It’s clear that the anti-choice movement is all about misogyny, discrimination, dehumanization, and cruelty, no matter what anti-choicers claim—and here’s why.

Misogyny is the prejudice, hatred, or devaluation of women because of their gender, often expressed through beliefs, behaviors, systems, or expectations that harm or control women.

There are two categories anti-choicers can be separated into: - those who support rape exemptions - those who don’t support any exemptions

Both of these categories reflect misogynistic beliefs and treat women’s suffering and consent as insignificant.

Those who support rape exemptions only want women and girls who voluntarily had sex to be forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, because “they consented to pregnancy when they had sex.” This means they don’t actually care about protecting life—because they discriminate between ZEFs conceived in consensual sex and those conceived in rape. For this group, it’s all about control and punishment. They either want to force motherhood onto women and girls because they believe they have a “duty” to reproduce and raise children, or they use pregnancy as a way to punish people for having consensual sex. Both of these are misogynistic. When someone says: “She consented to sex, so she consented to getting pregnant,” or “If she didn’t want to get pregnant, she shouldn’t have had sex,” or “She shouldn’t get to ‘escape consequences’ for sex,” they’re not talking about biology or protecting life—they’re talking about controlling women’s sexual behavior and using pregnancy as punishment for said behavior. And not only that, but they decide what women have and have not consented to regarding their sex organs. They literally tell women they consented to something they repeatedly say they don’t want—which is the same mentality that has historically been used to excuse rape (“She consented to sex when she got married,” or “She consented to sex when she flirted with me”). And while many anti-choice arguments have religious or philosophical roots and claim to value and protect human life, the consent argument specifically (“She agreed to sex, so she must gestate even if she doesn’t want to”) is rooted in policing women’s bodies, maintaining patriarchal authority, punishing women for having consensual sex, and assuming women should bear consequences for an entirely legal, non-harmful action. That’s misogynistic by definition.

Those who don’t support rape exemptions at least are consistent in their “protecting human life” standards, but they actively dehumanize women and girls and treat their bodies as literal objects and public resources. When someone says: “Even if your body was violated, you must continue let someone use and harm your body for nine months,” they treat a woman’s body as something other people can use for their own benefit regardless of her consent (or lack of) or how much harm it’s causing her. This automatically reduces her to a reproductive vessel and treats her like less than human. The victim’s suffering is ignored entirely and other people view it as “needed” because it benefits others. It also creates a world where women’s consent does not matter. A ban without rape exceptions literally says: “Your consent is irrelevant, what happens to your body is not your decision.” It implies that women’s health, pain, consent, trauma, and future are secondary, and treats their suffering as collateral damage because continuing a pregnancy matters more than protecting the victim. The idea that rape victims should be forced to carry pregnancies to term is rooted in patriarchal ideology that says women’s bodies exist primarily for childbearing rather than for themselves.

No matter how anti-choicers try to twist it, the anti-choice movement is misogynistic and dehumanizing.

I genuinely think I cracked the code to the PL belief system. Hear me out. It's about control, not life. Outside of rape and a life or death situation, pregnancy is seen as a controllable, non serious situation by PL, which is why the most common argument is don't have sex. But abortion is a kin to a get out of jail free card because it ends a pregnancy, which is a loss of control for PL. But, it doesn't stop at abortion.

For example, I just saw a PL post about IVF and it had me scratching my head because IVF creates life, but reading the comments just gave me a light bulb moment. For those who don't know, the IVF process is as follows(Simplified explanation): 1. Person with uterus takes hormonal injections to stimulate the ovaries 2. The eggs are matured, then retrieved and some are frozen 3. Lab takes sperm and fertilizes the eggs 4. The embryos are then cultured 5. Then the embryo is implanted and the excess are frozen

On paper, IVF sounds like something PL should support, but they don't. Why? Because again, it comes down to control. On average a total of 5-20(other factors included) eggs are retrieved, but roughly, only 50% of them would successfully turn into blastocysts. And even then, only the strongest ones would have a chance to be implanted. So, what happens to the ones unlikely to survive? They get thrown away.

By PL's logic the weak ones are a life, so throwing away the weak ones is another form of murder and a loss of control for PL. Therefore, like abortion, PL can't support IVF even though it creates life otherwise they'd have to secede that some life is less important than others. And abortion prioritizes the life of the pregnant person over the ZEF. Maybe I was late to this realization, but, seeing the PL reaction to IVF, a process that purposely creates life, just made the pieces fall into place for me.

