Progressive people of faith: The Nuns of Philadelphia

[lapucelle]

102. These terms are slippery and often used interchangeably,

but as a wise man once said "words matter".

Pro-choice involves supporting a woman's legal and moral right to bodily autonomy.

Pro-life involves respecting everyone's right to life, including the unborn, the sick and disabled, and condemned prisoners.

Anti-abortion involves the idea that pregnancy cannot be artificially or medically terminated, no matter what the physical or emotional consequences to the mother or the unborn child.

There are anti-abortion proponents who are more interested in punishing women than protecting the life of the unborn. They are especially snaky because they sound reasonable to some. They'll make exceptions for certain classes of pregnancies (rape or incest). These are the folks who want to make women pay for choosing to have sex. (If life were truly sacred, then the circumstances of conception would not matter.)

Pro-choice is a legal position. Pro-life is a moral position. Pro-life proponents often work to insure that women have access to contraception, education, and the means to safely carry a baby to term and put the child up for adoption. But, there are also those who actively work to end abortion rights. It's not a monolith; it's a spectrum. Mike Pence is an example of an anti-abortion, anti-choice politician who is not pro-life because he favors the death penalty and wants to end a woman's right to choose.

That people support a legal right to act, but abhor the actual act is nothing new. Feminists have for decades been trying to reconcile the differences between pro-choice versus anti-abortion stances with a movement that seeks to let every woman autonomously determine the course of her own life.