On April 25th, at the gynormous March for Women's Lives in Washington, I made a decision. I am no longer calling myself "pro-choice." Don't misunderstand me: I believe that abortion should be legal, not to mention safe, accessible, and funded (plus, in a near-ideal world — which is not the way we're headed — rare). I believe that abortion is an inalienable right, I believe it in my marrow, I believe it now more than ever. And that is precisely why "choice" has got to go.
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"Choice," first of all, is nowhere near urgent enough. "Choice" is what you get between "baked" or "mashed." "Choice" is not what you need when your birth control fails and you have two kids and an hourly wage and you live in a state like Maine where sixty-three percent of counties lack abortion providers and Medicaid doesn't cover abortion and by the time you figure all this out you're in your second trimester so you have to get time off, child care, and transportation to get the now more expensive and risky two-day procedure in New York City; dammit, what you need is an abortion. "Choice" sounds like we want women to have more options. It doesn't acknowledge that many women still have none from which to choose.
When we say "choice," we feed into the nasty misconception that we're fighting for "abortion on a whim."
"Choice," honestly, sounds selfish. When we marched by the anti-abortion gauntlet with our big banners for "choice," I cringed. They say we kill babies; we seem to say "What if we feel like it?" When we say "choice," we feed into the nasty misconception that we're fighting for "abortion on a whim." I don't care what these people think as individuals; no one's going to win any march-side arguments. But we're not going to win any collective moral victories when we sound, by comparison, like brats.
"Choice" is caving. It's a euphemism. Nobody wants to say "abortion." We'll watch Katie Couric's colonoscopy on TV, for God's sake, but we're still afraid to call a legitimate, legal medical procedure — abortion, abortion, abortion — by name. (Even Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul, and Mary, performing at the March, dragged out that wimpy, patronizing canard: "I'm not pro-abortion, I'm pro-choice.") When we say "choice," we're walking on eggshells when we should be storming the Bastille. As long as we dodge the word "abortion," we perpetuate its stigma and the sense of abortion as abstraction, distancing ourselves from the very reality that will help us win this fight: the experiences of real women, the actual impact of the restrictions on abortion that make Roe about as strong as the paper it's typed on.
We, for the most part, know what we mean when we say "choice." I still support NARAL, though I now wince more than ever at their Nutra-Sweet name change to "Naral Pro-Choice America." But I fear that a movement called "pro-choice" will not attract the fence-sitters, the swing-voters, or the actual women whose abortions involved very little choice at all.
"Pro-family" won't speak to the entitled college students who grab free condoms from fishbowls and take legal abortion for granted.
All right then, what should we call ourselves? I'm using "pro-abortion rights" for now, but it's only a stopgap; we are fighting, of course, for the full range of reproductive rights, including access to unbiased information and affordable, effective birth control. "Pro-family" isn't bad, if you take it to mean the quality of life one can provide for any number of children, including zero; but for one thing, it won't speak to the entitled college students who grab free condoms from fishbowls and take legal abortion for granted. "Pro-reproductive rights" is accurate, but a mouthful.
So, I'm thinking, maybe we ought to take back "Life." Sure, it'll take some doing; the gay rights movement didn't conquer "queer" overnight. And it's not ideal, because if you think about it, saying you're "pro-life" is like saying you're "pro-Earth." As in, duh. Still, let us finally admit it: in rhetorical rock-paper-scissors, "life" will always beat "choice." But how dare they call themselves "pro-life" — and how dare we let them? As long as we stubbornly, naively keep saying "choice," as long as we keep improvising and compromising with scrappy verbal seconds, we are letting the emotional terrorists win. Sure, I've seen plenty of signs that say, "Pro-choice is pro-life," but that still sounds to me like a defensive "Am, too!" So here, I'll start. I believe that we cannot live without full reproductive freedom. Which is to say, I'm "pro-life." — Lynn Harrisn°
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Lynn Harris is author of the satirical novel Death By Chick Lit and its prequel, Miss Media, as well as co-creator of the award-winning website BreakupGirl.net. A regular contributor to Glamour, Salon, The New York Times, Babble and many others, she also writes the "Rabbi's Wife" column for Nextbook.org. Visit her at LynnHarris.net.
