Pro-Life Feminism

Though it may be unpopular to point out the conflict between them, genuine feminism cannot be reconciled with the pro-choice position, since it emphasizes the same metaphysical basis for human value that the pro-life stance does.  In fact, pro-life ideas naturally accompany feminism.  A "pro-choice feminist" holds to two ideas that contradict each other, for feminism, while it may focus on gender relations, is ultimately about the rights that all humans share simply because they are human.

If a human right to life exists (which can only vanish in cases of legitimate self-defense/warfare or just capital punishment), girls and boys in the womb do not possess less of a right to life than adult women and men do.  Therefore, sound feminism affirms the humanity and human rights of the unborn just as much as it affirms the humanity and equal human rights of adult men and women.  Genuine feminism, being an egalitarian ideology, is not compatible with abortion.  The same moral principles that contradict sexism contradict pro-choice ideas.

Some will claim that a woman's right to bodily autonomy necessitates that she must decide for herself if abortion is something she wants to pursue.  This claim may even be mistakenly equated with the living out of feminism.  It is actually bodily autonomy that makes abortion, not pro-life philosophy, erroneous [1].  Abortion, after all, violates a baby's bodily autonomy in a manner that extinguishes its very life.  As has already been explained, there is no such thing as a legitimate feminist endorsement of abortion in the name of women's rights, but the argument for abortion from bodily autonomy contradicts itself as it is.

A sincere, consistent feminist (and an actual feminist is what one could also call an egalitarian) will not only defend women and men who are mistreated on the basis of sex outside of the womb, but will also defend the unborn girls and boys who cannot speak on their own behalf.  A pro-life stance is just one manifestation of egalitarianism, for a human's size and location have nothing to do with whether or not they have value by virtue of being human.  It takes a thoroughly egalitarian person to uphold the rights of all people, especially if some of them are completely unable to protect themselves from injustice.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2019/01/bodily-autonomy-contradicts-abortion.html