I've been thinking hard about this issue since you posted, Kip. And I've been thinking especially of your point about how any discussion of what is best for the woman almost always disappears in abortion discussions--sometimes unconsciously even among feminists. The Right has so thoroughly set the agenda on discourse around this topic that it seems to drag us cognitively into the pit they've dug, unless we consciously resist it.

I wanted to tell you about a discussion I had a couple of weeks ago. It doesn't really directly address your points, or this one about politicizing the actual pain of actual lives in ways that only benefit right-wing policy makers...but maybe it does.

My mother was visiting, along with a friend of hers, a recently uncloseted gay man who still identifies as a fundamentalist, is still a serious churchgoer, and had had two wives, children and now grandchildren rather than living as the gay man he knew he was, because he thought that would be the right thing to do. I'm not sure about his voting preferences. He may have leaned Republican.

My mother is one of those old school socially liberal Republicans you don't hear much about anymore--the kind that went into social work in the '60s to help struggling families, pushed hard in the '70s for family planning clinics in inner-city neighborhoods, let me read exactly what I wanted to read when I was a kid, taught me to ask hard questions and think clearly about politics and religion, and lived according to a strong ethic of social responsibiltiy. For this type of Republican, social responsibility translates into fiscal conservatisim. And so it was.

Anyway, my mother's friend Rick brought up the topic of abortion. His brand new grandson was not a particularly wanted baby. Neither of his parents wanted children, the mother had said that she'd rather die or kill the baby than have and raise it, and the father, Rick's son, just wanted to opt out of the whole thing. This is what Rick said to them: 'Whatever you do, whatever decision you make, I will support you. If you decide to have an abortion, please make absolutely sure that this is not just a means of birth control, but an enforcement of your desire never to have children. If you do have the child, my partner and I will help you raise him, and otherwise help in every way we can. If you don't, I will support your decison, which is yours to make."

That is what this conservative Christian believed was the right thing to do--not despite his faith, mind you, but because of it.

My mother, old-school Catholic social worker, who had her first jobs in hospitals for unwed mothers, said "I can't understand why people who don't want children don't put them up for adoption. In a situation where a child isn't wanted, this is what I believe is the right thing to do, and I don't understand why so many others don't."

I said "I think I do. I would feel much guiltier having a baby and giving it away, knowing it was somewhere out in the world and I wasn't raising it, than making sure it never existed at all."

My SO (Texas liberal who believes in the right to bear arms and rants endlessly about Republicans) didn't say much at the time, but told me later that he agreed with my mother. He supported the right to choose, but disapproved of abortion and thought adoption was a better option.

My point in telling this long rambling story about a dinner conversation of no concern to anybody is that none of us at that dinner had the same exact view of abortion. More important, none of us had a simplistic view of it. Each of us spoke from our own sense of ethics and from our own experiences. We didn't polarize, take rhetorical positons, or disrespect each other.

I think our discussion more truly reflects how most Americans feel. I think that this is how most of us would approach a complicated issue if given half a chance. We love and respect each other, we love our families, we want what's best for them, and we know that deciding what's best in the event of unwanted pregnancy is agonizing for everybody, and that the right decision depends on the circumstances.

What makes me the angriest is that this respectful, careful discussion isn't the one we get to have, because the Right thrives on the polarization and hostility it's been so effective in engineering.

The answer is:

Yes - A Feminist "can be" pro-life.

That's my take on it too - the right to make choices about our own body and life. Let's not forgot that no matter what fashionable postmodern theory is currently attached to feminism in academic circles that feminism is rooted in the fight for women to have the right to decide their own destiny and to own their bodies - this is the common thread that runs through the first victory when women attained the right to vote through rape and marriage laws and why they needed to be changed so that women aren't legally considered someone else's property and into the debates around abortion and access to birth control and other issues related to the choices we now have vis a vis our bodies because of technological and medical advances.