Pro-choice women are taking to the internet to make the point that it’s very possible to both support legal abortion rights and choose to become a parent.
Abortion opponents are sometimes under the impression that being pregnant is incompatible with being pro-choice. It’s a notion that typically emerges when prominent reproductive rights supporters decide to start families.
For instance, when Chelsea Clinton announced her pregnancy last year, some conservatives argued that being excited to welcome a grandchild into the world made Hillary a hypocrite, since she has spent her political career advocating in favor of legal abortion rights. And this week, the Washington Post reported that some anti-abortion activists are taken aback when they meet the head of NARAL Pro-Choice America, Ilyse Hogue, because she’s currently carrying twins.
Hogue told the Post that she once walked into a meeting on Capitol Hill and an anti-abortion activist looked at her pregnant stomach and asked, “Is that real?”
In response, the reproductive health and justice outlet RH Reality Check has launched a new project to collect personal stories from mothers who publicly advocate for abortion rights. The tumblr “Pregnant, Parenting, and Pro-Choice” provides a platform for reproductive rights supporters to submit photos of themselves during their pregnancies — and explain why making the decision to become a mother actually fits into their larger worldview about giving every individual the tools they need to plan their own family.
“Being pregnant has made me an even stronger believer that everyone should be free to make decisions about their bodies, and I’m raising my sons to respect and support the decisions people make about their lives and families,” Farah Diaz-Tello, the staff attorney for National Advocates for Pregnant Women, writes in her photo submission.
In an email exchange, Diaz-Tello told ThinkProgress that she was excited to participate in the project because she wants to help “give a fuller picture of who supports abortion rights, and for that matter, who has abortions.”
Despite the apparent dichotomy between motherhood and abortion that’s put forth by pro-life activists, there’s actually a huge overlap between the people who give birth and the people who opt to end a pregnancy. About 61 percent of women who choose to have an abortion are already parenting at least one child.
“It makes sense, if you think about it,” Veronica Arreloa, a feminist writer who submitted a photo of a pro-choice protest she attended when she was nearly eight months pregnant, told ThinkProgress. “The people who are already parenting know exactly what goes into it. They know the ups and downs of pregnancy, they know how scary it can be, and they also understand the economic ramifications… All of those things go into the calculus when people are deciding whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term.”
According to advocates in the field, the politicized conversation about abortion rights often obscures the real experiences of the people who are making decisions related to pregnancy. It’s more complicated than somehow being “anti-baby” or “anti-family,” Arreloa pointed out, even though abortion opponents have successfully pushed that narrative.
Jodi Jacobson, the editor-in-chief of RH Reality Check, hopes her organization’s new Tumblr project might help reclaim some of that ground. “We are pro-choice and pregnant, pro-choice and parents, pro-choice and grandparents, aunts, uncles, adoptive, step-, and foster parents,” Jacobson writes in a piece published this week to announce the Tumblr. “We are pro human rights for all people, and by default, pro-child, and pro-family. We are the majority, and it’s time for us all to step up and show it.”
Diaz-Tello summed up her position in a similar way: “I am pro-choice because I affirm the humanity and dignity of all pregnant people in deciding whether they carry a pregnancy to term, how they give birth, and whether they parent the child they give birth to,” she said.