You Can’t Fight for Women by Erasing Their Children

Feminism had historically been an agent of justice — standing for equality, standing up for the voiceless, and standing firmly on the claim that every woman matters. Yet in its current incarnation, something has gone horribly wrong, as the struggle for women's rights now includes the right to abortion. But how does a movement based on the argument of the preservation of human dignity also strip this dignity from its most vulnerable individuals?

At its heart, this is a human rights cause. And if feminism truly is about justice, then it has to be for all of humanity — including the yet-to-be-born humans.

Contemporary feminism often makes abortion a symbol of freedom — a condition necessary for the equalities of women. But there's a patent contradiction in this concept: in order to grant one group of people rights, it denies rights to another group of people.

The unborn child is human — biologically and genetically distinct — from the moment of conception. That's not ideology, it's scientific fact. And once we acknowledge their humanity, we also have to acknowledge their rights.

And when feminism is brought in to argue for abortion, it applies the same argument applied throughout history to maintain women's oppression: dehumanization. Women were denied personhood for many centuries. We were told we were too weak, too dependent, too different to be human. And now the same reasoning is being used to justify taking the lives of unborn humans. They're too small. Too dependent. Not "fully developed." But humanity is not something we come to possess. It is something we already possess.

We're instructed that abortion is empowerment — that if women don't have it, they can't survive. But that's not what frees women. That constrains them.

It tells them: you can't be a mother and a student.

You can't be pregnant and professional.

You can't bear life and yet chase your dreams.

That is not empowerment — that is coercion disguised as choice.

In the real world, many women have abortions because they don't realize that they have any alternative. They're frightened, isolated, coerced, and informed they have to make a choice between their child and their future. An empowered society actually does not subject them to that choice — it generates a society where the mother and the child can thrive.

Feminism is equality. It is that no one's life is counted any less because of age, size, dependency, or circumstance. If it applies to women outside the womb, it applies to those within as well.

The unborn child is not the enemy of women's rights. They are not a stranger, but a vulnerable member of our human family.

True feminism does not place mother over child. It sees the deep connection between them — and works to protect both of them.

What few know is that the earliest feminists — the women who struggled hardest for suffrage, education, and equality — were firmly pro-life.

Susan B. Anthony, a leading voice in the movement, condemned abortion as a tool of male oppression. She saw it as a dismal sign that society had not rallied behind women. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, another suffragette leader, called abortion "infanticide" and believed women should be treated much better than to be pushed to it.

These women weren't confused. They knew that dignity doesn't begin at birth — and that justice can't depend on convenience.

Modern feminism did not invent the pro-life stance. It simply lost its own heritage. Feminism has never been hesitant to raise difficult questions and dismantle dysfunctional systems. Now it must dismantle a system that teaches women the price of freedom is the life of their child.

You can't fight for women's rights at the expense of taking away from others. You can't build justice on a foundation of exclusion. If feminism is to ever be a movement towards justice, it will need to accept its heart and activism for all human beings — especially those who have no voice but ours.

Let's fight for women. Let's fight for mothers. Let's fight for kids — born and not yet born. Let's fight for the day when no woman is forced to choose between her future and the life of her child. That's freedom. That's feminism.