Mother

When I read "Abortion Is a Motherhood Issue" by Judith Arcana it was such a relief to read something so calm. Not to say it wasn't thought provoking, argued well and well written, because it was, but usually when reading and discussing abortion the two polarized sides spend all of their energy shouting back and forth at each other. There is a great anger and it can just get so loud....
And so I am thankful there was peace in this article. Arcana is pro-choice but I found her to be really interesting in that she believes all women who get pregnant are mothers. Even if the fetus is aborted or there is a miscarriage etc, from the time of conception, she believes all of those women to be mothers making a decision. This is unusual given how pro-choice supporters conceal and reject the word mother until the baby is born. They are simply women making decisions. Mother only factors into the equation when there is a visible child in her arms. I thought this discrepancy between words to be a bit tedious, but from reading the article it is understandable why Arcana wants to make this change in word choice. If the women are mothers from conception, the choices they make throughout the pregnancy are mothering choices for the good of the mother and child. She cannot be judged and criticized for her decisions as mothers know best. It becomes far easier to shut out the opinions of others, for instance the pro-life supporters who often use the word mother to guilt women into keeping the child, when the word mother gains a positive, responsible and intelligent connotation.
However this article did make me think of the film After Tiller in the sense that most abortion doctors, especially the late-term abortion doctors that we saw, very clearly identified the pregnant individuals as women and not mothers. If the doctors said mother, the pregnant women would feel even more guilt and express more distress and emotion. Keeping women as women allows the pregnant individuals to see themselves as just one person, one women faced with a decision; not a mother, someone who is responsible for herself as well as her children. And certainly in this situation, I think that this is best. Mother is still such a strong word.