So, here it is: I'm pro-choice because I believe that no one should be forced to give birth. I've never articulated my stance so succinctly or in that exact way before, but I think that that's it in a nutshell. At a reading for her co-edited book, Bitchfest, Lisa Jervis encouraged the audience to start calling the anti-choice movement the "forced childbirth movement;" and I liked the idea. I don't know if it's necessarily the best possible phrase out there, but I do find it helpful to move away from the notion of "choice" as what appears to be the only widely recognized way to articulate a "pro-choice" position. "Choice" is tough to define and harder to assure that everyone has. "Choice" also has a kind of flippant or mutable connotation that doesn't always suit abortion--"choice" as a broad concept, I think, is difficult to separate from the more ubiquitous and specific notion of "consumer choice" in the US. Abortion isn't merely about "choice" or even "rights," but about labor, health, opportunity, binary gender, notions of family . . . the list goes on. To frame the debate as an issue of "choice" may, strangely enough, move the discussion too far from the fundamental issue in the "abortion debates": who decides when and which women can or cannot give birth? But even now we're touching on forced sterilization, reproductive healthcare, organization of the workplace and the economy . . . again, the list goes on! So why not just parse it down to the bare bones problem: no one should be forced to give birth. Sounds right to me.
What does everyone else think?
Charlotte and Miranda choose their choices.
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