In a couple of my previous posts on Mary Daly, I mentioned that her secularized notion of “idolatry” – which she saw in first-wave feminists’ singleminded focus on suffrage – can be applied to modern-day feminism as well. Today, on the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I’d like to dwell on how “choice” has served as an idol – as a foundational concept that can’t bear the weight it’s been given.
“Choice” was an attractive term to the defenders of abortion rights in the 1970s because it provided a way to counter a growing “pro-life” movement without having to say that they were “pro-abortion.” Even today, defending “abortion” is a politically dodgy proposition. My Democratic ?? !! @*&$# congresscritter, Charlie Wilson, D-Bluedognia, proudly claims at every opportunity that he’s pro-life. He and his cronies are sure not going to come out in favor of abortion.
By now, though, we need a more flexible strategy, as lots of folks – especially radical women of color – have argued before me. What about access to abortion, birth control, sex education, prenatal care, and fertility treatments? How about reproductive rights and justice? What about bodily autonomy and self-determination?
Yes, it’s important that women have choices. It’s even more crucial that we have the material, social, and cultural wherewithal to exercise them.
Denying the means to exercise choice shows that we, as a society, just don’t trust women – especially those women who don’t already enjoy a panoply of privileges. Conversely, “trusting women” doesn’t matter a whit as long as their choices are highly constrained.
And while we’re at it, let’s remember than no one - female or male, fertile or not – has real bodily autonomy without access to health care. Reproductive autonomy isn’t just a women’s rights issue. It’s a matter of human rights.
Addendum, 1/24/10, 3 p.m.: Based on the comments to this post, it looks as though I haven’t fully clarified why I think feminists would be wise to walk back from our overreliance on “choice.” From the get-go in the 1970s, “choice” referred to narrowly to the formal legality of abortion. It was a product of liberal feminism, which framed abortion in terms of negative liberty – or freedom from interference. However, that wasn’t nearly enough to secure reproductive rights for women, broadly conceived, including a right to birth control, sex ed, etc. This would have required the issued to be reframed in terms of positive liberty, which includes the resources and means to act and exercise one’s liberties. (I’ve written about these disparate concepts of liberty here.) “Choice” also failed to highlight even the violations of negative liberty perpetrated on women who were poor or non-white, such as coerced sterilizations and pressure to use abortion or long-term birth control.
In theory, of course, “choice” could embrace both notions of liberty and and could include issues beyond abortion. Despite some feminists’ efforts to expand the term, however, it continues to carry historical baggage. The popular understanding of “choice” is that it’s shorthand for legal abortion. Its meaning has constricted and frozen. I hear this from my students in women’s studies classes, as well as from critics within feminism. That’s why I’d prefer we stop privileging “choice” in favor of “reproductive rights” and “reproductive justice.” These concepts highlight the importance of positive liberties and challenge us to think about the whole spectrum of gendered health issues.
Thanks to figleaf and kb for pointing out that I didn’t connect all the dots – a hazard of writing when I probably ought to have been sleeping instead. 
Patron cat of Kittywampus (1985-2001)
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Nicely put, Sungold! My only quibble, and it’s a very small one. First of all the label “pro-life” is a lie. For instance what’s Charlie Wilson or one single other “pro-life” braggart ever done about miscarriage or stillbirth to name only two? Second of all the term “pro-life” labels an extraordinarily narrow interest: being anti-abortion.
What I’ve always admired about the “pro-choice” label is that it’s enormously expansive, covering not only issues related to preventing or terminating pregnancy but also issues related to, say, the practice of forced terminations in China.
That said you’re 100% right that “choice” is pretty meaningless in the absence of access, rights, justice, autonomy, self-determination, and health-care… a.k.a. options upon which to exercise choice.
figleaf
Hi figleaf. Of course “pro-life” is a lie. I don’t think we disagree on this point at all, at least where the public face of the movement is concerned.
