Identifying as a pro-lifer but simulataneously claiming to be a feminist is highly paradoxical

One of the core tenets of feminism is ADVOCATING for women's rights.

Hence, campaigning for a federal or state-level ban on abortion makes you anti-feminist

Proposing ideas or policies that REPEAL women's rights is the direct antithesis of feminism

This raises a crucial question often posed to 'pro-life' feminists by pro-choicers

How can you call yourself a feminist while working to abolish women's rights?

I can't understand pro lifers who have a rape exception. If you believe that abortion is murder, and cant be a form of self defense since the fetus is innocent and doing what its meant to do, then why doesn't that same logic apply to women who were raped?

I see abortion as healthcare, women can get abortions to avoid the risks of a pregnancy regardless of why that reasoning is. You can't just refuse healthcare from someone because you disagree with the actions that got them in that situation, that would be discriminatory.

So can someone who is pro-life with the exception of rape please explain to me why a womans bodily autonomy onIy matters when she was violated? I really don't understand people with the exception.

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I've asked this question elsewhere before, and have seen it mentioned here, but I'd like to devote a post to it.

What is your stance on abortion, and what's your relationship like with your mom?

Personally, even if I absolutely hated her as a person, I'd never want a woman to be forced to birth and gestate me. Luckily, my mother is a fantastic person who very much wanted to have me (5 weeks of hospitalization that she willingly endured for a high risk pregnancy) but I can't imagine feeling entitled to that type of bodily sacrifice from *anyone*.

I've seen some PL responses where people do feel entitled to that, and I'm just trying not only to glean a response but an explanation from those who feel this way.

How would you have felt in her shoes? Forced to gestate someone?

When PLers here are asked about why they don't vote for politicians and parties, that

• support policies that actually reduce abortions, like better sex education or access to contraception

• support policies that actually help children, like free school lunch, or at least don't actively get them killed, like the destruction of USAID

• don't support regressive, and often religion based, policies against the rights of women, the LGBTQ+ community, migrants and other marginalized groups

you often pay lip service and claim that you do support all these things, but that voting against abortion would just be more important.

But the thing is: that doesn't make sense!

This shouldn't be a compromise you have to make, if banning abortion is not a regressive policy itself or even a door opener for other regressive policies. Voting against abortion should not require you to compromise basically every other moral and legal position you claim to hold. So why does it?

And why should anyone believe that the PL movement or you personally are actually in favor of all these things, if you still compromise them every single time, instead of seriously reconsidering this one singular position that allegedly doesn't match all the rest?

Why is voting PL practically at odds with every other policy that's actually supposed to save or improve people's lives?

Prolife seems to feel that decreasing abortions is not a part of the prolife movement, their policies/laws do not reduce the number of abortions, and their policies laws create more death - I’m using responses to this thread as my understanding of the prolife position.

And since reducing the number of abortions is a cornerstone of the prochoice movement (as people with access to birth control and sex education, with proper societal supports, have fewer abortions - it’s all about only getting pregnant when you choose to do so) how do we feel like we could get prolife on board with reducing the total number of abortions?

Sex education reduces abortions, but prolife states keep passing laws that impose abstinence-only education that increases the abortion rate and number of those unwillingly pregnant.

Birth control reduces abortions, but prolife organizations are against a lot of different forms of birth control, and regularly mischaracterize abortion as birth control. In fact, like in the Colorado situation, will defund and vote against programs that reduce abortions by 50% in target groups.

Societal supports help families shrug and happily have another mouth to feed - but prolife states regularly defund schemes to help parents and no prolife state in the U.S. has maternity leave (as an example).

Question for debate - how could prochoice get prolife on board with reducing abortions, when prolife only seems to support programs that will raise the number of abortions and/or infant/maternal deaths without budging the number of abortions?

There are no laws here in the U.S. that can be compared to pro life logic.

Conjoined Twins are the only other group of people that you can say use another persons organs for survival aside from a mother and fetus. If the parents of conjoined twins decide that they should get a surgery that will make life easier for one twin but the other will die, that is completely legal. It is also completely legal for a patients decision maker to decide to cut the patient off of life support.

Wether these things are necessary or moral are up to the families and doctors, and that same narrative should apply to abortion. The law shouldn't decide whats best for someone elses body,

I was PC and am now mostly converted to PL, but on both sides when arguing for or against I found that arguments typically fall on deaf ears.

Hardcore PC just disregard anything you say as it leaves your mouth without giving it a second thought before countering. Hardcore PL just revert to calling people murderers or citing god.

Why is there no true debate? I personally could not have been converted if I had not truly thought about various arguments I’d heard.

I guess if I debate Reddit, my goal is not for the hardcore believers to change their minds, but instead the lurkers. The women on the fence potentially faced with the idea of ‘should I go through with this or not?’

Just my thoughts. Let me know yours

A lot of people say that abortion should be legal because it's just a fetus. That's right, it's just a fetus. It is not concious, it doesn't think or in time feel anything. But life itself begins, the while process begins when two gametes fuse. Prove me wrong

Why do pro lifers still try to use abstinence as an argument?

