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Michael Pence

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington, DC 20500

Dear Vice President Michael Pence,

I am writing to you about to the current judgements you hold against abortion. I understand you believe abortion is immoral and should again be illegal in the United States. However, I urge you to consider eliminating a woman’s right to choose would not only have a negative impact on women across the U.S. but it would also be a social injustice. Making abortion illegal would obstruct our sacred human rights.

In 1973, Roe v. Wade established that here in the U.S., women have the freedom to choose if they wish to continue their pregnancy. I believe that if this court action was appealed, abortions would be recriminalized, leading women to use desperate and dangerous measures to end their pregnancies. This is important to me because as a woman, I would want the ability to choose motherhood rather than it be forced upon me. I want this choice to be accessible, safe, and to remain legal in the United States. I want all women to have the ability to choose motherhood.

It is known that you believe the fetus has rights, which makes abortion immoral. At the March for Life this spring, you stated, “life is winning here again in America.” You say the fetus has the right to life, which you could argue is protected under the Universal Declaration of Rights, Article 3. This claim of full rights to life is the basis of the pro-life argument. But I believe this defense tends to forget that “if a woman houses a child, it should be remembered that she is the person housing it” (Thompson 1971, p. 53).

A woman’s body is her property. That right is protected under the Universal Declaration of Rights, Article 17. This right declares that an individual has the right to “own property alone” and “no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.” This can be applied to a woman’s right to choose because they are the sole owners of their bodies, meaning the fetus does not have the right to the mother’s body. Women also have the right to life and liberty, which are protected under our own Constitution and the UDHR, Article 3. Women have the right to live their life according to their discretion and should not be forced into motherhood. We have the right of liberty to decide if they truly want to be mothers.

As you can see in this situation, women have more rights protected than the fetus which should give them the right to choose whether or not to continue their pregnancy. A common objection to this argument that “to have the right to do something does not mean that exercising that right is morally praiseworthy” (Skimulet 2015, p. 357). Pro-life activists claim the woman is not morally correct when terminating her pregnancy. Does the fetus or as you say “unborn child,” have the right to life at the expense of the mother? The right to life that you claim a fetus has does not guarantee the use of another human being’s body (Thompson 1971, p. 57). Simply because the fetus has the right to life does not make it morally permissible to use another person’s body against their will to continue their life. To do so is to restrain a woman against her will. It is not morally permissible to imprison a woman in her own body.

When abortion was illegal, women felt trapped in their own body. The government forced women to continue pregnancies that these women felt incapable of. They were not allowed to exercise their right to property because the government revoked that right. They were not allowed to live their life as they pleased because they were forced to carry a fetus against their will. Depicted in the 1965 Enforced Labour: Repeal the Abortion Laws poster, women were jailed in their own bodies because the government decided to enforce only what they saw as morally permissible. Due to this obstruction of women’s rights, women used desperate measures to terminate their pregnancies on their own. Within the documentary When Abortion Was Illegal: Untold Stories, Women describe how they feared for their lives, both from dying from an abortion and from the possible prosecutions of receiving one. A woman bled to death from trying to abort herself after being turned away from her doctor. The doctor, like many others, turned her and other patients who were in need away due to fear of being prosecuted and due to the possibility of a malicious reputation (Fadiman, 1992). This is perhaps a glimpse of what life for women could look like if abortion was made illegal again.

Vice President Pence, I ask you to rethink the judgments you hold against abortion. I ask you to understand the rights that a woman has and not attempt to take these rights away. I urge you to remember that these rights are upheld by sacred documents. I wish you to consider abortion as morally permissible and allow it to remain legal in the United States. I do not wish for women’s rights to move backwards which would force women to again use desperate measures in an attempt to hold on to their life and liberty.

Respectfully,

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Englewood, CO 80110

LIST OF REFERENCES

Enforced Labour: Repeal the Abortion Laws. [Between 1965 and 1980] [Image] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2015649230/.

Fadiman D. (Producer and Director). (1992). When Abortion Was Illegal: Untold Stories [Motion Picture].  United States: Independent Film.

Simkulet W. (2015) Abortion, Property, and Liberty. The Journal of Ethics, 20 (4), 373-383. Retrieved from http://0-link.springer.com.skyline.ucdenver.edu/article/10.1007%2Fs10892-015-9201-x.Thompson, J. J. (1971) A Defense of Abortion. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 1 (1), 47-66. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2265091.