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A troubling definition of "equality"

In this November’s issue of The Princeton Tory, Elly Brown ’18 attempts to dismantle the “false dichotomy” of the opposition between feminists and pro-life activists. There are a number of minor issues with the article, as with most pieces that attempt to tackle the sticky issue of abortion. Brown calls into question Emma Watson’s status as feminist. She implies that she will never change her views on abortion. She misrepresents the pro-life tendencies of early feminists, asserting that they were “largely pro-life”, in what Ann D. Gordon, a Rutgers history professor and leading scholar on the life of Susan B. Anthony, would term as “invented memory,” claims about history made without evidence for modern purposes.

There are additional problematic elements in the article, of course, but I’d like to focus on the crux of Brown’s argument. Her main point seems to be that the feminist and pro-life movements are compatible because both view all lives as inherently equal. Feminists act to promote equality between men and women — and, in the case of early feminists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, between whites and blacks — and Brown would extend this argument one step further: born and unborn should be equal as well. She equates “allowing women to pursue careers and success” with the possible futures of fetuses, asserting that the concept of equal rights and opportunities is inconsistent with “the denial of countless opportunities for unborn children.” Furthermore, by misinterpreting an Emma Watson quote which utilizes the phrase “because [she] might give birth to a child one day” as a euphemism for “because [she] is a woman,” Brown contends that “having children does not destine a woman to a life of any less success than that of a woman with no children,” presumably to make the point that “abortion [is not] absolutely necessary” for the eventual equality of women and men.

I don’t intend to cover the major fallacies inherent in the stereotypical conservative’s pro-life position — for example, being “pro-life” but opposing welfare programs and common-sense gun control laws while supporting the defunding of schools, implying that the potential opportunities and life value of an unborn child should only be fought for until birth. However, I do see a contradiction in Brown’s case. Brown identifies as a supporter of the pro-life movement. She supports equal rights for all, white and black (and, I assume, other people of color), male and female, born and unborn.

However, I fear that Brown misinterprets the goals of the pro-choice movement. The pro-choice movement does not preach total equality for all, born and unborn, but rather the necessity for and equality inherent in bodily autonomy. The platform of said movement is not, as Brown implies, that “abortion [is] absolutely necessary for a woman to achieve at the same level as men.” As someone who is pro-choice, I fully support any woman who believes that abortion is not right — she should be free to carry unborn children to term. Rather, the goal of the pro-choice movement is just that — to allow all women to determine the future of a fetus which is not only wholly dependent on the woman’s body to live, but also emotionally taxing, expensive to support both in terms of financial and bodily resources, and physically painful. Obviously, there are plenty of women who have the resources and time to support children born and unborn, but the pro-choice movement points out that not all women can do this.

The logical fallacy which arises from this pro-woman/pro-life stance is that by foisting an pro-life reality on all women regardless of each individual’s opinion, one necessarily claims that some lives are more important than others. Pro-coice supporters would support a woman who is pro-life and who refuses to have an abortion, but if that pro-life supporter enacts legal change which prevents woman who is pro-choice from having one, the former’s opinion would be considered more valuable under the law than that of the pro-choice woman. This seems to contradict itself — if one woman’s opinion overrides another’s, then how are the two equal in any way, shape or form? In supporting equality for all, as Brown argues she does, one must acknowledge that her personal belief or moral/ethical code cannot dictate what another can or can’t do. Otherwise, that person implicitly supports inequality of opinion, which seems anti-feminist and anti-equality.

The alliance of the feminist and pro-choice movements is not a logical contradiction because both movements believe that the life and future of a woman are more important than the life and future of her unborn child. After all, as Seth Millstein argues for Bustle, “the ‘right to life’ doesn’t imply a right to use somebody else’s body” to survive. Thus, the major difference between the feminist and pro-life platforms, in terms of Brown’s article, is that feminism freely acknowledges that the attempt at total equality for all results in countless contradictions, whereas, as it is represented in Brown’s argument, the pro-life movement blithely contends that by crushing the voices of women who are currently allowed to choose the fate of a fetus which exists at their expense, equality for all follows immediately.

Will Rivitz is a freshman from Brookline, Mass. He can be reached at wrivitz@princeton.edu.

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Correction: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this article mischaracterized, throughout the column, Elly Brown's position on abortion. She should have been characterized as pro-life. The 'Prince' regrets the error.

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