Critiquing the Pro-Choice Frame: 10 Reasons to Rethink Reproductive Choice

Here are 10 compelling reasons why advocates for abortion rights should move away from “choice.”

1. Choice resonates most with women who see themselves as having choices; not with those who don’t. Because they are dealing with high rates of poverty and lack of access to education, jobs, and healthcare, low income and poor women often do
not experience reproductive decisions as choices.

2. Choice homogenizes reproductive experiences. Women’s reproductive lives vary tremendously, because they are shaped primarily by their race and class. White middle class women have gained increased control over their sexuality and reproduction with the legalization of contraception and abortion. Poor women and women of color have not.

3. Choice has not included the right to have children. Most often, reproductive oppression has consisted of attempts to prevent low income women and women of color from having children. While women of color have consistently resisted these practices and fought for their right to be mothers, the pro-choice movement has not.

4. Choice disconnects abortion from the rest of women’s lives. Like all other reproductive experiences, abortion occurs in the context of a woman’s entire life – including her economic and educational status, her sexual orientation, her other healthcare needs, and whether she is in a violent or abusive situation, has a disability, has other children, is incarcerated or homeless, and so much more. A woman brings all of these aspects of who she is to her reproductive decision-making. Therefore, while preserving the legal right to abortion is a central aspect of reproductive freedom, it is only one part of what is needed.

5. Choice is a conservative framing. “Choice” became the primary way of talking and thinking about abortion in the 1980s when advocates were overwhelmed by the power of the New Right and the growing anti-abortion movement. The mainstream reproductive rights movement responded by trying to widen its base of support to include people who were more conservative. Thus the movement became “pro-choice” instead of being for abortion rights, sexual rights, and insisting on women’s bodily autonomy.7 Pro-choice politics were framed defensively by what was considered winnable rather than by a positive vision of reproductive freedom.

6. Choice is a market concept. In our capitalist society, choices are consumer decisions. If something is for sale, then supposedly we can choose it. This model is not adequate for dealing with basic needs, especially when almost 50 million people in the U.S. have no health insurance at all.

7. Choice is individualistic. The underlying assumption of the choice framework is that an individual is responsible for her economic status and for solving her own problems. With this understanding, childbearing and abortion are privileges, not rights. That there are social, political, and economic conditions required to enable individual choices is completely invisible.

8. Choice focuses only on women’s reproductive decisions. While women must have the right to decide whether to become pregnant or to continue a pregnancy, this is only one aspect of reproductive autonomy. Gay men, lesbians, and intersex and transgendered people are also fighting for reproductive, sexual and health rights. These include the right to be parents, to bear children and to have access to the technologies and services which support their parenting decisions. If we understand the right to abortion as a necessary aspect of bodily integrity, equality, and full citizenship, it is integrally connected to these other struggles.

9. Choice lacks moral force. In the abortion debate “choice” is pitted against life as the underlying ethical conflict, conceding the issue of “life” to the opponents of women’s rights. This allows the debate to center on the status/significance of fetal life as the primary moral question. Instead, advocates of abortion rights need to re-focus on the morality of forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy to term against her will and the ethical consequences of preventing women from terminating a pregnancy. At issue are women’s lives and livelihoods — their status, health, relationships, and ability to be in charge of the major decisions which affect their lives. Women who have abortions talk about them in terms of necessity and survival. Our language should reflect the significance that women attach to these actions.

10. Choice is not the adequately compelling vision needed to mobilize a broad and inclusive movement. Reproductive Justice provides that vision. Since abortion was legalized, the opposition has organized a movement aimed not just at re-criminalizing abortion, but one that is inspired by a holistic conservative vision of gender roles, familyand sexuality. Restoring traditional gender hierarchies and behavior, and taking back gains made by movements for women’s equality, gay liberation and reproductive rights, are all part of that agenda. In order to combat the multi-faceted nature of this attack, and to fully encompass the reproductive needs and concerns of all women, we must build a reproductive justice movement — a movement that is broad-based, linking issues and communities.