Pro-Life Is Really Anti-Choice

Melissa Ethridge
senior, zoology

Like many other young women today, I tend to take the social and political liberties I enjoy for granted. Naïve like so many others, I often forget that these freedoms have been only recently won. Only 30 years have passed since the case of Roe v. Wade, in which the Supreme Court announced the U.S. Constitution protects a woman's right to choose whether or not to end a pregnancy. The infancy of this newly won right has been made painfully obvious by the continuing controversy surrounding abortion and by the recent passage of H.R. 760, a bill penned to "prohibit the procedure commonly known as partial-birth abortion."

This latter event and Sunday's pro-life demonstration in Carbondale (which was held right in my front yard) abruptly ripped me out of my social equity dreamland. It is in light of this that I am compelled to urge other young feminists to realize just how close women are to losing all that they have thus far gained. The religious right is working very hard to deprive women of the right of corporeal autonomy, and the loss of such a fundamental freedom may only serve to catalyze further oppression. As Epictetus said, "No man is free who is not master of himself."

Accordingly, I assert that the use of the term "pro-life" by those who wish to limit the control that women have over their own bodies is deceiving. It is a clever piece of rhetoric meant to imply that anyone who supports a woman?s right to abort a pregnancy must be a hate-mongering advocate of infanticide or a depraved heathen who places no value on living things. This implication is so utterly ridiculous that it cannot be given serious attention simply because it is grounded too deeply in religious dogma. Those who call themselves "pro-life" would do better to discard that epithet for one more apt, namely "anti-choice"; for in reality, these people are fighting to limit freedom, albeit in the name of their god and his canon.

To fellow young feminists, I implore you to realize the fight to maintain social freedoms is not over. Due to our naivety and subsequent inactivity, we have allowed those who would deprive women of their right to choose to gain an advantage. The feminist voice in Carbondale (and the world) has been muted for far too long, and not necessarily by those who disagree with the feminist agenda, but rather by the apathy of young feminists. It is time to wake up and take action because before too long someone else's god is going to tell you what you can and can't do with your body.

These views do not necessarily reflect those of the Daily Egyptian.

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