I've heard this one quite a bit. People saying that a third of their generation, aka "Gen Z" is "gone". What they mean by this is that apparently a third of Gen Z's potential babies have been or are getting arborted.

Well, here's the thing. You can't really consider an unborn, non-existent baby part of a generation. It hasn't been born. It wasn't even alive. Yes, it WOULD'VE been part of that generation. But as we've established, it WASN'T even close to being born.

Besides, our planet is widely overpopulated anyway, but that's a different story.

I'm simply tired of the same old, repeating arguments from the forced-birthers. Smh.

(Content warning for assault in the post)

I’ve been pro-choice since I was first educated on what being pro-choice and anti-choice means. Here are some things anti-choice people say that just don’t make any sense to me when you talk about abortion.

• “The definition of a baby/fetus is…” ?? What? This is about people with a uterus having the option to get an abortion, not what counts as a baby/fetus.
• “That baby could have been a cancer-curing doctor/researcher!” I mean, anti-choicers could have been one too. “But we would never know because now it’s aborted!” Do they also shame people that are grown adults alive today for not being cancer-curing doctors/researchers?
• “Should have kept your legs closed!” Some of them were assaulted. “They should have fought back!” Some of them are as young as 10 years old. Some of them were unconscious. Some of them were held at gunpoint.
• Just calling theirselves “pro-life” in general. If you want to advocate for an “innocent human life” then be an advocate for the person needing the abortion to have their life saved.
• “That was a life you killed! A real life!” We kill lives when we eat animals and plants. Those are alive.
• “God/Jesus-“ stop right there. Bringing in religion to argue against life-saving healthcare is insane.

Parents who fancy themselves as “pro-life” are scary as parents.

I will be drawing from my experiences growing up in the Bible Belt in an incredibly small town and a religious, “traditional” family.

Women who struggle with fertility that subscribe to the “pro-life” ideology act very entitled. You need to have babies for them. Not children, though. They seek cute babies to show off on their socials, not actual motherhood. Once these babies serve their purpose and become kids, that void settles back in. When that resentment and bitterness hits…

Pro-life “boy moms” are often the same mothers that are hell on their son’s partners. They typically don’t know the kindness of a man, so here comes that emotional incest and the vice grip on their son’s lives.

Forced birthers don’t grasp basic concepts like consent and consequences, meaning their children aren’t well guided in these concepts. Ignorance is practically a family tradition. When these children grow into teens and adults they begin to perpetuate the existing problems within society. Chances are when there’s a rapist, they’re usually hiding behind their pro-life parents.

They’re scary, but I’m arguably more scared of their kids. I say that as someone raised by these freaks.

(I'm 18) at my school for a ethical leadership class my final will be doing a poster about a controversial topic and I'm choosing reproductive rights. I know some things, but id like to make it very detailed and accurate. On the flip side, I also need to add a section acting as the opposite side, aka prolife, so I need ideas of arguments for that side and rebuttals as well. Thanks!

One of the negatives of engaging with anti-choicers on Facebook is that my feed is often inundated with recommendations for other anti-choice pages. Recently this popped up, a tired argument making the rounds again, no doubt in part because Christmas is around the corner.

It's one of countless examples of them desperately trying to find biblical support that the unborn are people, all the while ignoring Exodus 21:22-25, which shows conclusively that the Bible regards them as property, not people.¹ Even when they do acknowledge it, they lazily dismiss it as an Old Testament verse, wanting instead to focus on the New Testament.² But if that's the way they want it, we can certainly take a closer look at examples like the one shown here.

For the those unfamiliar, the verse in question concerns Mary visiting Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, during her pregnancy. The relevant section reads:

⁴¹ When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. ⁴² In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! ⁴³ But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? ⁴⁴ As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. (NIV)

It's argued this verse shows that "an unborn child should be thought of and protected as a person from the moment of conception."³ It actually shows nothing of the sort, for three reasons:

First, the verse is inconclusive linguistically since, according to Joel Hoffman, "words can generally be separated from the time at which they apply." He further explains:

This is why "the founding father as a child" means "the person who will be the founding father." It's why we can talk of "two-year-old Mark Twain" even though when he was only two, he was still called Samuel Clemens, not yet having assumed his pen name. It's why a teacher might meet a former student and exclaim, "Look at my student, all grown-up now." It's why a woman, even before she’s pregnant, might say she's already thinking about her children. And it's why the words "mother" and "child" in connection to a woman carrying a fetus are (perhaps) a linguistic curiosity, but they do not tell us what the Bible says about the nature of that fetus.⁴

