Salon recently featured an opinion article written by Frances Kissling, former President of Catholics for Choice and current visiting scholar at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, about a new twist in the abortion debate. Kissling argues that the new anti-choice activists have shifted their focus to make bearing and possibly raising children who are the result of unplanned pregnancies more possible. This “new” position, however, does not consider the “essential way in which becoming a mother changes women’s identities forever – even if they place a child they bore in adoption.”
Kissling notes that the new and the old anti-choicers view women as “passive participants in gestation. They are the Tupperware containers in which children grow.” She finds this position untenable, as it belies the reality of the life-altering effect that pregnancy has upon women.
Kissling goes on to outline the flawed thinking of this new wave of anti-choicers, which includes denying the fundamental “need” for abortion, lack of support for contraception, inability to find non-procreative sex sacred, and redefining adoption to deny the physical reality of motherhood to women who would put their children up for adoption.
The article is well worth the read and asks some very pointed questions of this new group of anti-choicers who have begun to define themselves as progressives.
