“Women Obama ‘08″ – Contradiction?

I saw a bumper sticker this morning that read “Women Obama ‘08″ (meaning women who support Obama). Because of President Obama’s stance on abortion, I see this as a contradiction. His defense of the legality of abortion is that women should have the same sexual rights as men. Implicitly, his argument is that women should have the same right to sex without consequential pregnancy that men have. Therefore, he argues for and believes in legalized, on-demand abortion in the name of gender equality.

First, due to the intimacy inherent to sex, there are emotional consequences even when there is no consequential pregnancy. While there is such a thing as “pregnancy-free sex” and there is such a thing as “ending a pregnancy by abortion,” there is no such thing as “consequence-free sex.” . Defending “consequence-free sex” allows both sex and women to be handled cheaply. So, it is in direct opposition to women because most of the negative emotional consequences of “cheap” sex fall on women.

Secondly, women bear all of the emotional and psychological consequences of abortion, in addition to the physical ones. Sex always has consequences; abortion does not change that. When a woman becomes pregnant there are physical, emotional, and psychological connections between the mother and her baby.  Abortion does not change that she is already a mother; it merely takes her baby’s life, and leaves her with emotional and psychological consequences just like any other time a mother loses her child.

Therefore, both ”consequence-free sex” and abortion are damaging to women; and “Women Obama ‘08″ is a contradiction.