'Pro-choice' - what’s in a name?

Lisa shares her thoughts on the use of the term 'pro-choice' to describe organisations which campaign for reproductive rights.

Planned Parenthood this week decided to stop using the term ‘pro-choice’ to describe its position on abortion. I’ve read some excellent pieces on this and agree with many of the points made in favour of this change. Maybe it’s only a sentimental attachment to the term, but personally I don’t think I can ever stop being ‘pro-choice’.

Many people are arguing that the idea of choice is a misnomer because for some people there is no choice. For me this is like arguing that being pro-equal pay is a misnomer because currently there is no equal pay. Planned Parenthood has also argued that abortion should be de-politicised, and framed as a personal health decision that an individual should be able to make. Of course it is an entirely personal decision, but until certain conditions are met, de-politicising abortion seems to me like wishful thinking. The closest example I can see to this is the way in which Canada has taken abortion out of the criminal law altogether. However, even in Canada the political attacks on abortion as a legal procedure keep on coming. And importantly, as Tracy Weitz writes, shifting abortion from the public into the personal sphere does nothing to address or eradicate stigma or help to tackle obstacles to access: 'to say abortion is an individual woman's business absolves us of our obligation to create a more just world.'

It feels a lot like this change of terminology is an admission of failure: it acknowledges, implicitly, that the movement never managed to convey to the world what pro-choice should really mean (which of course includes the fact that abortion is a personal, medical decision). Also that the movement never adequately acknowledged, or fought to address the lived realities of all those in the community who wanted a real choice over their reproductive lives and parenting, and have been denied one, whether because of their age, class, race, gender, sexuality, disability, religion or other factor.

The reproductive justice movement was formed partly in response to the fact that poor women of colour in the US are damned if they do and damned if they don’t when it comes to parenting. Condemned for being disproportionately represented in the abortion statistics – though simultaneously represented as passive victims of a racist abortion ‘industry’ with no moral agency of their own; or condemned for having children when they are perceived as not having the means to support them.In fact, reproductive justice is about more than parenting choices. Reproductive justice activism embraces the whole conversation about how people define themselves, how they choose to live, and how they choose to have or not have sexual relationships, recognising the cultural, economic and social limits imposed on those choices.

For me the reproductive justice movement represents a lot about what being pro-choice should be about and what it means to me. Being pro-choice is not just about saying abortion is morally acceptable or should be legally available. Like any word, or phrase that is designed to be a shortcut to a philosophy, ethos or political position, 'pro-choice' may well not be up to the task, but I’m not convinced that inadequacy equates to inappropriateness and that we should ditch it just yet.

Until we have achieved the utopia in which real choice exists, we have to accept that it is an aspirational term, a goal to be fought and campaigned for. For me it’s about saying that complete sexual and reproductive choice – the fundamental right of a person to bodily autonomy, to have sex or not, to decide who to have sex with and how to have it, to have sex without having children; and of course the right of people who can get pregnant to decide the number, timing, and spacing of their children - is what we are aiming for. It necessitates recognising that some people’s choices are influenced by more than their desires in relation to parenting, but are constrained and directed by the culture in which they live, their economic circumstances, the social and political support or lack of support for certain pregnancy choices and much more.

Real choice can only exist in the context of:

• A society which values and provides equality, respect and security to people of all sexes, sexualities and gender identities and all people regardless of race, class, disability or religion

• Comprehensive and universal sexual health education and access to comprehensive sexual health services including safe and legal abortion and fertility services

• The destigmatisation of all pregnancy options, not just abortion and adoption but all sorts of parenthood including teenage parenthood, single parenthood, older parenthood, disabled parenthood, same-sex parenthood, transgender parenthood

• Rights to parental leave and flexible working conditions for parents

• Real economic and social support for parents caring for children including a living wage policy, accessible affordable childcare, affordable housing, VAW services and more

• Good free quality healthcare for all

In short: a society in which we can be optimistic that our children will thrive, wherever they are born and whoever they are born to...

Maybe the US context is so different that it would be laughable to aspire to any of the above conditions (free universal healthcare, adequate welfare etc), but in the UK we once achieved a few of these or were close to achieving them, and we’re fighting hard to achieve more and to stop the gains we have made slipping through our fingers.  If being pro-choice is an aspirational rather than a descriptive term I’m happy to aspire.

There can be common ground between pro and anti-choice movements - another Myth-Busting Monday

Every Monday EFC busts common abortion myths. Todays Myth-Busting Monday explores the concept of a common ground between members of the pro-choice and anti-choice movements that some people are on a quest to discover. While the prospects for finding the legendary common ground look bleak in the US it may not be too late in Britain, if only we could agree on just a couple of things...

Pro-choice advocates have been on the back foot in the US for some time. Many are tired of the war of attrition against abortion rights being waged in state legislatures around the country; they are concerned for the wellbeing of women attending clinics who have to run the gauntlet of angry, aggressive protestors and of those who stand in silent vigil and in judgment on them;  they are fearful for the lives and safety of clinic staff and for the future of reproductive health services. The response of some, including Obama, has been a call for an exploration of the ‘common ground’ in the abortion discussion, posing the possibility of a new kind of discourse on abortion. Explicit in this concept is the hope that a new kind of conversation could take place between pro and anti choice groups, one that is safer and more respectful of the others’ views; that shuns the polarisation of the debate; that is kinder and more productive; most importantly, one that would marginalise and disempower the crazy and scary outliers of the anti-abortion movement.

