Yes, this issue has been done to death. But in an election year which is potentially the most polarized in history, this issue is worth exploring. As has been established by countless sources, pro-lifers and pro-choicers want the same thing: preservation of life. However, there are various ways to preserve life. Ultimately, this issue cannot be black and white. Over a decade in anti-trafficking has proven that for me.
As someone who grew up in the far-pro-life platform and community, fundraising for crisis pregnancy centers, and attending walks for life’s through countless churches, independently researching the pro-life side, and even counting moms who chose “life” in rape situations as friends, I am well-versed in the debate. I believe there are hundreds of small, community-based pro-life organizations alike nationwide helping women in crisis. However, during my time in the anti-trafficking movement, I discovered, to my utter shock, more advocates voted pro-choice! For me, this launched a decade-long exploration.
I listened to post-abortive women, abuse/trafficking survivors and non alike, I discovered the communities and platform who were truly pro-ALL-life happened to vote pro-choice. Somehow, they discovered a way to hold pro-life beliefs AND vote pro-choice.
Here is what pro-ALL-lifers who vote pro-choice believe:
1. They care about FACT-CHECKING: While both sides can have their own confirmation bias, it is important to fact-check arguments and research all angles of an issue. I used to have much confirmation bias towards the pro-life side until I began researching the pro-choice side to determine more of what they believe. I’ll explain that more in detail in the points below. To this day, I still share pro-life sources like Care.Net and Live Action and even Family Research Council because some of the perspectives and studies are good and well-researched. It’s important to understand and affirm both sides, shared beliefs, flaws, struggles and to not oversimplify such a complex issue. If abortion is about human beings and human life and given that human life was created by an intelligent/complex Designer, then ergo, it cannot be black and white. Similar to the iceberg analogy, all one can see are the basic arguments. However, underneath the surface are all these other issues that drive the debate home. That is how to treat it with the utmost respect.
2. They care about RESPECT: One of my favorite pro-choice pro-ALL-life voices on the issue of abortion is God is Grey’s Brenda Marie Davis. In her video on “Why I’m a Pro-Choice Christian”, she does not belittle the “most difficult situation of a woman’s life” and calls out the stereotype and “lie that women go to abortion clinics because they love being sluts…and can’t be bothered with a baby. I’ve never once in my life heard a woman tell me that story. And I talk to women.” She encourages how this conversation requires commitment and listening to women. I, myself, am aware of how heart-breaking abortion is and how countless women have been put into this situation by abusive men, forced/coerced by traffickers, or underage girls pressured and even driven to abortion clinics by parents who gave them no other choice. Let’s also respect each other If pro-lifers don’t want to be stereotyped as violent and wanting to bomb abortion clinics and not caring about women, then please don’t stereotype pro-choicers as not caring about babies and human life. Neither of these are accurate, nor are they respectful.
3. They care about ALL life from womb to tomb. Despite how the pro-life far-right likes to claim All Lives Matter, pro-life Red states/platform do not live or vote For example: I grew up on the “always vote for the pro-life candidate”. However, it’s well known that there is more impact at the STATE level vs FEDERAL (comes back to Fact-Checking). Even some pro-life outlets agree with this. I will briefly address BOTH as well as overall platform/party. From lack of outrage over child abuse at the Border to silence on Trump’s global budget cut which prevents EIGHT MILLION pregnancies, 3.3 MILLION induced abortions, and 15,000 MATERNAL DEATHS every year, pro-life federal policies are not pro-life at all. However, pro-ALL-lifers consider everything that threatens the sanctity of life at every stage: homelessness rates, immigration abuses, systemic racism, poor education, violence to women, and negative healthcare. Yes, countless individual pro-lifers care about issues like forced hysterectomies on migrants or millions of budget cuts for global aid relief. But who wish to be truly pro-life or pro-ALL-life cannot ignore the policies and party that jeopardize ALL human life. Let’s reflect more…
4. They care about ALL HEALTHCARE: While many crisis pregnancy centers focus on supporting women in unwanted pregnancies, I discovered that according to many sources, pro-life states fail to protect life. The NIH’s Empirical evidence proves how Red states are pro-birth not truly pro-life with “significantly lower indicators of infant/child well-being”. When we consider human beings inalienable rights to life and omit the “liberty and pursuit of happiness”, it also becomes more excusable to cut healthcare and food aid for the most vulnerable. Pro-ALL-lifers do not discount the very real issues that face women who choose abortion: ¾ whom gave the reason that they could not afford a baby. This is why healthcare must be equally as significant a voting issue when it directly impacts abortion rates.
Another pro-ALL-life concept when it comes to healthcare is understanding that we are embodied. We cannot treat abortion as merely a physical or even a spiritual issue. As human beings, God created our bodies/souls/minds. This means that it’s important to not only consider what happens to the body of a female in pregnancy but also considering what happens to her mental/emotional health both in the present and in the future. Take all of this into consideration, including retraumatizing women and girls, and weigh those complexities.
5. They care about PREVENTION: I am a preventionist at heart. Trust me when I say that birth control is a vast and complex issue and one deeply personal to me. Common birth control pills are deadly to me as I have a medical disorder that predisposes me to lethal blood clots. This is one reason I am keen on discussing positive, comprehensive body talk with my daughters at a young age. The fact is that in states like Colorado where the state expanded family planning services and long-acting contraception, abortion and teen birth rates were dramatically reduced. Can pro-choicers and pro-lifers both agree that less teens getting pregnant and having abortions is a good thing? The BBC recently reported how abortion rates overall have declined since Roe V Wade, but it wasn’t due to conservative pro-life policies but rather contributions such as the ACA access to reproductive healthcare, lower birthrates due to women seeking higher education and employment, and increased awareness to pregnancy (credits pro-life organizations). And since abortion rates also decreased under democratic presidents vs republican ones, perhaps pro-choice beliefs are far more pro-ALL-life than we assumed.
