You can't be an anti-choice feminist. That's not a thing.
You can't be an anti-choice feminist. That's not a thing. Getty / MivPiv

Do you have a question for a feminist? Please send 'em to askafeminist@portlandmercury.com. For more on why I'm doing this, scroll to the bottom of the post.


Dear Feminist,
I am new to feminism and I feel weird about abortion. I just don't think I would ever have one. Is it possible to be a feminist and pro-life?

Thanks!
Genuinely Curious


Dear Genuinely Curious,

No.

I almost thought about leaving my response right there, but I think you deserve an explanation for why there's not a different answer to this question. This question drives me crazy, because it should be so obvious: Can you really call yourself a feminist while trying to dictate what other women do with their own bodies?

No. No, you cannot.

Some people will probably disagree with my hard-line stance, but the thing is, being pro-choice doesn't mean you can't Have Feelings about abortion. The anti-choice movement has worked long and hard to remove the nuance from conversations about abortion, but the truth is you can be 100 percent completely pro-choice while also Having Feelings about abortion. Guess what? I know women who've had abortions who Had Feelings about their abortions. You can Have Feelings about something and still know that it was the right decision for you and still understand that it's something that should be an available option for human women.

Because it is perfectly fine to Have Feelings about abortion. Why not? Most medical procedures cause feelings. There's a reason we don't sit around watching livestreams of appendectomies.

The feelings aren't the problem.

It's when you start turning impressionistic feelings into public policy that the real problems arise. Because it is actually a pretty big leap from "personally feeling kind of icky about abortion" to espousing a sexist worldview that treats women as children incapable of making their own decisions about whether they want to birth and raise another human in an increasingly uncertain world, or space out their pregnancies, or, you know, avoid living in complete terror that sex may ruin their lives.

Another way of looking at it: There is a big difference between saying "This isn't what I would choose!" and "This isn't what I would choose, so it should be illegal!" As soon as you start acting like you know what's best for other women, you're using the very logic that leads to the misogynist power trips we see from politicians like the Assaulter in Chief.

I have one caveat for you here, and only one: You can certainly call yourself "personally pro-life," like some politicians who have moral quandaries with abortion but understand that women should have rights anyway—e.g., former vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine, a Catholic who is personally pro-life but supports pro-choice policies.

That said, anti-choice propaganda often frames pro-choice advocates as "pro-abortion," but that's just silly. The only people who are actively pro-abortion are Republicans who claim to be pro-life while cutting family planning funding (the only thing that actually drives down abortion rates). Pro-choice people aren't, like, out there encouraging pregnant people to choose death. That just isn't a thing! Most pro-choice people just think that women should be able to have the option of a safe and legal abortion, and that's pretty much it. So you can know in your heart you'd never have an abortion, and still call yourself pro-choice. In fact, I wish more people who feel the way you do would be willing to do that, because it would help to make our conversations about abortion more nuanced and reflective of what it actually means to support reproductive rights.

I'm not really into big tent feminism if it includes throwing away key tenets of feminism. But luckily for you, the term "pro-choice" is already a big tent: You can feel however you want about abortion and still understand that women shouldn't have to die because they can't access it safely.

So, no. You can't be an anti-choice feminist. That's not a thing. But you can rejoice in the beautifully nuanced plurality of views that fall under the category of "pro-choice."

When in doubt, ask yourself this: "What would Tim Kaine do?"

With kindness and encouragement,
A Feminist

A note on why this column is written by a white/straight/cis person: I believe it is the responsibility of white, straight, cisgender people to "collect their friends" when they're being racist and/or exclusionary of trans, nonbinary, and LGBTQ-identifying people or are just generally being deeply clueless and need to have basic concepts explained to them. Attending to our own ignorance, white guilt, and white fragility should not be the responsibility of people of color, and if you think it is, we need to talk. So I'm offering up a space for you to get your shit together and pose whatever burning questions you have about intersectional feminism to a fellow ignorant white person with her own implicit bias who is trying to do better. I'll do my very best to answer them, or find someone else who can.

Are you already adequately riled? Check out our Resistance & Solidarity calendar.