There are plenty of individuals who see “pro-life” in a pretty expansive way. For instance, I’ve known Catholics who oppose abortion but also oppose the death penalty and strongly favor social programs that make it easier for a woman to be pregnant and raise a child, with or without a partner. These folks are reasonably consistent in their viewpoint, and if they claim the label of “pro-life,” I can live happily with that. However, the “pro-choice” movement is hypocritical to the core in the ways you described. I didn’t go into all that in this post because I wanted to focus on the “pro-choice” label and how it has become frozen.
In principle, of course, the pro-choice label can be just as expansive as you describe. Historically, though, its meanings have frozen into a pretty narrow concern: keeping abortion legal. Which doesn’t say anything about keeping it accessible for poor women. I mean, how much feminist outrage have you heard over the years about the Hyde Amendment? I remember real anger when it was first passed, but then decades passed in which the leadership of the pro-choice movement just quietly accepted it as settled law. Only in the wake of the Stupak Amendment has there been a rediscovery of Hyde. We’re seeing a renewal of feminist opposition to it, at least among feminist bloggers. I haven’t heard much lately from NARAL on Hyde, which I suspect is still trying to figure how the heck Stupak became law.
And so non-white, poor, and working-class women have tried to frame a feminist position that isn’t identified solely with formal legal availability of abortion. Terms like “reproductive rights” and “reproductive justice” better capture the diversity of women’s needs.
As for miscarriage and stillbirth: You’re right that pro-lifers are stupefying silent on those issues, and that this shows their hypocrisy. They – or at least, their narratives and interpretations – do wield influence at the grassroots level in pregnancy-loss support groups.
Feminists haven’t done so well, either, in supporting women who suffer a pregnancy loss. I think I’ve mentioned Linda Layne’s work to you in the past. (I want to write a post on her ideas one of these days, if I can find the time.) In a nutshell, Layne observes that feminists have ceded this issue to pro-lifers. Grief over pregnancy loss fits uncomfortably with the idea of “it’s just a fetus, not a baby.” She argues – and I agree – that women’s (and couples’) experiences aren’t so simple. We may very well enter into a relationship with a fetus before it’s a baby. Layne argues that feminists should be able to embrace the idea that something of value has been lost, without assigning legal personhood to the fetus.
autonomy and self-determination=choice, and keeping the choice with the woman instead of anyone else. and choice requires access, and expanding access. figleaf has it right-saying your pro-choice is the most expansive. I’m going to fight for a woman’s right to reproduce when and how she wants to. that means fighting against forced sterilizations and for fertility treatment when they want to reproduce, and fighting for birth control access and abortion when they don’t. and it’s up to the individual woman, nobody else. all of that is included in pro-choice.
I have yet to see a better term that doesn’t boil down to choice. pro-choice isn’t just pro-abortion. because you’re right, that’s not the only choice that might come up in regards to reproduction.
Thanks for your comment, kb. Autonomy and self-determination = choice if and only if “choice” is not significantly constrained. As I said in my reply to figleaf, the pro-choice movement’s use of the term has historically been insensitive to the constraints on choice.
Based on your comment, you and I are in perfect agreement on what “choice” ought to encompass. I’m just skeptical about its ability to do so, given the historical baggage it has accumulated. As a middle-class, highly educated white woman with good insurance, I know that I’m privileged to enjoy the full panoply of possible “choices.” But most women still don’t, even here in the U.S. So I’d rather back away from the privileging of “choice” in favor of “reproductive rights” and “reproductive justice.”
but is it really choice if the “choice” is significantly constrained? I mean, most people don’t think “give me all your money or I’ll shoot you” is a really a choice. so I’m not sure how that’s different from autonomy and self-determination.
I do actively object to the term reproductive justice. Justice to me has too many connotations of the justice system, and trying to apply top down laws equally. or really just equality and equal treatment. that implies that just because Susie didn’t need help to have/raise her kid, nobody else should get it. that’s what’s fair. that’s what’s just. But that’s not the world I want to work towards, or live in.
reproductive rights is more neutral to me, but what rights are we looking for other than expanding the scope real choices, and real options?
[...] really about reproductive rights at all, this is more about going out to vote in elections. Blog for Choice Day: “Choice” as a Feminist Idol – this one required an edit to make it more clear, it’s like… [...]