Pro-Lifers Should be Allowed at the Women’s March

Sophia Bouyakzan

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Image obtained through Google Commons.

Women who are a part of anti-abortion groups, which includes one in six women that supported Hillary Clinton, have expressed feeling unaccepted at the Women’s March. This issue will likely continue to plague women’s movements in America under the incoming administration according to Quartz Media.

The march was originally unfocused in its mission; however, in past weeks, it has become more defined, and Planned Parenthood is now the biggest sponsor of the march, according to The Washington Post. The Atlantic reported that a few hundred pro-life women planned to attend the Women’s March on Washington; however, the decision to be comprehensive was greatly criticized on social media.

Granted, organizers convey that anti-abortion women are welcome to attend the Women’s March; their involvement with what the event represents may become problematic if the platform laid out by the organizers is a sign of the feminist movement, according to The New York Times. Many women dispute that by confining the march to reproductive issues, its organizers found an opportunity to unite women en masse.

History proves that abortions will still occur even if they become illegal. Proponents of these reproductive rights consider that those opposing abortion are refusing women safe access to these procedures. In fact, the political term, feminism, is the idea that women should be able to choose what they do with their bodies, according to The Washington Post.

The New York Times reports that the relationship between reproductive rights and feminism goes back decades. To the initiation of the second wave feminism in the 1960s, in which the first wave concluded in women winning the right to vote.

The march should be open to everyone, even if they do not comply with every part of its mission.