Yeah, Life Begins at Conception —So What?

It's time abortion rights supporters stopped dancing around it: Life begins at conception, argues Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon. "Throughout my own pregnancies, I never wavered for a moment in the belief that I was carrying a human life inside of me," she writes. "And that doesn’t make me one iota less solidly pro-choice." Indeed, Planned Parenthood now eschews the pro-choice/pro-life terminology altogether, and Williams thinks that's a "long overdue" move; it only strengthens abortion opponents when "we squirm so uncomfortably at the ways in which they’ve repeatedly appropriated the concept of 'life.'"

"We wind up drawing stupid semantic lines in the sand—first trimester abortion vs. second trimester vs. late term," as if "there’s a single magic moment when a fetus becomes a person." The uncomfortable truth is this: "All life is not equal," Williams writes. We make decisions about life all the time, from war to the death penalty to care for the terminally ill. "A fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss." Click for Williams' full column. (More abortion stories.)