“Pro-Choice Women Shouldn’t Cry Over Miscarriages”

Just in case your day is going a little too smoothly, let me share an article that will make your blood boil—particularly if you are one of the numerous women who has suffered the pain of a miscarriage and also happens to believe in a woman’s right to choose.

A guest blogger named Gina over at Mom Logic has written a gem of offensive inanity called “Pro-Choice? Quit Crying Over Your Miscarriage!” Here’s how Gina characterises the pro-choice women who “break down in hysterics” over a miscarriage: “It’s a baby when they want it to be, it’s a bundle of cells when they don’t.”

This is such a shameless confusion of the issue that we need to put Gina’s thinking in perspective with an extreme—but real-life—example: do I believe that a 12-year-old rape victim should be forced to keep her baby? Absolutely not. Would I be heartbroken if I lost the baby I was carrying, whom I had carefully planned my life around for years? Absolutely. These are two entirely different issues. One has to do with my belief in the universal right to reproductive freedom, which is essential to ending the oppression of women; the other has to do with my personal feelings about motherhood.

Many women who would not choose to have an abortion themselves (except perhaps in extreme cases such as rape or incest) respect other women’s right to choose—as do many men, who will never face the decision of whether or not to have an abortion. That’s why it’s called pro-choice, not pro-abortion. By Gina’s line of thinking, no one who wants kids—male or female—should support a woman’s right to choose.

Gina also writes of pro-choice women who have the gall to want kids of their own: “Suddenly the monthly visitor that they were relieved to get when they were 20, now, at 32, plunges them into the depths of depression.” Well, Gina, this is a little something called “family planning”: making life choices that give both you and your future children the best chances for happiness and success—and therefore, bettering the world. How could anyone take issue with women who were responsible enough to avoid pregnancies when they were too young to care for a child? If it weren’t for unplanned pregnancies, there would be no need for abortion in the first place.

Gina claims that she “respects women’s right to choose.” If she truly is pro-choice—which, by her own definition, means believing that all babies are nothing more than “a conglomeration of microscopic cells” until they are out of the womb—then I sincerely hope she never gets pregnant. It’d be pretty difficult to avoid things like smoking and drinking if you have zero emotional attachment to your baby.

Photo: Flickr/Steve Rhodes