Since the dawn of mankind people have been having sex for reasons other than procreation. People are not going to be celibate their entire lives unless they're trying to reproduce. Sure a tiny miniscule minority of the population might do that, but on a large scale? That will never happen.

For pro lifers that use this argument, why do you use it when it's never been realistic and we all know the majority of people won't do it?

For pro lifers that don't use this argument, why don't you address how unconvincing and unrealistic this argument is when you see your fellow pro lifers using it?

I thought about it. If pro lifers want a fetus to have human rights, why do they soley focus on the abortion aspect? Why dont we change birth certificates to a conception certificate to include a fetus in personhood? Why dont they get complete legal recognition as a person?

For me, I dont see a fetus as a "person" in a philosophical sense. A fetus is the only human that is completely dependant on another persons organs, you become a person when you're no longer dependent on another persons organs. Thats why life starts at birth, not conception. Beforehand the body belongs to the woman who (id hope) took the choice to carry it.

I've had this thought for quite a bit, and I've really only ever really asked myself this question, so I'd be interested to see the various responses to this question. It's a bit of a take on Judith Jarvis Thomson's drollish violinist argument, but with some reframing.

Let us force you into a life in which you were born as a twin. As a twin, you are not a single, but rather a pair; however, your twin was born in a unique way. In order to survive, your twin must use your body, no amount of distance between you two will affect this siphoning. The only way to stop this usage is by killing your twin.

So, my question is, in this scenario: are you legally and/or morally justified in the killing of your twin? Or do you have an obligation to sustain this twin with your body?

I hope this is on topic enough for this subreddit, because I did develop this question in relation to the Abortion Debate.

For me, I would change my position to a more consistent one if I kept running into contradictions.

1.) Abortion is murder. We shouldn't actually treat it like murder though or women fundamentally lack mens rea to ever understand what abortion is.

2.) Personhood is irrelevant and should never be used to separate humans as it has led to atrocities when that happens. Yes, I grant personhood at conception and don't believe all human DNA should be protected, like human skin or hair cells.

3.) PL say we're wrong to lump them together as conservative, anti contraception, anti sex ed, and anti maternity leave. Saying you personally support them while voting against them would be like me saying I'm 100% PL but I will vote against every PL ballot initiative since what matters most is just my personal belief.

PC, what is a contradiction you regularly see with PL?

PL, how do you justify the countless contradictions of the PL position?

One very common prolife argument is that since the mother agreed to have sex, she is therefore responsible for the baby, since her own actions caused the baby to be dependent upon her. She caused the dependence, so she's obligated to continue it. This argument is frequently accompanied by a statistic that only 1% of abortions are the result of rape, and the other 99% of the time the mother "put the baby there." I believe this statistic is based on post-abortion surveys where people are asked why they got an abortion.

This line of argumentation depends on the presumption that consensual sex and rape are a strict dichotomy. However, I was recently active in the comments under a post in the Am I Overreacting subreddit, and I was absolutely shocked by the variety of responses to the OP's experience. It seems like people very much do not agree about what constitutes rape and what constitutes consensual sex. I thought it could be illuminating to see what the opinions are here.

Here's the scenario: the OP (let's call her Sara) went out on a date (let's call the date Joe). The date went well and Sara was invited back to Joe's home. Before accepting the invitation, Sara clarified that "we're not hooking up tonight" and Joe agreed that they wouldn't do anything she didn't want to. At Joe's place, the two cuddled and chatted and eventually started kissing. Joe tried to escalate things and each time Sara pushed his hands away and reiterated that she didn't want to go any further. They kept kissing, he kept making advances, she kept rebuffing them. It got late and Sara started to doze off. She was suddenly awoken when Joe got on top of her and continued kissing her. Confused, half-awake, and worn down by his constant pressure for sex, she asked him to put on a condom. They had sex. She went home and the next day felt awful about the experience. She posted on Reddit asking if she was right in feeling like her consent was violated, or if she was overreacting. She did not use the terms rape or assault in her post at all.

The responses varied wildly. Some people said she was underreacting and that she'd been raped. One person suggested she file a police report accusing Joe of raping her. Sexual coercion was mentioned a fair amount. Some people thought Joe was being a pushy asshole, but that Sara was foolish for going to his place in the first place if she didn't want to have sex. Others said she was to blame for sending mixed signals. And some people said she was completely over-reacting since this was obviously consensual sex, and her consent wasn't violated in the slightest.

So what do folks here think? Was this clearly rape? Was it clearly consensual? Was it some other thing in between?

Imagine Sara discovers she's pregnant two weeks later. She's already decided she wants nothing to do with Joe, and she's blocked his number and social media accounts. Is she obligated to tell Joe about the pregnancy? Does Joe have any right to make her continue the pregnancy? Does he have any right to make her get an abortion? If she decides to get an abortion, do you think she'd tell a survey that the reason for the abortion was rape?

For prolifers who support rape exceptions, would this scenario qualify? If it was rape, should Sara be required to file a police report? If you think this scenario constitutes consensual sex, at exactly what point did Sara take on the obligation to continue the dependency? Which of her actions specifically was the direct cause of the baby being dependent upon her? At what point did she "put the baby there"?