5B: Prevention also factors in how society should establish far more safety networks for children to prevent unwanted pregnancies. More educational funding is one example (point. Dismantling extremely traditional structures that allow for child marriage is another. Yes, the United States still allows child marriage and there is no nationwide law against it, so multiple states can have loopholes.
6. They care about comprehensive EDUCATION: This might seem a little redundant, but it’s important to address the significant impact of education, especially for youth. Abstinence-only education, for example, in theory is effective. However, like purity culture, it stipulates that a certain brand of living must and can be enacted over the vast majority and the results will be positive. Unfortunately, we know how effective the purity culture turned out. Consistent with fact-checking, I’ve included screenshots from the Journal of Adolescent Health and the NIH which show how abstinence-only education leads to rising rates of teen pregnancy and creates a higher demand for abortion. Sadly, despite all of this established medical evidence, the Trump admin has dramatically increased funding for abstinence-only education, feeding into the demand for the ever-growing weed of abortion.
7. They care about GLOBAL compare/contrast: A very important fact-check that people who want to be truly pro-ALL-life is considering global laws on abortion. According to findings from the World Health Organization, legality has very little effect on abortion. Repeat: LEGALITY has very little EFFECT on abortion. Limiting abortion talks to and especially voting on Roe V Wade is NOT going to change the DEMAND for abortion in the USA just as it doesn’t for other countries. Par ex: Brazil – one million illegal abortions performed every year! If abortion is a crime, do we want to turn emergency rooms into potential crime scenes and doctors into detectives? Do we also want to retraumatize and penalize women who have had miscarriages? It might seem as though this is extreme, but let’s be aware that Red states like Ohio have proposed severe anti-abortion bills that would charge doctors for not performing medically impossible medical procedures and states like Georgia where the governor signed into law an anti-abortion bill that would prosecute women for seeking abortions and even having a miscarriage. In light of these extreme controversies, perhaps the USA, in various states, is not so distant from third-world countries like El Salvador where innocent and desperate women like Evelyn Hernandez do not deserve to be criminalized and should be supported.
8. They care about RAPE: Throughout my years in anti-trafficking advocacy, I discovered pro-choicers were far more willing to discuss rape culture and the imbalance of power of men and the need for more responsibility and awareness towards rapists. While some pro-life outlets like Care.net discuss deadbeat dads and single moms, the vast majority of the pro-life platform still clings to stereotypes from how there is “no war on women” (Ben Carson recirculated meme) to the myths of abortions from rapes. This is an extreme logical fallacy considering how rape is the most under-reported crime in the USA. If women aren’t even comfortable reporting rape, how much more likely will abortions from rape be reported?
7B: In reducing the demand for future abortions from rape, society must take active steps to strip protection and rights from rapists. Even well-known pro-life activists like Rebecca Kiessling agrees that rapists should not get custody or parental rights. It was only after a horrifying story broke about a young woman named Jessica, who was repeatedly raped and impregnated by her biological father and had multiple miscarriages and children who died later in life from incestual diseases that Alabama, well-known pro-life state, passed a law prohibiting rapist parental rights. However, this is only in the case of convictions and since rape is such an under-prosecuted and under-reported crime, there is so much work to do!
9. They care about TRAFFICKING. Intersectionality of rape culture. At a 2018 anti-trafficking summit, I looked a former pimp right in the eye and asked him if he got abortions for his stable of girls. He responded that he had and it was very common. Even well-known pro-life outlets like Family Research Council have begun to research trafficking as a contributing factor to abortion. This is not about condoning trafficking as the pro-abortion side would but rather awareness of the reality of our society and how we can work toward prevention-based The last thing any of us would want to see are more situations like the Georgia baby found in a plastic bag, which I highly suspect was a case of abuse or trafficking. Pair the known facts about trafficking with point 7 and imagine what our country would look like.
10. They care about SYSTEMIC RACISM: You could literally write a whole book on this issue. In fact, many have been written. When framing abortion as a complex issue, we can’t boil it down to pro-life stereotypes of “caring for Black babies in the womb” and how Planned Parenthood centers are in high Black communities and feeding into the myth of bad Black fathers without addressing systemic racist structures. A great book on this is from Dr. Jonathan Metzl who shows how far-right policies negatively impact everyone’s healthcare, education, and lead to greater violence in society. (Remember all my points before with how these structures contribute to greater abortion demand.) There are countless resources that address systemic racism and its impact on the most vulnerable in our society. With this evidence longitudinally crossing multiple states, we can’t claim the far-right pro-life party/states policies and especially Trump admin policies are “pro-life”.
Many perspectives have been shared to establish how one can be a pro-choice aka pro-ALL-life Christian. God is Grey might be my favorite, but Rachel Held Evans is another and even a Catholic Democrats movement! Who knew there was such a thing as a Catholic democrat? Who also knew Joe Biden voted FOR a BAN on partial-birth abortion? Overall, I know some wonderful pro-lifers who work in crisis rescue organizations just as I know wonderful pro-choice feminists who work in anti-abuse advocacy. We have the same goals and passions. But I no longer want to reduce my voting choices to the option that is ultimately pro-birth and not pro-life. Moreover, I want to be pro-ALL-life.
At the end of the day when we consider voting and party choices and regard for state impact, if we want to be truly pro-ALL-life, voting pro-choice is the best method to care about ALL lives (including Black lives *wink, wink*), respect humanity, prevent abortions, reduce the demand, dismantle racist systems, defeat power imbalances, eliminate violence, and educate our youth to make better choices for all our futures.