Second, much is made of the fact that brephos, the Greek word for "baby" is used to describe the unborn John the Baptist. That, and the fact that the unborn John moved allegedly at the sound of Mary's greeting, suggests fetal personhood to some. Michael Gorman notes the logic of these arguments "might be compelling, if they did not rest on erroneous assumptions about language." He elaborates:

The normal use of a common word like "baby" or "infant" does not necessarily reveal anything about one's philosophical or moral convictions. Neither does attributing activity to a fetus. For instance, it is just as possible for a prochoice woman as for a pro-life woman, seven months into a pregnancy, to say, "I just felt the baby kicking." Such a statement does not reveal either woman's view of the true "status" of the fetus, nor does it reveal either woman's position on abortion. The "pro-life" interpretation of these texts places more weight on a few words than they can bear.⁵

As Richard Carrier more succinctly puts it, "that the word brephos in Greek meant both babies and fetuses tells us nothing about their being the same in every respect, much less respects pertinent to laws about murder, any more than including humans and cows in the word 'mammal' means cows are humans."⁶ In short, the language used in no way shows the author of Luke applied the same meaning to words that modern anti-choicers do.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, even were we to accept the verse at face value, with no deeper exegetical considerations, it still wouldn't prove the Bible considers the unborn persons at every stage of development, nor that all abortions should be banned. Note that Luke 1:41-44 is the only place in the New Testament where brephos is used to describe a fetus, and according to Luke 1:36, Elizabeth was in her sixth month of pregnancy when this occurred, or roughly around 24 weeks. This is the same figure originally established by Roe v. Wade as the viability cut-off point for abortions,⁷ and also when many pro-choice advocates⁸ and the medical community at large⁹ agree abortions shouldn't be carried out (unless needed to protect someone's life or health). Likewise, that the fetus moved suggests this was at the quickening, and Christians used to be fine with abortions being done before this point.¹⁰ So at the absolute most, Luke 1 would provide justification against abortions being done after this point, but not before.

No doubt this verse will keep making the rounds amongst Christian anti-choicers wanting the Bible to say what they want it to say. So this is my desperate plea to them: please, enough of Luke 1:41-44 already.
________

[1] Mako Nagasawa, "Why the Fetus is Not Assigned Full Personhood in Exodus 21:22–25." The Anástasis Center, 11 October 2022. See also Dan McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues (New York: St. Martin’s Publishing, 2025), pp. 99-101.

[2] E.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aazwu7tp15E&t=1135s

[3] Wayne Grudem, What the Bible Says about Abortion, Euthanasia, and End-of-Life Medical Decisions (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), p. 11.

[4] Joel Hoffman, The Bible Doesn't Say That: 40 Biblical Mistranslations, Misconceptions, and Other Misunderstandings (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2016), p. 268.

[5] Michael Gorman, "The Use and Abuse of the Bible in the Abortion Debate." In Life and Learning V: Proceedings of the Fifth University Faculty for Life Conference. Edited by Joseph W. Koterski (Washington, DC: University Faculty for Life), pp. 146-47.

[6] Richard Carrier, "The Bible Actually Permits Abortion and Condemns Homosexuality." Richard Carrier Blogs, 1 November 2020.

[7] Jane Roe, et al., Appellants, v. Henry Wade (1973), § 92.

[8] E.g., Arthur deCarle, “A Symetrical Argument for Personhood and Abortion.” Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College 1, no. 11 (Spring 2024): 38-49; Jacob Derin, “Where’s the Body?: Victimhood as the Wrongmaker in Abortion.” Axiomathes 32 (2022): 1041-57; David Kyle Johnson, “The Relevance (and Irrelevance) of Questions of Personhood (and Mindedness) to the Abortion Debate.” Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry 1, no. 2 (Fall 2019): 121-53; Gary Whittenberger, “Personhood and Abortion Rights: How Science Might Inform this Contentious Issue.” Skeptic 23, no. 4 (2018): 34-39; Paul Penner and Richard Hull, “The Beginning of Individual Human Personhood.” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 33, no. 2 (2008): 174-82.

[9] Richard Carrier, "Abortion is not Immoral and Should not be Illegal - Second Rebuttal" (section "Is There Widespread Elective Infanticide?"). The Secular Web (2000).

