I’m Pro-Choice. Pro-Life People Are Right More Than We Admit.

Reductive thinking is hysterical, inaccurate, and not conducive to any sort of progress.

Abortion was a central issue in the 2024 presidential election, and the election results have been deeply unsettling to the more Left-leaning half of this country. 

Trump’s first term led to a conservative-leaning Supreme Court that reversed federal abortion protection through Roe v. Wade. Since Roe’s reversal, there has been an outpouring of fear and rage around policies that the Left considers to be robbing women of their bodily autonomy—and there are still a number of female reproductive rights at risk, including Plan B pills, IVF and more.

Personally, I have been a monthly donor to Planned Parenthood for many years, and I remain a committed advocate for safe and accessible abortion—with reasonable limits. However, I no longer hold in contempt those who disagree with me on this sensitive matter. Festering extremism and hate-mongering offer no constructive solutions, but instead prevent us from reaching consensus. I was illuminated after challenging my own myopic thinking on this fraught topic, and my experience revealed that the path to understanding is closer than people think.

My perspective radically shifted thanks to a single bad grade.

Critical Thinking 101

You know those movie moments when an eccentric but inspiring professor finally breaks through to their resistant pupils? I recall one of those cinematic moments in my own college experience, when my understanding of critical thinking changed forever.

A gruff and oddly disheveled, yet erudite law professor was teaching an undergraduate course on debate and reasoning for the School of Communications. I came into his class uninterested; I was quite sure given my personal history of relentlessly arguing with the multiple lawyers in my own extended family throughout my life that I was already quite precocious at the art of debate, and I didn’t think he would have much to teach me.

Then came our first assignment: an essay about whether or not you believe in abortion, and if so, up until what point in pregnancy, and why or why not. Being a proud, pro-choice feminist, I wrote a passionate response and patted myself on the back for a job well done.

A few days later, I got my paper back. It was my first F ever. I was apoplectic. And I wasn’t the only one; most of the class failed, so the professor told us he would let us try the assignment again. What did almost everyone get so wrong about the assignment? No one really answered the question.

The mistake I made, like many of my peers, was answering a different question than the one he had asked. Most of us launched into impassioned tirades about the importance of a woman’s right to choose, to have agency over her body; about the importance of being able to decide for oneself if and when a woman actually wants to become a parent (something that benefits both mothers and children).

But that wasn’t the question. It wasn’t a question about whether or not women deserve agency over their bodies; it was a question about whether or not abortion itself, as a procedure and as what is technically (or literally) a cessation of life, should be allowed—and up to what point in pregnancy, and why or why not

Getting an F blew my mind and enraged me, but the stronger reaction came when I realized what it was that he was actually inquiring about through that assignment—and how much harder that question was to answer. I felt suddenly uncertain of my own entrenched young adulthood and longstanding childhood dogma for perhaps the first time ever. I was forced to grow a muscle of critical thinking that deeply challenged and frustrated me.

Personhood

I double-majored in Anthropology and Communications in college, and while I had been immersed in academic theory and study of “culture,” the explicit notion of what constitutes “personhood” had never crossed my mind before this assignment.

It had always seemed like such an obvious dichotomy—i.e. this is a person, and that is a gecko, as evidenced by pretty much everything. But the deeper question of personhood, whether we like to think so or not, is more ambiguous.

Those “obvious” features of human life… what are they? A heartbeat? Fingernails? Consciousness? The ability to survive outside of a womb? The point when a person can open their eyes?

The current world record for the earliest-born premature baby to have survived was 21 weeks and 1 day old. That’s about 5 months old out of the 9 months typically endured in-utero, which would put that baby squarely in the second trimester.

Once relegated to the imaginings of science fiction, science is developing at such an astounding rate. We’re likely not so far away from being able to gestate fetuses outside the womb significantly earlier—or perhaps without ever having the fetus in the womb to begin with.

According to Scientific American, what we define biologically as consciousness arises between the 24th and 28th week of gestation. In terms of “physical substrate, the thalamo-cortical complex that provides consciousness with its highly elaborate content” happens at this time, and around two months later, “synchrony of the electroencephalographic (EEG) rhythm across both cortical hemispheres signals the onset of global neuronal integration. Thus, many of the circuit elements necessary for consciousness are in place by the third trimester.”

