrum posed by rape, violence against women, and the ubiquitous second class status of women in our society and how child bearing has been used to enforce these grave sins against womankind.
They seem to have a hard time admitting and facing up to their own moral responsibility to work to end the ways in which pregnancy and child bearing have been and continue to be used to enforce discrimination, violence, oppression and cruelty against women.
The truth is, pregnancy can be difficult and dangerous for many women. Women do become pregnant from rape. Women do die because of complications of pregnancy or childbirth. Women do face loss of employment, education and all their dreams of the kind of life they want when they have a baby.
It is hard — very hard — to raise children in a society where “pro life” people label social supports for families “socialism” and revile anyone who backs them. When child care costs half the parent’s income, public schools in low income areas are substandard and often dangerous, housing is priced out of reach for many people, employers demand 60-hour work weeks with no give whatsoever for families and parents, when women make far less than their male counterparts — when all these things and more are built into a system that flagrantly works against families on behalf of corporations — “choosing life” for her baby can sentence a young woman to a hard and limited life.
“Choosing life” for her baby shouldn’t be an act of life-long penance that is enforced by the fact that the “pro life” political party is also the party that is owned by right wing corporate interests. But that is the way things are.
The Supreme Court has a super majority of justices that we have been told will vote to overturn Roe v Wade. Pro life people have torn this country apart to get those justices in place. We have elected psychopaths, traitors, liars, sexual predators and corrupt self-enriching scum, just to pack the Supreme Court with “pro life” justices.
If those justices don’t overturn Roe v Wade in a few weeks, we have all been lied to and we will have sacrificed our country for nothing.
If the Supremes do overturn Roe, it is a clear signal that the next pro life goal should be for pro life people work to make it possible for women to chose life for their babies. We should — and could — have been doing that all along.
The only reason to oppose abortion is because the unborn child is a living human being. However, there are two human beings in every pregnancy, and both of them matter.
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