We’re taught that every woman has a maternal instinct, that motherhood will somehow come naturally, and that having children is what makes a woman complete.

But not every woman wants to be a mother. Not every woman enjoys motherhood. And not every woman is equipped for the demands of parenting.

That doesn’t make her selfish, defective, or less of a woman. It makes her human.

And perhaps the most damaging part of this mythology is the assumption that a woman who doesn’t want children will magically change once she gives birth.

Children deserve to be wanted, and women deserve lives that don’t require motherhood to have meaning.

The maternal instinct should never be used as an argument against reproductive choice.

Voters are being asked to make consequential decisions about abortion rights this November. Yet some Republican candidates with documented anti-abortion records have declined to say how they intend to vote.

In Virginia, Reps. Rob Wittman and Jen Kiggans have not publicly clarified their positions on the state’s abortion referendum, according to MS NOW. In Idaho, Gov. Brad Little recently announced his opposition to a measure that would overturn the state’s abortion ban.

Even some anti-abortion organizations are criticizing the silence, arguing that candidates should be transparent about their positions.

There is a fundamental difference between keeping abortion out of a campaign speech and keeping voters informed about where a candidate stands.

Abortion policy affects medical care, pregnancy decisions, and personal autonomy. Voters deserve direct answers from anyone seeking the power to shape those policies.

The question isn’t just what candidates say about abortion. It’s what they refuse to say.

Her Safe Harbor | Reproductive freedom begins with informed choice.

Overturning Roe Wasn’t Enough. Now They’re Demanding More.

Chuck Donovan, founder of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, says the Trump administration hasn’t gone far enough on abortion.

His October 14 opinion piece lays out what he wants from the next Republican presidential nominee.

A federal abortion limit. Permanent restrictions on federal abortion funding. An end to Planned Parenthood’s federal funding. And potentially removing abortion medications from the market entirely.

He’s also frustrated that the FDA’s mifepristone review won’t produce findings until at least March 2027.

This is an important reminder that overturning Roe v. Wade did not end the national debate over abortion.

It shifted the battleground.

The next questions are about federal power, medication access, insurance coverage, and how much authority the government should have over pregnancy decisions.

And those questions are already shaping the conversation about 2028.

Her Safe Harbor

As has been the standard since Dobbs, voters in multiple states will weigh in on their abortion laws on November 3rd. One we’re keeping an especially close eye on: Idaho, one of the most conservative states in the country, with Republicans holding every statewide executive office and supermajorities in both legislative chambers. Right now, they have in place a ban on nearly all abortions, which has contributed to their loss of nearly a third of the state’s OB-GYNs and cruel consequences for women who need care. The team at Idahoans United for Women & Families has pushed forward Proposition One, the Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act), which would guarantee abortion rights through fetal viability.

This is the only state where we have a chance to restore reproductive rights this fall, our only reasonable means of doing so with so many GOP officeholders, and a chance to demonstrate that the public wants the right to choose no matter where they stand on the political spectrum. Polling last year suggested as many as 6 in 10 Idahoans could be on board, including 45% of Republicans, but the Church of Latter-Day Saints has been pushing hard for its members to oppose.

☎️ Yes on One phonebanks are now live! We can help encourage folks to make their voices heard for reproductive rights on Sundays from 4-6PM ET and Tuesdays from 9-11PM ET by signing up for a shift here. ☎️

WE CAN WIN FOR WOMEN IN IDAHO

Meanwhile, we’ve also got opportunities coming up to help beat back the forced birthers in Missouri, where they’re testing a new strategy: combining an abortion ban with attacking gender-affirming care for trans kids in the same ballot question and hoping to get pro-choicers to flip for transphobia’s sake. 💬 The Human Rights Campaign will be holding textbanks to help stop Amendment 3 tomorrow at 1PM and October 27th at 6:30PM ET we can sign up for here, and the main Stop The Ban campaign will be texting on Thursdays at 5:30PM ET. 💬

SHOW ME A NO VOTE ON 3

I don't think the general public is aware of/discusses this much but as someone who doesn't have kids, I was so shocked and scared to learn that abusive men/criminals can get shared custody or visitation rights of their children.

This effectively means that the abusive man is in a woman's life forever and can continue to make a woman's life hell.

I've personally had to cut off toxic non romantic relationships so I cannot imagine having to be tied to an abuser forever. There's also the fact that the rates of murder are significantly higher for pregnant women. 🥲

Abusive partners also sometimes use children to trap their partner into staying.

I read an NYTimes article of a husband who waited until his wife was 9 months pregnant to admit he'd been having an affair. The calculated nature of that was chilling knowing that he purposefully picked the moment she was most vulnerable and would forgive him.

