This week, headlines heralded Northern Ireland’s new abortion law as “triumph” for choice, but women are being sold a cheap lie.

One time in university dorms, a friend tried to give me a “pro-choice” t-shirt to wear. When I told her I disagreed with the message, she stared, almost choked, and mustering all indignation, spluttered, “That’s NOT what a feminist looks like!”

The words stayed with me for years – not because I worried about whether she thought I was feminist, but it because it truly challenged the meaning of the ideology itself. If feminism is really just “equality between men and women”, and my allegiance to the label is demanded by my millennial peers; then what does that look like as I seek respect, dignity and human rights for my fellow womankind?

Termination is usually sought by girls in very difficult life circumstances, and is a very hard and very painful decision. Many seek abortion because of pressure from manipulative partners; some, because of social stigma; and still others out of simple financial shortcoming. According to a study by the Guttmacher Institute, a large proportion of abortion-seekers come from underprivileged minority backgrounds: in the USA, black women are most likely to face abortion in their lives, followed secondly by women from Hispanic communities.

About 1% of abortions in the States take place as a response to rape, which amounts to a significant number of instances every year.

It’s clear, then, that abortion isn’t a light decision. It’s soaked with the pain and anguish of women bearing the weight of societal discrimination, or even physical brutality on their shoulders. However, the demand that we stand idly by while this procedure is marketed as the “best option” for young, or poor, or struggling girls should be a very bitter pill for any real feminist to swallow.

Enabling abortion ironically reinforces the structures of discrimination that pressure women into “needing” one, or being “unable” to cope without one. Why are we, as a generation, so docile as to allow poverty or violence or unsupportive families to drive women into clinics? According to leading pro-choice psychologist David Ferguson, the claim that abortion can improve mental health is false; rather, evidence suggests a causal link with an increased likelihood of anxiety, substance abuse and depression. For women whose very pregnancy was caused by violence to start with, this “bandaid on a broken arm” solution only compounds their trauma, forcing victims of rape now to also deal with the invisible emotional scarring of a termination. Sweeping pressure, abuse and poverty under the rug of a Planned Parenthood does not help empower any of these women outlined to break the chains of their circumstances and offer all the potential of life to their child, either through motherhood or through adoption. Imagine the lives and opportunities that could thrive if only we would rally around vulnerable pregnant girls with real financial, practical and sustainable support. Abortion, on the other hand, isn’t pro-choice; it frames us with no-choice, and we can offer better.

Freeing our world from abortion might sound like idealism, but so did a world without legal slavery back in the early 1800s. Change is difficult, but sometimes it’s necessary in order to create a societal structure that really is better for everyone. We need to break the chain somewhere. For every abortion that covers the weakness of an unsupportive boyfriend, there is another man learning that he doesn’t need to step up and be a father. For every abortion that covers up insufficient welfare support, there is another politician learning that he doesn’t need to invest in providing childcare for working mums. For every abortion that supports a culture of son-preference, there is another little girl looking on and learning that she, as a woman, isn’t valuable. Rather than raising a woman’s voice, an abortion-complicit culture silences it.

Being pro-life, then, isn’t just being anti-abortion. It’s being anti-rape, anti-sexist, anti-abuse, and so much more. Our culture and all our people will not only survive, but thrive, if we strive to build a community where abortion was not just unavailable, but utterly unnecessary. If the future is female, we have to get serious about supporting the lives and flourishing of all women, including pregnant women and mothers; from the womb, until the board room, and beyond.