Anyone who dialogues with abortion rights supporters has heard it many times: “Nobody is pro-abortion. We’re pro-choice.”
One problem: it’s demonstrably false.
Below are ten essays and blog posts (including in major outlets like Salon and Mic) whose authors avow they are pro-abortion. They support not just women’s legal right to the procedure, but abortion itself – which they call a “positive social good” and even a “blessing.”
If you’re pro-choice and believe nobody is pro-abortion, you won’t – you can’t –if you dare read the next few hundred words, click a few of the links, and examine the comments sections of these pro-abortion articles and blogs.
Of course, many pro-choice activists don’t agree with these writers. They might even argue that when these essays are analyzed properly, the writers aren’t really pro-abortion after all but pro-choice just like they are. But these activists would never call a transgender woman by a pronoun she rejects, and some of them bristle when called a “liberal” instead of a “progressive.”
In fact, this very conversation is about pro-choicers rejecting a label (pro-abortion) someone else is trying to assign them. How can the same people then tell pro-abortion Americans that they have a false consciousness and should stop using an improper term to describe their actual, pro-choice beliefs?
It is never OK to try to quash the voices of a group of Americans because their beliefs are not politically convenient to your own ideology.
(A clarification: like most Americans, I’m in the middle on abortion. It’s not an issue I’m particularly passionate about – or at least not the issue itself. I do object to the substantial dishonesty and inconsistency on both sides of the debate, and have not hesitated to criticize pro-life discourse.)
I don’t expect anyone to switch sides on abortion after reading the testimony below, from ten Americans who are unambiguously pro-abortion. But it ought to help us have a more honest and inclusive conversation about this most divisive topic:
1. “I am pro-abortion, not just pro-choice: 10 reasons why we must support the procedure and the choice” by Valerie Tarico in Salon
Excerpt: “I believe that abortion care is a positive social good. I suspect that a lot of other people secretly believe the same thing. And I think it’s time we said so.”
2. “Yes, I am pro-abortion” by ProChoiceGal in Her Authority
Excerpt: “Anti-choicers have shamed us into avoiding the a-word. It’s time to reclaim the word. It’s time to make it our own again. In order to remove the stigma attached to having an abortion, we have to first remove the stigma attached to the word in our own statements. It’s time to accept that abortion isn’t terrible. Abortion is a blessing.
3. “Pro-abortion, but not pro-choice about life in general” by Anonymous, Enjoyment and Contemplation blog
Excerpt: “Let me call myself not just pro-choice, but pro-abortion. Abortion is a social good (I’m not the first to make this point) because control of your own body is control of your own destiny.”
4. “Yes, I’m pro-abortion” by Lauren Rankin in Mic
Excerpt: “The statement that ‘I’m not pro-abortion, I’m pro-choice’ is inherently defensive. Rather than embracing abortion as a viable and respected choice, it sidelines abortion; it delegitimizes that valid choice.”
5. “Why I am pro-abortion” by Madison Hampton in Eagle News – Florida Gulf Coast University
Excerpt: “I am pro-abortion because children deserve to be wanted and well supported in their homes.”
6. “Why I’m pro-abortion” by L. Kate Nelson in Rethink the Rant – blog
Excerpt: “I’m pro-abortion because women uninterested in being mothers tend to make pretty terrible parents, and I think children deserve a better life than that.”
7. I’m not just pro-choice, I’m also pro-abortion” by Aimee Ogden in Mommyish parenting site
Excerpt: “I am pro-choice, no contradictory clauses necessary. I trust people to make the right decisions for their own bodies. And I, for one, am unabashedly pro-abortion.”
8. “I am pro-abortion, not pro-choice” by Rachel McCarthy James in Deeply Problematic: Feminism, and Stuff
Excerpt: “I am for abortions. I am for aborting fetuses. This does not imply that I am for aborting all fetuses, any more than folks who say anti-choice are saying that anti-abortion rights folks are against all choices, ever.”
9. “Pro-choice? Pro-abortion” by Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser in The Abortioneers
Excerpt: “I didn’t bargain on negative comments, which were along these lines: abortion is not to be defended with zeal. At best, it’s a necessary evil. I strongly disagree.”
10. “Abortion disconnect” by Laura Kaplan in the National Women’s Health Network Newsletter
Excerpt: “Whenever I hear a pro-choice politician say, ‘No one is pro-abortion,’ I want to shout, ‘Excuse me but I’m pro-abortion, and I am not alone.’ I’m pro-abortion in the same way I’m pro-organ transplant or any other medical procedure: when you need one, you should be able to get one.”
Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
David Benkof is Senior Political Analyst for The Daily Caller. Follow him on Twitter (@DavidBenkof) or E-mail him at DavidBenkof@gmail.com.