There can be common ground between pro and anti-choice movements - another Myth-Busting Monday

Every Monday EFC busts common abortion myths. Todays Myth-Busting Monday explores the concept of a common ground between members of the pro-choice and anti-choice movements that some people are on a quest to discover. While the prospects for finding the legendary common ground look bleak in the US it may not be too late in Britain, if only we could agree on just a couple of things...

Pro-choice advocates have been on the back foot in the US for some time. Many are tired of the war of attrition against abortion rights being waged in state legislatures around the country; they are concerned for the wellbeing of women attending clinics who have to run the gauntlet of angry, aggressive protestors and of those who stand in silent vigil and in judgment on them;  they are fearful for the lives and safety of clinic staff and for the future of reproductive health services. The response of some, including Obama, has been a call for an exploration of the ‘common ground’ in the abortion discussion, posing the possibility of a new kind of discourse on abortion. Explicit in this concept is the hope that a new kind of conversation could take place between pro and anti choice groups, one that is safer and more respectful of the others’ views; that shuns the polarisation of the debate; that is kinder and more productive; most importantly, one that would marginalise and disempower the crazy and scary outliers of the anti-abortion movement.

Recently some 'self-defined' pro-choice advocates in the US have been falling over themselves to try to make concessions to the anti-abortion lobby: calling for abortion to be ‘safe but rare’; challenging the common pro-choice wisdom that later abortions are necessary and legitimate; calling out their own colleagues for not sufficiently addressing the moral dimension of abortion, and thereby damaging the ‘pro-choice brand’; and, importantly, colluding in the use of  the term 'pro-life'. There has recently been a conference to bring together abortion providers and pro-choice advocates with anti-abortion lobbyists and activists to help increase mutual understanding. Many in the pro-choice movement are asking whether it is possible to be pro-choice and simultaneously to be prepared to concede chunks of women's abortion rights. Others are asking what they are getting back in exchange.

What has been marked during this time is that while the pro-choice movement has searched for a language that is conciliatory, there have been no discernible changes in language from the anti-abortion lobby. There has been no decrease in false advertising by crisis pregnancy centres; no support for women to receive evidence-based information on pregnancy options; no acknowledgement of a moral dimension to the pro-choice position; no fewer threats to abortion providers; no support for politicians properly to invest in support for parents who are poor, young, single or otherwise disadvantaged. Most markedly there has been no support for making abortion rarer by lobbying for funding of contraception services. In fact, as we have seen with attempts to defund planned parenthood’s sexual health and contraceptive services in the past week, quite the opposite is true.

If there can be any common ground surely it is that of information and pregnancy prevention. If the anti-abortion movement is not willing to support provision of contraception and can't even agree on the need for evidence-based medical information on which women can reflect in the decision-making process, many feel it is hard to see where else the two movements can meet.

Luckily the abortion debate in the UK is less heated. Maybe the anti-abortion lobby here would like to make some concessions to avoid it becoming so, and to join us in calling for brilliant evidence-based education and information on pregnancy prevention and abortion, and well- funded sexual health and contraceptive services for all. Then I will truly believe in the legendary, and elusive, ‘common ground’.

Guest Blog: America’s Uterus Police

Today’s guest blogger is Reni Eddo-Lodge, a 21 year old English Literature student who writes about issues facing young people for The Guardian and has her own blog discussing ‘politics, feminism and other stuff’.

It must be very difficult to be a poor woman in the US right now. Rich, white, powerful men have spent the past few weeks in Congress making life changing decisions that will ultimately determine whether women will be granted control over their own bodies.

Unfortunately, it looks like Congress is winning.

If you follow American politics, you may have noticed that there has been an unprecedented rise of right wing patriarchal traditionalism in recent months- a movement that is callously concentrated on keeping women in their subordinate place.

First came the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act. In this bill, speaker of the house John Boehner asserted that funding for abortions should only be provided to women who have been ‘forcibly raped’. With this phrasing, Boehner aspired to realign the definition of rape so that it fitted neatly with his own ideology. ‘Forcibly raped’ quite unsubtly suggests that women who don’t emerge from rape or sexual assault covered in bruises are somehow lying or disingenuous when they ask for help. It excludes victims of incest who are over 18. ‘Forcibly raped’ immediately eliminates those women who have been raped whilst drugged, raped whilst intoxicated, or manipulated and groomed.

Then, Congress voted to strip Planned Parenthood, America’s largest sexual and reproductive health provider of funding - effectively barring access to hundreds upon thousands of poor women across America who can’t afford healthcare.

Currently, South Dakota is considering a law that would determine abortion ‘justifiable homicide’- a crime punishable by death.

And now, Republican Rep. Bobby Franklin is campaigning to classify abortion as murder, and wants to put policy in place that would require hospitals to report all spontaneous miscarriages so that women can be investigated for abortion. He’s joined Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker in an all-out assault on abortion rights.

For too long now, the misconception that pro-choice means anti life has warped public debate about women’s reproductive rights. This mistaken logic leads to anti-choicers branding sexual health and abortion clinics as murder houses, which couldn’t be further from the truth. The same people campaigning to ban abortion are often those campaigning to restrict sex education, with the misguided belief that abstinence is the only way to curb teen pregnancy.  To assert that young women shouldn’t have sex if they don’t want to get pregnant is absurd. Take a look around at our hyper sexualised culture and you’ll notice one stark factor - the idea of pregnancy has been completely divorced from the concept of sex.

Educating young women about sex and relationships, as well as granting them access to contraception and the morning after pill are all key factors that are likely to reduce the rates of abortion.  Pro-choice means granting women the dignity to make their own decisions without governments interfering with and attempting to control their reproductive organs. Motherhood is glorious, but women aren’t baby machines. Much of the abortion debate has been fuelled by ideology; with those in government putting their own beliefs before the health and well-being of women in their own country. A recent US study found that 77% of anti-abortion leaders are men. 100% of them will never be pregnant.

It’s a funny paradox that the American republican right occupy themselves with. In the midst of all this passion to rescue potential life, they’ve forgotten actual life - the women having to make these difficult and devastating decisions. The women who own these bodies. In the middle of a recession, America’s republican men and women are more interested in policing women’s bodies instead of focusing on wider social, cultural and economic causes of a catastrophic financial crisis. It seems, in times of austerity, it’s easier to bully and belittle those with no power rather than address real issues. These false bastions of the family are currently channelling all their energy into making the world a harsher place for American women.