This post is part of our "What Does Choice Mean to You?" series [3] commemorating the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
I love the word choice. I know there are those in our movement who have rejected it. Some think it is the word we use when we want to avoid saying abortion. They think we are cowardly when we use “choice” in talking about abortion. Others see it as a privileged word. Low income and marginalized women who are financially and socially disadvantaged, it is suggested don’t have meaningful choice available. New words have entered the abortion dictionary and reproductive justice is said to better represent what we want for all women.
There is merit to both arguments. There are words and concepts other than choice that can represent our vision for women. But for me choice, indeed the concept of free choice, still has a positive meaning and value. I would hate to see us abandon it.
For me, when women claim they have a right to choose, they are not being cowardly, rather they are being very gutsy. They are laying claim to a right, a concept that philosophers and theologians have asserted is an essential element of freedom and rationality. Descartes linked free will with freedom of choice and noted that “the will is by its nature so free that it can never be constrained. It is only if we are free that we can make “free choices”. Hobbes thought we were free only insofar as we “may do as we wish without hindrance.” As philosophers continued to explore freedom, Locke and Hume added the concept of power. A person has the “power to do or not do as one wills.”
Even within Catholicism which like other branches of monotheism struggled with reconciling the idea that God knew and determined all action in the world with the idea of free will, Aquinas wrote on the subject of free choice. He said
Without doubt it must be said that man has free choice. Faith demands that we hold this position, since without free choice one could not merit or demerit, or be justly rewarded or punished."
While religion is too often concerned with punishing those who exercise choice, especially women, the link between freedom, free will, choice and responsibility is an important one that is part of making choices. As women who claim our moral agency, our right to free choice, we also accept our responsibility for the consequences of the choices we make.
Too often we are told that talking about free choice brands us as believing anything goes or that “choice” is trivial. Choice is one of the most precious aspects of a good life. While some want to restrict the choices of others, almost every person clings to their own ability to make choices – trivial and profound. Butter of margarine, The shuttle or Amtrak. But also, our own doctor, the school we want to attend, the partner we wish to marry, the number of children we will, the profession we will choose and what we will do when faced with a pregnancy.
Choice is a central component of the rational human being. It is especially important that we assert it for women whose choices are constrained by circumstances along with efforts to increase the circumstances that give women more choices. Who needs the right to choose more than the woman who will suffer most if she is denied choice. Who needs more encouragement to make a choice than the woman who has so rarely been able to do so?
Let each of us celebrate the freedom we have, let us claim it from the roof tops and let us insist that as rational moral agents we have the right to choose.