They know how much women want to make their family work and give their kids a 2 parent home.

We need abortion so pregnancy and children are not weaponised against vulnerable women.

I'd like to try out a newly-formed argument on y'all, if I may. (Newly-formed for me.)

Anti-choicers keep thinking they have a "gotcha" in accusing me of not stating plainly what abortion is. "Admit it. You're killing a human!" But I know exactly what abortion is and I acknowledge that. So, at this point, I just go ahead and say "yep. Sure am [killing]. Don't care, because women and girls are, and have always been, infinitely more important than a fetus you idealize for your own sense of moral superiority."

The "more important" argument I will never let go of. Sorrynotsorry. But is it detrimental to our argument to call a spade a spade? Or- is my argument generally correct but my phrasing is detrimental? (My personality tends toward the dry-humored/spare no one/snarky type. Sometimes to a fault.) Curious to hear your thoughts, please and thank you.

I’m 21 years old, 24 weeks pregnant, and what I’ve experienced has changed the way I see reproductive rights forever.

I live with my parents in rural Germany. I’m financially dependent on them, don’t have a driver’s license, and have very little independence. My mother is extremely pro-life and believes abortion is murder. Growing up with those beliefs surrounding me made it incredibly difficult to admit that I didn’t want this pregnancy.

I spent months suppressing my feelings because I was terrified of what would happen if I was honest. I feared losing my mother’s support, being judged, and having my life made even harder when I already felt trapped. The hardest part is that I love her. She’s my mother, and a part of me still desperately wants her approval, even when I’m afraid of what that approval might cost me.

I felt like an incubator. All my mother talked about was the pregnancy and the expectations surrounding my pregnancy. There was no "How do you feel?" or any support surrounding me, a living breathing person. All people saw was the fetus I was carrying. So alone and terrified with no one to share my true thoughts with.

At around 20 weeks, I reached a breaking point. I attempted to end my pregnancy myself using abortion medication because I felt like I had nowhere else to turn.

It didn’t go as I had hoped. I experienced 2 days of unimaginable pain, without the outcome I expected. I was terrified, alone with my thoughts, and unsure of what was happening to my own body. Eventually, I ended up in the hospital for a week with a medical emergency. They saved the pregnancy.

What happened was life-threatening for me. I was in a situation where my health and safety were at risk, and I had reached that point after feeling like I had no accessible way to make a decision about my own pregnancy.

I cannot explain how frightening it is to feel so trapped that you attempt something like this alone. I wasn’t doing it because I didn’t care. I was desperate, struggling, and trying to regain control over a life that suddenly felt like it no longer belonged to me

Now I’m considering adoption because I don’t believe I’m ready to raise a child. Even that decision comes with fear, guilt, and the possibility of losing my family’s support.

I'm still in the same spot I was at the beginning of my pregnancy

This is why I’m pro-choice.

I’m pro-choice because reproductive decisions don’t happen in a vacuum. They happen to real people with complicated families, financial dependence, limited support, and circumstances outsiders will never fully understand.

I’m pro-choice because nobody should have to feel so alone and powerless that they risk their health trying to manage a pregnancy without adequate support.

I’m pro-choice because I know what it feels like to be afraid of your own mother’s reaction to your feelings about your own body.

My mother is entitled to her beliefs. But she isn’t the one who has to live through my pregnancy, face the medical consequences, give birth, or figure out how to build a future afterward. I am

I wish I had felt safe enough to be honest from the beginning. I wish I hadn’t spent so long suppressing my feelings because I was scared of being condemned by the person whose support I depend on most

People can debate abortion in abstract moral terms all they want. But I will always remember what it felt like to be terrified, to feel that I had no real choice, and to end up in a hospital for a week after attempting to take control of my own situation.

Nobody should have to risk their life because they feel they have no other way out.

That’s what being pro-choice means to me. It’s about autonomy, access to medical care, compassion, and recognizing that the person living through a pregnancy deserves a voice in what happens to them.

I don’t need everyone to agree with me. I just wish people would understand that behind every pregnancy is a human being whose circumstances, fears, and suffering cannot be reduced to someone else’s moral convictions.

The situation I'm in is the cause of someone else's moral stance and expectations. And I feel for the women that end up in similar situations as me. Alone, afraid and willing to go to desperate measures.

Taking away the legal right to abortions will not solve problems.

Adoption is not the "solution" to it either. Adoption comes with it's own traumas.

I'm now forced to carry a baby to term, ruin my body, bond with it inside of me and ruin relationships and hand it over to strangers.

