Care and the Limits of a Pro-Choice Discourse

Abstract

Abstract The global pandemic exposed many flaws in the gendered political economy. It also illuminated how essential care is to our economy and to our flourishing. Yet, when care is dependent on a capitalist system that relies on competition, there will always be people who receive care and those that will not. In such a system, care is wrongly perceived to be a “choice” one can opt into or out of. This short essay grapples with the discourse of care as a choice, particularly around reproductive decisions. Choices offered within a neoliberal market logic fail to understand the political relationalities of such choices. Drawing on my personal experience of an abortion and other examples from the first year of COVID-19, this essay demonstrates how little choice there is in matters of care; care connects and disconnects one another regardless of personal choices. If matters of care persist in the realm of the market reliant on rational economic autonomous actors, then the many interrelationalities of care that the pandemic exposed will not have any impact on attaining a more caring society. This is particularly important given the nature of abortion politics in the United States. I argue that abortion is health care, and is often the most caring decision a pregnant person can make for the world they are trying to maintain, continue, and repair (per Tronto 1993). Care is not a choice; it is fundamental to human society.