Recently some 'self-defined' pro-choice advocates in the US have been falling over themselves to try to make concessions to the anti-abortion lobby: calling for abortion to be ‘safe but rare’; challenging the common pro-choice wisdom that later abortions are necessary and legitimate; calling out their own colleagues for not sufficiently addressing the moral dimension of abortion, and thereby damaging the ‘pro-choice brand’; and, importantly, colluding in the use of  the term 'pro-life'. There has recently been a conference to bring together abortion providers and pro-choice advocates with anti-abortion lobbyists and activists to help increase mutual understanding. Many in the pro-choice movement are asking whether it is possible to be pro-choice and simultaneously to be prepared to concede chunks of women's abortion rights. Others are asking what they are getting back in exchange.

What has been marked during this time is that while the pro-choice movement has searched for a language that is conciliatory, there have been no discernible changes in language from the anti-abortion lobby. There has been no decrease in false advertising by crisis pregnancy centres; no support for women to receive evidence-based information on pregnancy options; no acknowledgement of a moral dimension to the pro-choice position; no fewer threats to abortion providers; no support for politicians properly to invest in support for parents who are poor, young, single or otherwise disadvantaged. Most markedly there has been no support for making abortion rarer by lobbying for funding of contraception services. In fact, as we have seen with attempts to defund planned parenthood’s sexual health and contraceptive services in the past week, quite the opposite is true.

If there can be any common ground surely it is that of information and pregnancy prevention. If the anti-abortion movement is not willing to support provision of contraception and can't even agree on the need for evidence-based medical information on which women can reflect in the decision-making process, many feel it is hard to see where else the two movements can meet.

Luckily the abortion debate in the UK is less heated. Maybe the anti-abortion lobby here would like to make some concessions to avoid it becoming so, and to join us in calling for brilliant evidence-based education and information on pregnancy prevention and abortion, and well- funded sexual health and contraceptive services for all. Then I will truly believe in the legendary, and elusive, ‘common ground’.

Guest Blog: America’s Uterus Police

Today’s guest blogger is Reni Eddo-Lodge, a 21 year old English Literature student who writes about issues facing young people for The Guardian and has her own blog discussing ‘politics, feminism and other stuff’.

It must be very difficult to be a poor woman in the US right now. Rich, white, powerful men have spent the past few weeks in Congress making life changing decisions that will ultimately determine whether women will be granted control over their own bodies.

Unfortunately, it looks like Congress is winning.

If you follow American politics, you may have noticed that there has been an unprecedented rise of right wing patriarchal traditionalism in recent months- a movement that is callously concentrated on keeping women in their subordinate place.

First came the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act. In this bill, speaker of the house John Boehner asserted that funding for abortions should only be provided to women who have been ‘forcibly raped’. With this phrasing, Boehner aspired to realign the definition of rape so that it fitted neatly with his own ideology. ‘Forcibly raped’ quite unsubtly suggests that women who don’t emerge from rape or sexual assault covered in bruises are somehow lying or disingenuous when they ask for help. It excludes victims of incest who are over 18. ‘Forcibly raped’ immediately eliminates those women who have been raped whilst drugged, raped whilst intoxicated, or manipulated and groomed.

Then, Congress voted to strip Planned Parenthood, America’s largest sexual and reproductive health provider of funding - effectively barring access to hundreds upon thousands of poor women across America who can’t afford healthcare.

Currently, South Dakota is considering a law that would determine abortion ‘justifiable homicide’- a crime punishable by death.

And now, Republican Rep. Bobby Franklin is campaigning to classify abortion as murder, and wants to put policy in place that would require hospitals to report all spontaneous miscarriages so that women can be investigated for abortion. He’s joined Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker in an all-out assault on abortion rights.

For too long now, the misconception that pro-choice means anti life has warped public debate about women’s reproductive rights. This mistaken logic leads to anti-choicers branding sexual health and abortion clinics as murder houses, which couldn’t be further from the truth. The same people campaigning to ban abortion are often those campaigning to restrict sex education, with the misguided belief that abstinence is the only way to curb teen pregnancy.  To assert that young women shouldn’t have sex if they don’t want to get pregnant is absurd. Take a look around at our hyper sexualised culture and you’ll notice one stark factor - the idea of pregnancy has been completely divorced from the concept of sex.

Educating young women about sex and relationships, as well as granting them access to contraception and the morning after pill are all key factors that are likely to reduce the rates of abortion.  Pro-choice means granting women the dignity to make their own decisions without governments interfering with and attempting to control their reproductive organs. Motherhood is glorious, but women aren’t baby machines. Much of the abortion debate has been fuelled by ideology; with those in government putting their own beliefs before the health and well-being of women in their own country. A recent US study found that 77% of anti-abortion leaders are men. 100% of them will never be pregnant.

It’s a funny paradox that the American republican right occupy themselves with. In the midst of all this passion to rescue potential life, they’ve forgotten actual life - the women having to make these difficult and devastating decisions. The women who own these bodies. In the middle of a recession, America’s republican men and women are more interested in policing women’s bodies instead of focusing on wider social, cultural and economic causes of a catastrophic financial crisis. It seems, in times of austerity, it’s easier to bully and belittle those with no power rather than address real issues. These false bastions of the family are currently channelling all their energy into making the world a harsher place for American women.