Here’s a great video of Nancy Keenan, the president of NARAL, speaking about what it means to be pro-choice.
What’s your opinion? Do you think that the pro-choice movement is about more than abortion? If so, what does the term “pro-choice” mean to you?
Pro-choice, to me, is more than supporting a women’s right to choose abortion. Pro-choice, to me, means the ability to take charge and make the choices best for me in regards to my reproductive health. It’s also supporting all women in the right to take charge of their reproductive health.
The woman’s right to choose is about having the right to choose what happens within our own bodies. It’s about having the right to choose to terminate an unwanted and or dangerous pregnancy. It’s the right to choose never to have an abortion. It’s about having access to factual, unbiased medical information regarding pregnancy, birth control & abortion. It’s your body, it’s your choice!
For me pro-choice means that all genders are openly given all the materials (education) needed to make wise and healthy decisions regarding their bodies in every situation. It means that the choices that they make are supported.
Thank you!
Great answers – I agree with all of you!
It’s about having the right to govern our reproductive lives. I think it goes deeper though. Without choice women lose any chance at equality. All of the hard work for women to gain access in the public world will be gone if we lose the right to choose.
To me prochoice first means being able to make choices about my body, and for others to have the ability and right(s) to make choices about their bodies. Additionally, the ability and right(s) to make choices about my body suggests that there is an infrastructure and system set up in support of that. This latter part proposes that more needs to be done to create an infrastructure that is supportive of the ability for women to make choices (anywhere in the country, at any time!).
For me, pro-choice means that all people have the ability to make decisions about their bodies with out harassment or condemnation.
To me, being pro-choice is supporting every woman in becoming educated and allowing her to make her own decisions about her reproductive health.
Sadly, I have had some men incorrectly assume that because I am pro-choice I would also get an abortion if faced with an unwanted pregnancy. To pressure or threaten any woman to make a choice she doesn’t agree with (abortion or otherwise) goes against the whole movement.