You’ll get tons of people calling him a heretic for saying this. But I’m glad there’s some progress in the right direction.

I grew up in the church. Every denomination ranging from Orthodox, Catholic, to Presbyterian. Didn’t feel like it helped me.

Purity culture damaged me in ways I don’t want to describe. I walked away from the church, although I’m still non denominational and read the Bible on my own. I don’t consider myself an atheist.

And I used to be pro life due to dogmatic religious brainwashing, then I did my own research. There’s so many potential medical complications in pregnancies that it’s clearly not a debate in my opinion.

Abortions should absolutely be legal in every state up to 9 months. After that texas case, doctors should NOT have a limitation on when they can act.

And then it feels like many “pro lifers” are just pro forced birth. They’re pro life until that baby is born and actually needs to be taken care of. It’s extremely important to distinguish between being pro life and pro forced birth.

To top that off, Catholicism also views all contraception as inherently evil. Absolutely stupid. Orthodoxy also is skeptical about IUDs. It’s all just outdated teaching. Protestantism is the only sensible denomination when it comes to contraception, leaving it up to individual conscience.

Absolutely frustrating that religious institutions try to control people’s bodies, then claim it’s for moral reasons.

Are there any other pro choice christians in this sub? Do you keep your opinion silent?

Hi everyone! Me 22F and 2 of My Schoolmates are conducting an anonymous survey for a school research project exploring abortion, agency, and bodily autonomy. We are looking for a variety of perspectives and would really appreciate your participation! It only takes a few minutes and if you took time to share your thoughts we would more than appreciate it!

Thank you! 🩷

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeWKdbR1P8V0vj5y0ypZP-1-SNqcPnMoSPAUtrMRIcOQCtLJQ/viewform?usp=preview

I’m pro-choice, absolutely. I believe everyone should have the right to decide whether to continue a pregnancy.
I didn’t want to have an abortion. My circumstances left me with a decision I didn’t really want to make. So while I fully support the right to choose, my own abortion wasn’t something I experienced as empowering or positive. It was something I felt I had to do.
I was raised in a conservative Catholic country where abortion was often described as “murder”, so I carry a lot of inherited religious guilt around this. My own beliefs are actually very different — I believe in reincarnation, souls and the possibility of consciousness continuing beyond one lifetime.
Still, I obsessively read pro-choice stories because I’m looking for reassurance that I’m not a cruel person and that I don’t have to feel guilty forever. But then I often encounter discussions PL vs PC about “fetuses” and I feel unrepresented.
I took the medication at 4 weeks + 2 days. The ultrasound showed only a tiny 3 mm gestational sac, with no visible embryo or heartbeat. I know technically embryonic development had begun but the size would be max grain of sand. So I am getting angry when pro lifers screaming about tearing baby apart to me.
I keep going back and forth between peace and intense guilt. Sometimes I feel that it was extremely early, that nothing had really formed yet, and that I made the best decision I could in difficult circumstances. Then I read someone describing abortion as murder and suddenly I’m terrified that I’ve done something unforgivable.
I don’t even know exactly what I’m asking. Maybe I’m wondering if anyone else has felt somwhere in between these narratives** **— especially people who had an extremely early abortion, grew up with religious guilt.
How did you make peace with your experience?

This is what reshaping reproductive healthcare looks like when it happens quietly.

I see it all the time, even among some pro-choicers. Abortion is the termination or ending of a pregnancy, not the killing of a zef. The term and procedures are related to the woman's body and uterus, as in: was pregnant, is no longer pregnant. The outcome of the zef is not included, nor is it the intention to kill them. They most often just don't survive because they can't survive outside of the womb, and/or they were incompatible with life. If you could have an abortion at 12 weeks and the zef survives, then... it would survive. It's ultimately irrelevant when the whole point of abortion is to end the pregnancy (ie: being pregnant).

This is why when pro-lifers say "so you'd be okay with abortion up until birth?" I say, well.. yes! Because abortion is not the killing of the fetus, and at that point it would literally just be birth via induction, c-section, whatever. You'd end up with a live baby. It boggles my mind that people actually think you walk into a clinic at 35 weeks pregnant (healthy) asking for an abortion, and they'll just remove the baby from you and kill it.

You don't have to justify abortions later in pregnancy by saying "but those are super rare!" even though they are. And yes, most often abortions done that late are due to a serious, fatal anomaly and/or is threatening the mother's life. But remember that having the abortion is not with intention to "kill" the fetus, it's just a common outcome due to other factors.

Her opening statement is kind of a gotcha? maybe... But I didn't know that so many types of miscarriage needed abortion care. weird.