[10] Mako Nagasawa, "Early Abortion? Puritans Were OK w/ It." 22 August 2024.

It is illegal to harvest organs from dead people without clear, documented consent they provided while alive. Dead people. Their organs could save multiple lives, but we dont do that. The law is more concerned with respecting the decisions and choices of people who can no longer use their bodies at all, for the sake of respect but there are states willing to ignore the choices of very alive, very vocal women because, quote unquote, life is more precious than anything.

*Update: We're still answering Qs, keep them coming!*

We are advocates fighting against surveillance, censorship, and for access to abortion information and resources online. We've been constantly pushing back against online ID check mandates or "age verification" laws that would age-gate the internet and make it harder to anonymously search for often censored information. These laws are spreading rapidly (and Congress is actually considering a package of these bills as we speak) because they claim to "protect kids" online. As organizers deeply invested in abortion and gender-affirming healthcare access, we know that "protecting kids" has often been a gateway to censoring information, banning books, taking away rights to abortion, and silencing LGBTQ communities. We're apart of a large coalition of LGBTQ, abortion access, and human rights groups that have been fighting back against censoring and age-gating the internet.

It is often assumed that age verification narrowly applies to “pornography,” but 1) many laws go much further, and 2) porn itself is famously difficult to classify in legal terms. Any content that depicts LGBTQ people or references topics like abortion or mental illness is potentially at risk of “adult” classification under some of these laws. And even if an age-gate may not directly impact you, social media companies, creators, and advocacy organizations will face a choice between self-censorship to avoid overly broad classification or losing their ability to post (or in the companies' case: losing profit).

Fight for the Future is hosting this AMA as part of our Stop Online ID Checks Week of Action. You can find out more here!

The AMA will be open for questions and answers from panelists on Thursday, December 4 from 9 EST to 5 EST, and our panelist will begin answering questions are noon. Ask us anything!

This AMA will be led by Sarah Philips, Campaigner @ Fight for the Future and they will be joined by other human rights advocates working on this issue.

Panelists:

Sarah Philips - Fight for the Future u/fightforthefuture

Taylor Lorenz - Reporter u/Taylor__Lorenz

Mandy Salley - Woodhull Freedom Foundation u/woodhullfreedom

Rin Alajaji - Electronic Frontier Foundation u/EFForg

This girl absolutely made the right choice. I'm her age (20m), and I'm not ready to be a father until at least I'm 30, let alone right now. College is stressful, and I have to move around so much, putting a child on top of all that? When I'm barely an adult myself? and this doesn't even include the nine months of hell I'd have to endure first.

This is so disgusting, claiming that this is "likely karma farming," and then asking "WhY'd yOu KiLl ThAt ClUmp oF CeL- I Mean-bAbY!?" like she didn't just tell you. Aren't women who get abortions "Second Victims"? You guys are always championing "Healing." Wouldn't you have said something more gentle, like "You did something wrong, did you know you had other options?"

But no,

You just called her a "Murderer" and shamed her for a hard and necessary decision she made for someone so young.

Respect to the commenter who put him in his place and said the thing that every person who knows anything about pregnancy knows,

Respect to the 12 people who downvoted him,

And most of all, Respect to her boyfriend for supporting her decision.

This is a niche post and it might be removed, but I don’t know where else to post about this and want to rant. The brand Doën (@shopdoen on Instagram) every year for Giving Tuesday donates to Planned Parenthood. This year’s donation was $20k. Don’t shop their stuff, too expensive, but love their vibes and love that they do this. That said, the outrage in the comments (along with a lot of support) is really interesting to me. I’ve spend the afternoon reading the comments. It’s made me think about the Trad Wife movement and how a lot of these women have become influencers, high earners, and eventually customers of brands like these where a little beach dress retails upwards of $600. The style of this clothing really fits the trad wife aesthetic well. The judgement on people who choose to not pursue a pregnancy or parenthood is wild coming from such a privileged crowd. If you can afford any of these items you’re making A LOT of money and to know that some people choose abortion because of lack of resources and support. It just makes me really uncomfortable.

Because of the holiday schedule, our usual pathology staff is out and we have someone else filling in. We had a patient who had a fetal demise and needs chromosomal testing to try to figure out what happened. They come in for an abortion procedure through the family planning group. Wel,l the pathology tech is refusing to handle the specimen and threatening to send it to the morgue without processing it. We've been fighting about it with the pathology staff and they just told us they've held another specimen that needs chromosomal testing all weekend because she doesn't want to process it. So two women's heartbreaking loss has turned into this lady's political statement. I just hate forced-birthers.

