Emily Geiger

I help pro-lifers foster respectful and productive dialogues about abortion.
Director of Education & Outreach @EqualRightsInst

[Emily Geiger @GeigerEmilyA]

No, I don't support mandated vasectomies or mandated tubal sterilization. I’m not interested in forcing people to get pregnant or not. I’m not pro-life because I want to control people’s bodies or punish people for sex. I just think once a human exists, it's wrong to kill them.

[Emily Geiger @GeigerEmilyA]

PC: "My body, my choice."
PL: "Do you think that abortion should be legal after viability?"
PC: "No!"
PL: "So...you ARE okay with controlling women's bodies."
Most pro-choice people don't actually think you have a right to do ANYTHING you want with anything inside your body.

[Emily Geiger @GeigerEmilyA]

Sometimes when pro-life and pro-choice people talk, they talk only about abortion. Forgetting that people are complicated, multifaceted creatures can ruin your chance to form a meaningful friendship with someone.

[Emily Geiger @GeigerEmilyA]

Almost all pro-choice people make bodily rights arguments, but most of these people, well-meaning or not, are flagrantly inconsistent.

[Emily Geiger @GeigerEmilyA]

PC: A acorn isn't an oak tree, so a fetus isn't a child.
Me: An acorn isn't an oak TREE because tree is a stage of development term. But an acorn IS an oak. Sure, a fetus isn't a human ADULT. But a fetus IS a human.
There are good pro-choice arguments. This isn't one of them.

[Emily Geiger @GeigerEmilyA]

"Women deserve better than abortion."
True, but I also think women deserve better than vanilla ice cream, and that doesn’t mean Baskin Robbins is wrong to offer it. We shouldn’t be selling abortion as a second rate option. We should be selling abortion as an unthinkable choice.

[Emily Geiger @GeigerEmilyA]

Pregnancy is not exotic. Or a disease. It's a perfectly normal biological process that my body is preparing to do literally every month. Stop degrading women. Stop degrading pregnancy.

[Emily Geiger @GeigerEmilyA]

"Sex isn’t a contract to incubate a human within your body”
The problem is that pregnancy is being talked about like it is an ACTION instead of an EFFECT. When you consent to actions you are also consenting to that action’s consequences even if you consider them to be undesirable

[Emily Geiger @GeigerEmilyA]

One of the reasons we launched Equal Rights Institute is to help pro-life and pro-choice people to have better dialogues. I believe a necessary condition of having a good dialogue is accurately understanding what the person in front of you actually believes.

[Emily Geiger @GeigerEmilyA]

If you believe or act or speak like the other side is Snidely Whiplash, then you have no business bemoaning how polarized people are. You are part of the problem.

[Emily Geiger @GeigerEmilyA]

One of the most common pro-choice arguments is “don‘t like abortion, don‘t have one,” but that statement completely misses the point of our pro-life case. We don’t merely believe elective abortion is wrong for us individually. We believe elective abortion is wrong for everyone.

[Emily Geiger @GeigerEmilyA]

When you refer to a group of human beings as animals, you train your mind to be unempathetic towards them. When you train your mind to be unempathetic towards a group of people, you make it much easier to mistreat those people.

[Emily Geiger @GeigerEmilyA]

People 100% have rights to make choices about their own lives, but that doesn’t include choosing to kill someone else, especially someone who you put in that situation as a direct result of an action you willingly consented to. #endabortion

[Emily Geiger @GeigerEmilyA]

I am pro-life because we know the unborn are alive, because they’re growing. We know the unborn are human because they have human parents, and I think human beings like me and you are valuable.

[Emily Geiger @GeigerEmilyA]

If more than one person has misunderstood you about the same concept, that means it’s a really good candidate for a “Here’s what I don’t mean” clarification in the future.

[Emily Geiger @GeigerEmilyA]

There are many aspects to consider when weighing the moral gravity of a harmful act, and many of them would fall under a qualitative category of how much harm is being done to the victim or victims.

[Emily Geiger @GeigerEmilyA]

We're not interested in forcing people to get pregnant or to never get pregnant. We're not pro-life because we want to control people’s bodies or stop people from having sex. Being pro-life is all about being pro-equality and anti-violence against innocent people.

[Emily Geiger @GeigerEmilyA]

Don’t be so afraid of failing that you become paralyzed and don’t engage at all until you feel like you have something perfect.

[Emily Geiger @GeigerEmilyA]

We don’t need to defend the fact that there a lot of issues out there that involve innocent people being hurt. Human trafficking, teen bullying and racism are just a few of them. However, not all issues deserve equal amounts of resources.

[Emily Geiger @GeigerEmilyA]

It’s foolish and short-sighted to just blast people with the truth, with no thought to how they are going to respond to it.

[Emily Geiger @GeigerEmilyA]

It is very easy to go into an argument with your conclusion already decided, but doing this opens yourself up to self-deception. We encourage pro-life advocates to be open-minded, even about abortion.