Pro-Choice Versus Pro-Life

By Barsha Chakraborty, Lead, Digital engagement, partnerships and advocacy at Breakthrough India

The debate about the right to abortion is back once again, now with the recent US Supreme Court judgement overturning the historical Roe vs Wade judgement, removing a nationwide protection of abortion laws and by extension,? ensuring that? abortion will be out of reach for women in many of the USA states which are anti-abortion.?

People are once again ideologically polarised on this: either you are pro-life and consider abortion as a criminal act, or you are pro-choice, and consider abortion as a matter of choice and?up to the woman to decide whether or not she wants to terminate her pregnancy. This ‘pro-life’ vs ‘pro-choice’ debate has always baffled me. I never understood why being pro-choice is considered as being against life? And if one is pro-life, why can't one be pro-choice??

Since childhood we have been taught to choose wisely, because we are told that our lives are shaped according to the choices we make. Choice is also about exercising our own agency: agency of our body, mind, intellect, emotion - every aspect of our life and existence. Just like it's our choice to wear whatever we want, however we want, it is our decision as women to decide what we want to do with our pregnancy. It's a matter of women’s lives. How is that not being pro-life??

It has been proved time and again that criminalising abortion is strongly based on a religious and moral construct. A construct created to disempower women, to dismiss her agency, reducing her to a baby producing machine. Countries which have criminalised abortion have witnessed that such bans don’t reduce the abortion rate, rather women take other unsafe measures to abort causing them long term health problems, leading to even death. Furthermore, using ‘illegal’ methods for reproductive health excludes women from the public healthcare system.? What even is a public health care system which criminalises women’s right to sexual and reproductive health?

While? talking about ‘pro-life’, what about the lives of the millions of unwanted children born? What about the lives of rape survivors? What about teenage pregnancies, which forces many teenagers to choose to end their lives, unable to deal with societal disapproval? Does life mean just living? Or living with dignity? Do we consider a life without dignity enough? I wonder when they say pro-life, who’s life? are they talking about?

How is it that putting so many lives at risk, dismissing women's rights to our own bodies, excluding women from basic right to health can be called “pro-life”? No, it isn't remotely about the right to life. It is an ideological branding: promoting moral policing, politicising women's bodies, a pro-patriarchal propaganda for religio-political gains by the powerful. Period.

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons