Fetal Personhood
Anti-Choice Statement: Human life begins at conception. Therefore, abortion is the murder of a person.
Pro-Choice Response: There are many different moral and religious views on that question. In a country that embraces and is tolerant of a variety of religious views, it is important to avoid adopting one religious view over another. That is why every woman should have the right to examine her own religious, spiritual and ethical beliefs in deciding what is best for her and her family, rather than allowing the government to impose one view on all Americans.
Anti-Choice Statement: The fetus is in no real sense “part” of the mother, but is a separate and distinct human being.
Pro-Choice Response: The fetus is totally dependent on the woman until viability, when it could live outside the womb, and it depends on the woman until it is born. The health of the fetus is directly related to the health of the pregnant woman, which is an additional reason why we need to work for policies that promote healthy childbearing.
Anti-Choice Statement: When do you think life begins?
Pro-Choice Response: The question is really when legal personhood begins. Eggs and sperm are alive; so are bacteria and all plants and animals. Of course, embryos and fetuses are alive. That doesn’t mean, though, that abortion should be illegal or that it constitutes murder. The Supreme Court has said and I believe that legal personhood begins with birth. The Roe v. Wade decision allowed states to ban abortion after the fetus could live on its own, after viability, with certain exceptions, but it did not say that a viable fetus was a legal person.
Anti-Choice Statement: The right of the unborn to live supersedes any right of a woman to “control her own body.”
Pro-Choice Response: We shouldn’t trivialize a woman’s right to control her own body. Margaret Sanger said, “No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her own body.” The Supreme Court has recognized that the right to choose is tied to women’s progress in all spheres of life.
Anti-Choice Statement: Pro-abortion people insist that the fetus is nothing but a worthless blob of tissue. They refuse to face the fact that there is a miniature person in that womb.
Pro-Choice Response: No thoughtful person denies that the fetus is a potential person. We do maintain, however, that abortion is a moral choice made by a woman based on her moral beliefs and that every woman must be free to choose. At the same time, we work for solutions to reduce the number of abortions, such as by promoting access to contraception and responsible sexuality education.
Anti-Choice Statement: I’ve seen pictures of highly developed fetuses, bloody abortions, tiny feet, fetuses in garbage cans. It’s obvious that abortion is the killing of a baby.
Pro-Choice Response: Anti-choice visual materials are often grossly enlarged, undocumented and mislabeled. They are cleverly designed to evoke emotions of repulsion against abortion and sympathy toward the fetus. We should not take away women’s rights because we are repelled by sensationalized images.
Anti-Choice Statement: We should pass a “human life amendment” to the Constitution, declaring the unborn to be full persons from the moment of conception.
Pro-Choice Response: If “person” were defined as beginning at conception, then women’s bodies, rights and health would be subordinated to the protection of the fetus. No abortions would be permitted for any reason, including rape, incest, or the health of the woman. Decisions about reproductive choice are so fundamental that every individual must determine for herself what is the right decision.
Anti-Choice Statement: Abortion is mass murder—genocide—on the order of the Nazi Holocaust. Six million abortions are the same as six million Jews; abortion is “America’s Holocaust.”
Pro-Choice Response: Anti-choice groups and individuals often use inflammatory rhetoric to make their case, as when they call abortion an American holocaust. The fact is that legal abortion protects women’s health and saves women’s lives.
Anti-Choice Statement: Stem cell research destroys embryos that are human lives. We should ban this research.
Pro-Choice Response: Embryos are a cluster of cells with the potential to develop into a human life if implanted into a woman's womb and brought to term. The embryos used in this research are from couples that have had successful fertility treatments. If not used for this purpose, they would be discarded. Many individuals who oppose abortion believe that stem cell research -- with its potential to save thousands of lives -- is actually the "pro-life" position.
Anti-Choice Statement: Aren’t fetuses surviving at younger and younger ages?
Pro-Choice Response: In some cases, medical advances enable infants born prematurely to survive. Such advances are consistent with my pro-choice beliefs, as I believe that we need to do more to ensure that women have a range of reproductive options, including healthy childbearing. However, such advances should not undermine the basic right of every woman to make her own reproductive choices, including abortion prior to viability.
Reproductive Choice as a Threatened Right
Anti-Choice Statement: I am not a single issue voter. I’m pro-choice but other issues are a lot more important to me.
Pro-Choice Response: I agree that other issues are important. But no right is as threatened as reproductive choice. Both the House and Senate are anti-choice and voted repeatedly to restrict reproductive choice. For me, choice is a touchstone issue that reveals a great deal about a candidate. It tells whether the candidate trusts women to make their own choices, and values women’s lives and health and the progress we’ve made since Roe v. Wade. Choice is in peril, so it’s an issue I look for in a candidate first.
Anti-Choice Statement: I’m not pro-abortion; I’m pro-life.
Pro-Choice Response: I am pro-choice, not "pro-abortion." I support reproductive freedom, which means that an individual woman should be able to make her own choice, whether she chooses abortion or carries her pregnancy to term. The “pro-life” concerns of abortion foes are too often only for fetal lives, not the lives of women or unwanted babies. “Pro-life” is a term used to make the anti-choice and anti-abortion position seem positive and good. Interestingly, some people who consider themselves personally “pro-life,” in that they believe they would not have an abortion are also pro-choice, because they think the individual woman should decide.
Anti-Choice Statement: Abortion is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution. Where do pro-abortionists get the idea that abortion is a constitutional right?
Pro-Choice Response: The Constitution protects many rights that are not specifically mentioned, but are derived, as the Supreme Court has affirmed, from other rights. Examples of this are the right of free association and the right to travel. The right to privacy has been repeatedly interpreted to include matters of marriage, family, and sex, including the right “to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision to bear or beget a child."
Anti-Choice Statement: The right to choose is a settled issue. Pro-choice groups are just crying wolf and trying to raise lots of money.
Pro-Choice Response: I wish it were a settled issue. But the Supreme Court is one vote away from undermining Roe v. Wade. Both houses of Congress are dominated by anti-choice lawmakers and have repeatedly voted to restrict reproductive rights in the past few years. States across the country are poised to criminalize abortion if the Court overturns Roe, and states are already enacting numerous restrictions on reproductive freedom and choice. Meanwhile, many doctors are terrified by anti-choice violence and won’t offer women full reproductive health care, including abortion.
Laws Regulating Abortion
Anti-Choice Statement: But what about those women who have five, six or seven abortions – enough is enough.
Pro-Choice Response: We should encourage people to be responsible about using birth control, and I support measures to make contraception more available to reduce the number of abortions. But it’s not for me or for the government to decide when a woman should have an abortion. And I certainly don’t think that women should be “punished” by forcing them to bear children they are ill equipped to raise.
Anti-Choice Statement: I’m against abortion on demand.
Pro-Choice Response: No one is forced in this country to have an abortion, or to provide one. That’s the way it should be. So a woman can’t just “demand” an abortion. But if what you’re saying means that you think a woman should have to overcome lots of hurdles in order to exercise her right to choose, we disagree. It’s hard enough for her to have to weigh her options at a difficult time; the government shouldn’t add obstacles on the assumption she can’t reason about moral issues for herself.
Anti-Choice Statement: Women have abortions for their own convenience, for trivial reasons, or on a “whim.”
Pro-Choice Response: Women have abortions for lots of different reasons, and it’s not my place, or the government's, to decide what reason is “good enough.” She may not have the partner she feels she needs to raise a child; she may wish to continue her education and career; she may be too poor to take care of a child; she may feel unprepared emotionally to give the infinite love and care every child deserves. I know I don’t want the government deciding who deserves to exercise the right to choose and who doesn’t.
Anti-Choice Statement: It is wrong to allow women to choose an abortion without the father’s consent. What about a man’s right to choose?
Pro-Choice Response: The Supreme Court said that when a husband and wife disagree, only one view can prevail, and it should be hers because she “physically bears the child and she is more directly and immediately affected by the pregnancy.” The Court reaffirmed this holding in 1992. Although many women do consult their male partner when considering an abortion, circumstances of abuse, rape, or incest prevent some women from involving their partner. The woman -- not the government -- is in the best position to determine whom she should consult.
Anti-Choice Statement: Mandatory waiting periods between counseling and an abortion allow women to make an informed decision about abortion. These laws are passed to protect women and are not a barrier to choice.
Pro-Choice Response: Anti-choice activists advocate for mandatory waiting periods to dissuade women from having an abortion. The waiting periods associated with so-called "informed consent" laws bear especially heavily upon women who must travel far to reach their nearest provider, and must spend additional time away from school, work and family. Like other anti-choice restrictions, these laws discriminate against women who are poor or live in rural areas; they are also an insult to all women because they imply that women do not think carefully about their decision unless they are required by law to do so.
Anti-Choice Statement: Restrictions on abortion are made to protect women from coercion, danger and grief that may plague them their whole lives.
Pro-Choice Response: Laws restricting abortion are passed by anti-choice lawmakers who have the goal, not of protecting women, but of discouraging women from exercising their right to choose. There is no scientific evidence that legal abortion harms women physically or psychologically. Indeed, if anti-choice advocates wanted to promote women’s health, they would stop stigmatizing abortion and the women who choose it. We should do more to reduce unintended pregnancy and the need for abortion by supporting family planning and responsible sexuality education.
Contraception
Anti-Choice Statement: If you have sex, you should expect to get pregnant and pay the consequences.
Pro-Choice Response: It is certainly advisable to increase awareness about sexuality and its consequences, and increase access to contraception, but the responsibilities of motherhood are too great, and children are too priceless, to force women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term.
Anti-Choice Statement: There should be no unwanted pregnancies in a society where contraception is readily available. Women who get pregnant are irresponsible about contraception and use abortion as contraception.
Pro-Choice Response: No birth control method is perfectly reliable, and many women cannot use the most effective methods for medical and economic reasons. Contraceptive information and services are frequently withheld from teens and poor women, and leading family planning programs are woefully underfunded. We should redouble our efforts to promote family planning, not outlaw abortion.
Anti-Choice Statement: The abortion rights movement is only about abortion and has no position on contraception.
Pro-Choice Response: The prevention of unintended pregnancies and reducing the need for abortion are both goals of the pro-choice movement. To this end, we favor increasing access to contraception and family planning programs as well as responsible sexuality education to give young people the tools they need to protect themselves. Unfortunately, too often, the same groups that oppose abortion also oppose these common sense, preventive measures that make abortion less necessary.
Anti-Choice Statement: The "morning-after pill" is really an early-term abortion.
Pro-Choice Response: False. Emergency contraception, often called the “morning-after pill,” are not the same as mifepristone (RU 486), and do not interfere with an established pregnancy. These pills are a high dosage of regular birth control pills that, when taken within 72 hours after unprotected sex, can decrease a woman's chance of becoming pregnant by up to 89 percent. Unfortunately, the majority of women do not have the correct information about EC, and many hospital emergency rooms will not dispense them, even to victims of sexual assault. Increasing the knowledge and availability of EC would decrease unintended pregnancies and abortions.
