What pro-life actually looks like

Kirsten Gillibrand, Democratic candidate for President, has released a policy initiative, the Family Bill of Rights: The right to a safe pregnancy, the right to give birth or adopt regardless of income or sexual orientation, the right to a safe and affordable nursery, and the right to affordable day care and universal pre-k. The release added:

It gives parents confidence that they're going to have the resources they need to meet the needs of their infant. It also gives them hope that their child is going to have all the resources and opportunities that they know that their child deserves.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville notes a contrast. She wrote that…

particularly in this moment of aggressive anti-choice horror, that this sort of policymaking is what being "pro-life" actually looks like.

McEwan quotes a Guttmacher study from 2005 that found 73% of women gave as their reason for an abortion, “I can’t afford a baby now.” That included no help from the father, not being able to work while pregnant or caring for a newborn, lacking health insurance.

Want to significantly reduce abortion? See Gillibrand’s Family Bill of Rights. Make sure having a baby isn’t a financial calamity.

But GOP lawmakers aren’t going for it because their real purpose isn’t to end abortion, but to make women’s lives miserable.

McEwan adds that she is delighted with the way Cory Booker and Julián Castro have been talking about these anti-abortion bills.

I am old enough to remember when even pro-choice male (and some female) Democratic politicians would practically crawl out their skins if obliged to say the word "abortion," no less vigorously defend it without qualification and caveat, and now here we are with four unapologetically pro-choice female senators running for president and two male candidates who can unyieldingly defend abortion access, who can say the word without a squeamishness that conveyed a deadly stigma.