Last Friday, January 19th, a very influential March For Life took place in Washington DC. While last weekend, named the “weekend for women”, many advocates for pro-choice spoke up for their beliefs at various marches. At the March For Life, Donald Trump, Pam Tebow, the mother of former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow, who is known for his conservative Christian beliefs and several members of Congress who oppose abortion rights spoke. These influential individuals added to the already present passion for the pro-life argument. The recent marches have reignited the abortion debate.

At this march, many individuals held up signs with the phrases “We don’t need Planned Parenthood” or “Defund Planned Parenthood” written on them. Yet while holding respect for those that support the pro-life argument, for their religion, affiliation, and beliefs–I disagree.

The most prolific argument for the pro-life argument is that to abort your child is to commit murder–that to abort a child, is to deny them of their human rights.

However, I believe it to be hypocritical to claim that you advocate for women’s rights while supporting these arguments. So long as a zygote, an embryo, or a fetus is attached to its mother, so long as it cannot voice its own opinions–it is not a fetus’s rights you are defending, but a women’s rights you are refusing.

For the sake of this argument,  I will agree that a fetus is a human life. Yet even so, the women that this fetus is attached to is human as well. If a fetus cannot survive on it’s own, it is fully dependent on its mother’s body.

Whether or not a fetus has a right to life, a fetus does not have “a right to use somebody else’s body” says Seth Millstein. “People have the right to refuse to donate their organs… even if doing so would save somebody else’s life”. The Right to Life proponents are naive because nothing in this world is black and white. If you claim that a fetus has a right to life as a human being, with human rights – than I ask, shouldn’t a women have these rights as well? A right to life does not imply “a right to live by threatening somebody else’s life” says Millstein.

“Fetus’ are not fully developed human beings” says Jayden Palermo, a student at Naugatuck High School. “They should not be able to impose upon another’s body without consent”.

If the criminalization of abortion is put into action, hundreds or thousands of babies will be abandoned. Even if those who support the pro-life argument manage to force women to give birth, they cannot force these women to take care of their children.

In Romania, “the ban on abortion sparked a nationwide orphan crisis, as roughly 150,000 unwanted newborns were placed in nightmarish state-run orphanages. Many of those orphans now suffer from severe sever mental and physical health problem” says Millstein.

To support a belief that is your own, that is asked of you by your religion, is a belief for you to claim. However it is not a belief for you to impose upon those that do not share that belief. To persuade someone into understanding your argument is justified, to march for awareness of your values is rational, but to march for a country full of an estimated 125.5 million women to comply to your beliefs is distasteful to the women’s rights movement. Banning abortions violates a women’s rights to obtain control over her body.

“E. Scott Lloyd, the anti-abortion activist who heads the Trump administration’s refugee resettlement program, tried to prevent a 17-year-old rape victim in federal detention from getting an abortion, according to court documents” says the Los Angeles Times. Though Trump will continues to strive to ban abortion, women all over the country will continue to fight for their their rights.