Women's Rights: Unification of Pro-Life and Pro-Choice through Feminism

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Recommended: Roe v Wade and Its Impact

Abortion and Women's Rights: Unification of Pro-Life and Pro-Choice through Feminism

January 22, 1973 is a day that, in the eyes of many modern feminists, marked a giant step forward for women's rights. On this date the U.S. Supreme court announced its decision in Roe v. Wade, a verdict that set the precedent for all abortion cases that followed. For the first time, the court recognized that the constitutional right to privacy "is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy" (Roe v. Wade, 1973). It gave women agency in their reproductive choices; no longer were they forced to succumb to second rate citizenship as a housewife, a single mother, or a mother in poverty on account of pregnancy.

Was this decision really a step forward for women, or was it a step backwards? The abortion debate has polarized women, pitting them against each other in the binary of pro-choice and pro-life. This leads to a destructive division between women, one that is detrimental to the furthering of women's rights. How can we, as women, fight for our rights as women if we are so divided? Is there any way to unite these two apparently irreconcilable sides of the abortion debate?

A good starting place is to look at abortion from a feminist standpoint. Within feminism, the debate over abortion is not based in the morality of abortion or the integrity of people who support or are against abortion; it is about how abortion fits into our culture and how a women's choice to undergo or not undergo an abortion influences the status of women within our culture. Abortion has become a double-edged sword for women's rights. Without the right to choose women would be locked into their role as mothers, but being giv...

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...rolyn C. "What is a Pro-Life Feminist?" Problems of Death: Opposing Viewpoints Series. Greenhaven Press, 1997. found at http://www.gargaro.com/lifefem.html accessed on 11/20/04

Greer, Germaine. The Whole Woman. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1999. 91-100.

McClain, Linda C. "Equality, Oppression, and Abortion: Women Who Oppose Abortion Rights in the Name of Feminism." Feminist Nightmares: Women at Odds, Feminism and the Problem of Sisterhood. Ed. Susan Ostrov Weisser and Jennifer Fleishner. New York: New York University Press, 1994. 159-188.

Planned Parenthood Website. www.plannedparenthood.com accessed on 11/20/04

Pro-Life Feminism Website. http://members.tripod.com/~SLV80/ accessed on 11/20/04

Young, Iris. "Pregnant Embodiment." Body and Flesh: A Philosophical Reader. Ed. Donn Welton. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1998. 274-290.

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