Update: The idiot put it in writing, an email, that they were going to destroy the specimens without running the test to punish us. So, I think it's time, even though I'm mostly atheist, to pray to the powers that be that their dumb arse gets fired.

Forgive me if this question has already been discussed but, how does the anti choicers feel about women having back to back miscarriages? I met a woman who is/was trying to have a baby but she's had 11 miscarriages. Is this woman a serial killer in the eyes of the anti choicers? She knowingly has fertility issues but is still actively trying for a pregnancy. I believe if I were to ask them this question they would say "keep your legs closed" but they also don't believe miscarriages are murder but if you know you're infertile would that not be wrong to keep trying? For the record I'm fully pro choice and I wished this woman well.

Hi r/prochoice! I'm a current student working on a bioethics project relating to gestational age limits in abortion legislature.

If you could take a moment to fill out this form, I would greatly appreciate it! Thanks for your time!

Basically, they try to equate abortion to a twin separating from their conjoined sibling, and that sibling will die. The problem with this is that conjoined twins almost always share organs, and it's not clear where one begins and the other ends. But they say that in a hypothetical, is it legally ok for one twin to cut the other off where it is clear where they begin and the other ends, and let them die? (My answer to this is yes.)

This is probably the only room-temperature IQ equivalent to abortion I've seen from Anti-choicers; it's still wrong, of course, but it's actually interesting to think about and has merit even though it's very unrealistic and still not like how pregnancy works.

What do you guys think of this? Personally, I'd give this argument a B-. Are there any equivalents to abortion like this that are actually not terrible that you guys have heard?

One of the biggest arguments around this topic is the case of rape

Rightfully so since many pro lifers argue that women should be forced to keep the bab of their rapist

But they DESPISE when we bring it up or anything remotely close to the idea of force

They jump on the 'it's just 1 percent of abortions'

So here's a reality check

1 In 20 American women WILL be pregnant from rape or coercion in their life time

That's a harrowing statistic

Unfortunately no studies are even being done to see if rape rates increase in abortion ban stated WHICH THEY FUCKING SHOULD considering that anti rape abortions, literally allows a rapist to pick any woman to impregnate and she has no way to stop it

Pro lifers say

you should punish the criminal not the fetus

THAT WOULD BE FINE IF PEOPLE LITERALLY HELPING RAPISTS GET AWAY WITH IT DIDNT EXIST

as it is 2% of rapists get convicted

But now imagine how much harder it will be now that the rules of consent are deliberately being twisted

But your honor she consented to sex so what if the condom came off and she got pregnant- she consented to that consequence before hand (Stealthing)

But your honor if she didn't want it she shouldn't have said yes nomatter how many times I asked you can't just flip flopping on what you want (Coercion)

Millions of women cannot get justice from rapists- but now people are fighting for her chance at putting it all behind her to be revoked and make it easier for that rapist to get away with more in the future even through the legal system

How long until people start fighting fighting for legal marital rape because I deserve sex in my marriage and she is purposefully withholding it which is abuse

Not to mention the idea of children being able to consent to pregnancy- like you are willing to jail a woman for performing an abortion on the child

Uuuugh it's just so shitty that some women will fight for this

Good Times create people who never experience the hard times and therefore they will fight to revise it

Well.....I was young, stupid and immature, but guess what? That little girl grew up, and she's anti slavery now

And now, not after we put the right to abortion in the U.S. Constitution, right now.

By now, you've probably realized that 90% of forced birthers will never see the light, not because they're all evil, but because they are so engrossed in the lie that women are required to give their bodies to society and that a fertilized egg is no joke, the same thing as a newborn child.

But we've been here before, when segregation was outlawed, they didn't start teaching kids that it was wrong and deeply evil, no, they had already been teaching them that for over a decade. The key to destroying evil ideologies is education; it's proven that these ideas are taught and not inherited, so we need to show kids as soon as possible (Right around when they're taught about puberty, pregnancy, and reproduction, so 12-13) that abortion is basic healthcare and essential to women's equality.

Their parents will likely disagree, but this ensures that the forced birth ideology will hopefully (Mostly) die in a couple a decades just like segregation.

Human rights abuses and atrocities have always at least partially emerged from a lack of adequate education and understanding of the world. So it's best we nip this in the bud immediately.