A fetal heartbeat can be detected much sooner, at 5-6 weeks, although this isn’t a fully formed heart (which comes later in pregnancy), and it’s only because of advanced modern technologies that we are able to hear this—in fact, it’s only in the last two centuries of scientific development that we really have any firsthand scientific understanding of the progression of human gestation.

The subjectivity of when life begins

Most people view the question of abortion ethics through a binary lens—either you’re for it, or against it; and each stance is peremptorily ascribed an accompanying totalizing moral condemnation (e.g. you’re a fundamentalist religious nutjob, or you are an enthusiastic baby killer, etc.).

However, even without the pomp of publicly (or consciously) reckoning with critical thinking and the nuances of abortion legality, most people do tend to have more nuanced beliefs around the ethics of abortion.

According to a 2023 Gallup poll, 69% of Americans believe abortion should be legal in the first trimester, but support drops to 37% for the second trimester, and 22% for the third. A 2021 AP poll found that 8% of people support legalizing third trimester abortions unconditionally.

Most abortions happen in the first trimester, 10-15% of abortions happen in the second trimester, and very few happen in the third trimester—but they do indeed happen (and not necessarily just due to maternal or infant health and safety complications). Rape and incest account for a very tiny sliver of abortions, though they understandably occupy an outsized role in conversations about abortion access and restrictions.

Because they’re so uncommon, pro-abortion individuals often scoff at discussion of third trimester abortions (specifically outside of mother or infant health complications), but on the subject of horrific and rare but regular things that do happen in this world, it’s worth noting that 500 children are killed by their parents every year, with 72% of those being kids under 6.

Killing a 5-year-old shouldn’t be equated with having an abortion, but if a woman sought an abortion the day before she was due, does it not invite any comparison? Indeed, in the eyes of the small but mighty contingent of people who believe that abortions should be unconditionally available and completely normalized and destigmatized, those two things don’t exist in the same universe.

But for the majority of people (even those who aren’t bioethicists), there’s clearly a grey area. And that grey area exists precisely because personhood is not as prescriptive or objective as we would like it to be. The implications of this are manifold.

Us and Them

It’s true that a large majority of this country is Christian, and that many (but not all) of these individuals’ theology influences their position against abortion—and it’s also true that we have a separation of Church and State that is explicitly designed to prevent religious political rule over the masses.

That said, the subjectivity of what constitutes the beginnings of life—even with the many deliberations of scientists around whether it’s fertilization, pre-viability, viability, or birth—makes it so that the ideological beliefs of pro-abortion adherents are not necessarily more rational or virtuous merely because they do not explicitly come from a popular religious doctrine.

When there’s a matter as personal, complex, and subjective as the question of abortion, I fear that disagreement is intractable. However, my goal in writing this is to challenge the notion that this debate reflects what its ugliest and most extreme assumptions represent: that it’s misogynist/religious fanatic/wingnuts versus baby killers/evil irresponsible jezebels—because that reductive thinking is hysterical, inaccurate, and not conducive to any sort of progress or compromise.  

Fast Forward

I am hopeful that Americans can try to transcend this “good versus evil” partisan binary and try to find more understanding, even in the midst of an election that has led so many to a sense of confusion and loss.

I wonder what kind of country this would look like if, in addition to thinking critically about our own belief systems, we could look at the overwhelming foundational differences in the abortion debate as people who earnestly believe they are protecting all human life (regardless of whether you agree with their assessment, or think they succeed in doing so beyond infancy or childhood), versus people who are wholly committed to ensuring parenting remains a choice (to protect the safety and sanctity of parents and children alike).

That doesn’t resolve the intractable differences in beliefs. But it certainly makes this country seem like a much more human, and far more compassionate place when we try to get to the root of where other people are coming from.

America is a wonderful melting pot of people, cultures, and belief systems. Being able to disagree without threatening, harming, or dehumanizing one another is a critical backbone of a diverse and civilized society. We don’t sacrifice our integrity or our sense of purpose by attempting to understand those who we disagree with; indeed, that is the very foundation for progress, and for building a society and a world that offers dignity and liberty for all.

For my part, I see that most of those who I disagree with are coming from a place of compassion and integrity—that they are human beings, just like me. And that none of them are evil or “hateful” merely because we interpret a complex phenomenon in a different way. And none of that undermines the imperative to fight for the wellbeing and fair treatment of women in America.