A review by beatsbybeard
Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights by Katha Pollitt

5.0

Katha Pollitt does an excellent job of affirming why abortion is a necessary and empowering facet of women's reproductive rights. She covers anti-abortion movements, the "muddled middle" who disapprove of abortion but think it should be legal, and the pro-choicers who still shy away from citing women's sexual freedom as a valid reason for keeping abortion available. Fetal personhood is revealed as a bogus notion, and the efforts of Republicans to both ban abortion and gut social support for single mothers are shown to belie the true root of their cause – women having sex. The physical, social, and financial costs of pregnancy, childbirth, and childcare are unevenly saddled to women, and yet, in the name of duty and domestic norms, no thought is given to what other aspirations she might have had. What abortion really offers women is the chance to have at least the same degree of control over their lives as men do; the same freedom to enjoy sex, to have a career, and to start a family when (if ever) they feel ready to do so. It is for that reason that it should be low-cost, free of stigma, legal, accessible, and safe.