Why I’m pro-choice

I am pro-choice. I believe women have the right to determine the future of their bodies, to determine whether they should conceive a child and whether, should they become pregnant, to bring that child to term. I believe that they have a right to contraceptives and access to abortion and that both should be treated like other healthcare options.

I also understand and can respect the arguments made by many right-to-lifers, those who are committed to the belief that life begins at conception. I respect their view, but I find their arguments wanting. They are couched in a kind of certainty that is impossible, and they show little concern for the impact on others that their arguments imply.

Any debate over abortion has to consider two issues: When life begins, and who has control over women’s bodies. The first question, for me, is impossible to answer. There tend to be three potential answers: that life begins at conception, that it begins when the fetus is viable outside the whom; and that it begins only at the moment of birth.

Science is only nominally helpful on this — we can point to scientific arguments in favor of all three options, but we do not have consensus. And we can’t. The reason is that the meaning, the definition, of life, remains in dispute, in flux. Religions disagree. Philosophers disagree. Is life a physical thing, purely of our bodies? Is it ephemeral and tied to the soul? Do we retain some kind of life outside our bodies?

This uncertainty, for me, is key. And it is why this decision has to be left in the hands of the people who are most affected: Women.

As I said, I understand the arguments: Catholics, evangelical Christians, other religious groups, may be certain of the answer here, but we do not live in a Catholic nation, or a Christian nation. We live in a nation of secular laws that are predicated on the notion that no single religion or religious tradition should hold sway. My reading? No woman should be forced to abide by rules set by a religion to which she does not subscribe, and no religious should be able to impose rules on the rest of us.

I write this today, because thousands are in Washington today at the March for Life, and because Vice President Mike Pence offered these words: “You know, I have long believed that a society can be judged by how we care for our most vulnerable – the aged, the infirm, the disabled, and the unborn.” Not the poor. Not women. Not victims of domestic or other violence. Not women and men fleeing war and economic location. Not the condemned. Just “the aged, the infirm, the disabled, and the unborn.”

Pence, of course, is a hypocrite and an extremist — as are many on the pro-life side. Pence supports the death penalty (unlike the Catholic Church, which views capital punishment as a threat to life), He is willing to attach strings to state assistance for the poor, essentially telling them that their life has less value than the rest of us. (Testing welfare recipients for drugs to get aid but not the rest of us when we get far more in government benefits than the average poor person is the height of disconcern.) He approves of discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community, has backed military interventions, and so on.

This is where my respect for many pro-lifers’ arguments comes to an end. Life is sacred, you say, but you prioritize life, you make the woman’s life less valuable than the life of those not yet born. Kill the prisoner, drop the bomb, withhold help from the drug-addicted — you are ranking lives, you are judging some to be less valuable than others. You are saying, if not explicitly, that some lives are less worthy, less sacred, or perhaps not sacred at all.

I don’t to have the answers on these questions, but I try to come to them with humility, with a sense that, maybe, just maybe, I could be wrong. And because of this, as I said, I have to let the people most affected, the ones who have to weigh the various options, have the final say.

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Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet