Pro-Choice Versus Pro-Life
By Erin Armstead
You’ve heard others talk about it. You’ve seen at least a dozen people share articles and post opinions about it on social media. You’ve seen the protests on the news, showing people shouting about fetuses being cut up and sold for body parts. How much of it is true?
What started all of this? The debate is pro-choice versus pro-life, the two sides of the abortion debate. This conversation entered public space in the time of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that made access to abortion legal across the U.S. in 1973. It has been a hot topic in political conversation ever since. More often than not, if a candidate runs for office on the platform of “family values,” they mean to advertise that they are pro-life.
Many people who identify themselves as pro-life are also fundamentalist Christians, who also often believe that birth control is frowned upon by their God. The pro-life platform has come to a consensus that life begins at the moment of conception, and the people who feel this way have fiercely defended their beliefs, even going out of their way to show up at various locations of Planned Parenthood, a nonprofit organization that provides affordable reproductive healthcare, picketing and shouting at clients that they are “going to hell” and “murdering babies.” This activity is vicious enough to draw the attention that this platform craves. Like any group of people holding a strong belief, they desire to be heard and to share their message with many. To this group of people, shouting directly at vulnerable people, usually already shy enough about showing up to a center for sexual health, is the most efficient method of spreading their message.
Their passion for protecting unborn children is understandable, however, particularly in the light of the 2015 hoax that circulated through social media based on heavily edited “sting” videos released by a pro-life organization called Center for Medical Progress (1). These videos suggested that tissue and organs were being harvested from late-term abortions at Planned Parenthood for trafficking, to the extent that a late-term aborted fetus was kept alive so that its brain could be harvested. However, these purported claims were heavily investigated, and it was revealed that the videos had been significantly edited, and that the aforementioned late-term fetus harvested for its brain had had its heart momentarily restarted by tapping on it, but that the fetus was, in fact, irreversibly deceased at the time of the brain’s harvesting. If these claims had been true, of course, the pro-life outrage would have been warranted; however, fetal tissue donation at Planned Parenthood is not for profit, and the only location of Planned Parenthood that receives any kind of compensation for its tissue donations is strictly regulated by the law and is limited to a total of $60 reimbursement for such things as storage and transportation of the critical fetal tissue (2).
In that light, what does it mean to be pro-choice? Does that mean pro-abortion? The short answer is no. Pro-choice is exactly what it sounds like: to be in favor of whatever choice the person affected prefers to make, because it is, after all, their own body and pregnancy.
Overall, people in the pro-choice camp believe in the right to bodily autonomy, or the right to decide for yourself what you want to do with your own body. There are many reasons a person might want to have an abortion. In the world, there are people who want to have children, but it is physically unsafe for them to do so and might risk their own life or the child’s or both; people who are unfit to be a parent and know it; people who want to have a child, but who may feel as though the child’s life might be at risk or too low-quality if born into their current circumstances; and people who may have conceived under undesirable conditions--such as sexual assault--and cannot bear the thought of looking into their abuser’s eyes for another second, much less, potentially, the rest of their lives in their child. The point is that no one can assume that every child in the world is conceived in favorable conditions, and, especially if the circumstances are undesirable, it is not our place to become involved in the matter unless requested, nor is it the job of the pregnant person to justify their actions. They themselves will live with the knowledge of the loss for the rest of their lives, and, should one desire to punish for ending a potential life, as many people holding pro-life beliefs seem to, it is quite possible that that history, a possible source of grief and regret, would be enough.
The pro-life camp is known for suggesting that the “unwanted children” should simply be given up for adoption, because there are plenty of people desperate to have children who are unable to conceive. Currently, there are more than 100,000 children in the U.S. waiting to be adopted, and it should be acknowledged that if there is indeed such a demand for adopted children, that number should hold at a steady zero instead. In addition to those statistics, there is the fact that more than 200,000 babies have been born as a result of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), which was introduced in 1981, and other similar methods (3.) These numbers suggest that, when possible, future parents truly desperate for a child would rather choose IVF or similar and have their own child rather than adopt someone else’s biological child. This makes adoption a rather less practical solution for the matter at hand.
At least a portion of the group of pro-choice people view the baby’s first breath as the moment when life begins, or, alternatively, at the fetus’s first heartbeat. There is some debate on the matter, but it is agreed that the moment of conception is not when life begins; this thinking would also cast some condemnation on every person who has ever had a miscarriage, which is an unfortunately common natural occurrence outside of the pregnant person’s control.
Some abortions are done out of medical necessity. There are many reasons why a pregnancy would not be a good idea for the mother or child and require ending the developing life before birth. An ectopic pregnancy is when an egg is fertilized and implants outside of the uterine cavity, where life is meant to be created; the fetus cannot develop outside of the uterus, and not only cannot survive, but may threaten the life of the mother if left as is. It is also worth noting that, despite suggestions currently circling on social media to the contrary, ectopic pregnancies cannot be reimplanted in the uterus to produce a surviving embryo (4.) A mother who has diabetes or high blood pressure issues prior to conception, among other common medical issues, may also be regarded as a high-risk pregnancy. In these cases, abortion would not be required, but the pregnancy would need to be closely monitored to be sure that all develops as it should and that there are no complications that would threaten the life of the fetus or mother, which might require an abortion (5.)
You don’t have to be pro-life to be anti-death. Statistics show that in countries across the globe where abortions are illegal, 8 to 11 percent of all maternal deaths, estimated to total about 30,000 women each year, are a result of unsafe, unregulated abortions. 6 Many of these deaths result from self-induced abortions, such as the practice of inserting a bent wire hanger into one’s body to remove the fetus, or inserting herbs into the vagina as a way to induce a miscarriage, which is known to result in septic shock, from which a woman can also die. Part of the focus of the pro-choice platform is to provide safe, medically-regulated abortions for those who desire them. A popular statement in pro-choice conversations is, “Making abortions illegal won’t stop them from taking place. It will only stop the safe ones.” Statistics show that this is true.
In the end, it comes down to whether you will choose to be an idealist who blindly believes that the world is and will be kind to everyone or a realist who sees the world for what it is and knows that there are people who have known pain beyond what we can imagine without having experienced those moments ourselves. Sometimes the most difficult and painful choice, ending a potential life, is the best choice available. That choice should be safely available to all.