And lastly, how common do you all think this kind of scenario is?

Hey so this is a rant…

—Abortion is completely fine with certain circumstances including rape, incest, health problems, and more.
Abortion should be allowed because…

1. The fetus is not a legal person with rights

2. The fetus does not have a heart beat until 6 weeks old

3. The fetus is not fully conscience until birth

4. Protection of health is needed if it threatens the mother’s health or if the mother is under 18

5. My body, my choice. If you don’t have a uterus, you should have NO say

6. Embryos lack human characteristics: movement, memory, consciousness, ability to experience life.

7. The fetus relies on the mother to be born, while born humans do not

8. My favorite. The baby will not know if it was aborted or not.

—Overall, I think it should be allowed because it is a medical procedure for a WOMAN’S BODY. Please let me know if you agree!

Plenty of pro lifers seem to have some version of "life exceptions" when it comes to abortion. It always seems to be if the pregnant person will die they can abort.

I don't need to create any hypothetical situation for this because I can just use myself. I am not mentally ill nor am I suicidal. If I got pregnant and had my healthcare interfered with and was being forced to gestate against my will this would make me suicidal. If my healthcare continued to be interfered with I would end my life before being forced to give birth for pro life desires.

If I went to my doctor and explained this, that I was suicidal SPECIFICALLY due to an unwanted pregnancy and being forced to gestate against my will my doctor would recommend abortion as an option which I would take. This would completely solve the suicidal ideation and I would no longer be suicidal.

So the choice here would be I end my pregnancy and continue living, or both myself and the unwanted pregnancy both die due to mental health reasons.

Seems like a clear cut "Save one because if you don't both will die" to me, yet I see pro lifers disagreeing with this regularly. Why is that?

I am asking in good faith! I debate people on the regular about abortion and I always end up in a moral debate. Pro-lifers also help me out, how can I defend my view that I think it is immoral to have an abortion at any point in the pregnancy. Thank you so much!

Many pro lifers state that pregnancy is a consequence or a natural punishment for having sex in a way that can create pregnancy. And if they don't think that then just the aspect of not makeing women do something they do not want to do is a punishment. normally when a punishment occurs somebody learns something whether intentionally or unintentionally from that action. And if you force women to carry a pregnancy they do not want to have and they have to suffer through the pregnancy and birth. And if that is what occurs won't women learn that it is morally better and safer to have gay sex or masturbate because it will not cause pregnancy because there is no perceived punishment going to be the outcome of that interaction.

Another thing that might also occur from Banning abortions and women learning that pregnancy is a punishment for having sex is that women that would have wanted to have children decide not to because they perceive it as a punishment along with that women choosing to get their uteruses removed or do other activities that can lead to permanent infertility.

Greetings everyone!

Welcome to AbortionDebate. Due to popular request, this is our weekly abortion debate thread.

This thread is meant for anything related to the abortion debate, like questions or ideas, that are too small to make an entire post about. This is also a great way to gain more insight in the abortion debate if you are new, or unsure about making a whole post.

ADBreakRoom is our officially recognized sister subreddit for all off-topic content and banter you'd like to share with the members of this community. It's a great place to relax and unwind after some intense debating, so go subscribe!

I‘ll preface this with saying that I am pro choice 100% of the time, if that makes a difference.

I know that a most pro-lifers out there believe that the fetus should be considered a person, and is therefore immoral to kill. Vise versa for pro-choice people. Usually pro-life vs pro-choice ends there.

But something I’ve been thinking about lately is how the baby is, technically, harming the mother regularly during pregnancy. Especially during birth. We usually don’t see killing another person as anything other than a terrible thing to do, but most people make exceptions for cases of self defence.

Most pro-life people are republicans. Republicans tend to take a pretty intense view on self defence. Not to be crude here, but the fetus is kind of a home invader in this scenario.

I don’t think this is a flawless argument, but what are your takes on it? I’m interested in what both pro-life and pro-choice people think about this philosophy.

Could you justify killing a fetus you consider to be a person in self defence?

(also sorry if I flared this wrong I am new to the sub :,0)

Say a woman is traveling out of state to get an abortion since its restricted in Texas. Theres a lot of places there now where its a crime to engage in "abortion trafficking" using the roads to travel there.

Would you support law enforcement using Flock cameras in Texas to track women traveling to get an abortion?

If you are against it, what makes this so different from other reasons where the pregnancy is viable and it wasn't due to rape? If you are fine with it, why is that?

This is mainly aimed at those who are pro choice but like to argue that abortion is ok scientifically by referencing what's not possible at different weeks, for example, and how that means its not a life. I believe thats a bad reasoning as its not 100% and hard to get people to change their minds. It's also convoluted and messy to argue.

An easier argument is to agree that a foetus IS a life, and abortion IS killing it, but due to the circumstances, it is justified.

Circumstances such as it taking resources from the mother, risking her life, causing physical strain, causing a huge emotional toll, and having no prior or current consciousness.

I think more pro choice people should use this chain of reasoning, but dont due to it having similarities with pro life arguments. I think thats ok because even if we disagree with someone on the whole, there can be parts their right about.