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So I got into a discussion today with a young gentleman (white, cis, presented as straight, well-off enough to attend college...you know, your average highly-privileged young fellow) and eventually, I made an off-handed comment about my lack of desire for children in my future, and upon his asking, I agreed that I was in fact pro-choice.

This highly-privileged young fellow, who of course will never have to worry about such things because cis-men generally do not get pregnant, promptly stated that he was pro-life.

HAHAHA OF COURSE HE IS. ISN'T THAT GREAT.

So, because I am quite sharp on this topic both online and off, my response was that pro-life is probably not the term that he really wanted. I then proceeded to ask him why he was pro-life.

"Because it's a person in there!"

HAHAHA OF COURSE IT IS.

I could tell he was waiting for my retort of "NO IT ISN'T." So instead, I asked him, "So what?"

"Huh?"

"So what?"

It doesn't matter if it's a person in there (which, by the way, is not true in the eyes of many people and many religions--Judaism, for example, states directly that a foetus is not a person until it comes out of its mother's womb). But let us state for the moment as a proven fact (which it is not) that a baby is a person from the instant of conception.

So what?

So it's a person in there. There's a person out here, too, and she* is called the mother. Why does she not matter? She's the one who has to suffer for nine months, she's the one who is expected to raise the child (alone or with a partner) for 18+ years...why does she not matter?

"But it's a person in there!"

So what?

If I had a child with a bone marrow disease that would eventually kill them, and I was the only match...well, bone marrow regenerates, right? I'd survive the harvesting, right? It only takes some waiting and a painful procedure, right?

Yeah, that's all right. But you know what? Even so, the doctor cannot force me to give up my bone marrow for my child, even if it means my child will die, because my body is mine.

Likewise, let's ignore the fact that pregnancy is a horrible and debilitating thing that can often leave a woman with lifelong problems. Let's pretend it is just some waiting with a painful procedure at the end, and every woman is guaranteed a healthy and complete recovery (spoiler: every woman is NOT guaranteed a healthy and complete recovery). My uterus is mine. It does not matter that the baby will only need it for nine months, it does not matter that I would probably survive the birth. It does not matter that if I don't allow it to stay, the baby will die. All legal and medical precedents say that I cannot be forced to give up some part of my body for the use of another human being. My liver, my kidneys, my bone marrow, my skin, my blood, my uterus, all of it is mine. If I don't want to share it, the right to decide that is mine and mine alone.

Upon explaining this to Dude, his response was something along the lines of, "Well, if you don't want to get pregnant, you shouldn't have sex. You know the risks."

Seriously. That was his answer. If I am in a loving relationship (or hell, even if I'm not), rather than enjoy my partner and the closeness that sex can bring, I should abstain--forever, not just until marriage!--if I don't want to have a baby. What if I never want to have a baby? Well, then I'd better never have sex!

Thus leading me to my point: the same point I made to him.

Pro-life is mislabeled. Their name should be anti-choice. This guy, like many other "pro-lifers" I have talked to, does not really care about the children. He wants to control women--he wants to control me. He wants legislation and rules in place that say if I dare to have sex and I get pregnant, I should suffer. If I dare to enjoy another person and that person happens to get me pregnant, I deserve to die--because I cannot survive (and incidentally, any foetus in my body would not survive) nine months without the medication keeping my illness in check, a medication I could not take if I were pregnant.

I do not deserve to die for a broken condom. I do not deserve to die for a missed pill.

But anti-choicers think I do.

How is that pro-life?

(*Note: It is not only women that need or want abortions.)