If you keep up with abortion rights, you probably know by now that the pro-life movement clashes with modern feminism and that most modern feminists disagree with outlawing abortion. Living in the South, I constantly am seeing women post that they are feminists (if they are brave enough to say that here), pro-life, and proud! I am completely for women being feminists and making the decision to never get an abortion, but why should you be actively trying to take away women’s rights to make decisions about their own body? You are surely not a feminist.

A lot of people just throw labels around now so “pro-life” no longer means “abortion is murder, should be entirely illegal, and there should be consequences to having one.” Instead, people are making the pro-life movement into “I would never have an abortion so I stand behind these people,” “pro-fetus movement,” or even the “anti-abortion movement.”

Those identifying themselves as these pro-life feminists (particularly the ones that I see in the South), never seem to actually care about all lives. It seems that they only care about children and fetuses. Why do these pro-life feminists not picket the NRA to make increase gun control laws so around 80 toddlers a year are not killed by guns? Why are they not passing water out to the children in Flint who are poisoned by lead? Why aren’t they trying to make it harder for people to smoke during their pregnancies so there won’t be as many risks for stillbirths?

Why aren’t they doing these things? Because they are not pro-life. They are just pro-fetus.

People will stand behind this movement because “babies,” and “I will never get an abortion,” but none of them really realize what the major anti-abortion organizations are doing. Actual right-to-life organizations in the United States want to outlaw abortion entirely, including if someone were to be raped, it were a case of incest, or even if it threatened the pregnant woman’s health or life.

Before you stand behind people who want to make abortion illegal, please understand what you are standing by. Making it illegal harms women. Instead of being able to have a safe procedure done, they will resort to trying to terminate the pregnancy themselves or having someone help them. Think of the risks of infection, of never being able to have a child when they are ready, of death, and even of the pregnancy not even being terminated, her going through the pregnancy and it all just not working out. If it was outlawed, think of the woman who is trying so desperately to end her pregnancy that she is bleeding to death instead of calling an ambulance so she doesn’t get arrested for “murder” or “attempted murder.”

Before you stand behind abstinence programs, think of how this could all be preventable if sex education was accessible. These abstinence programs that people try to pass off is a reason teenage pregnancies are high. Why are people trying to make abortion illegal without giving us birth control or even just sex education? No, no, no. If you honestly agree with any of this, I promise that you are not a feminist. You are just a hypocrite.

For some reason I see a lot of women shame those who choose not to have children (or are even infertile). reproducing doesn’t make you any superior or closer to God than anyone else. It just means that you used the organs in your body that you can. You are no less of a person before you had a child. If you are a women and you stand behind people who do not want to make safe abortion accessible for women who make that decision for themselves, then you are just another puppet of the patriarchy and you are not a feminist.