Progress on Abortion Thought: Working Paper A
Thomas LyonsWhenever people with differing opinions debate their respective positions, finding common ground is integral. The abortion debate, I suspect, is no different. It’s entirely possible that progress on abortion dialogue might only occur with a similar pursuit towards what is held mutually, and not an emphasis on where the camps differ.
Perhaps the following statement could be a good starting point:
A society where abortion is rare but freely chosen is superior to one where abortion is prevalent but freely chosen.
That is, all else being equal, the act of an abortion isn’t a part of anyone’s vision for an ideal world.
My hope is that many in the pro-choice camp might be willing to admit this. Even if one disagrees with a certain humanity of the unborn, there still lies the potential for human life, which is not meaningless. Abortions are often chosen as a backup to botched family planning efforts; while we may disagree on the application, my hope is that we can all admit that sexual responsibility is a fair price to pay to limit aborted pregnancies. Beyond failed family planning, though, I’ll be so bold as to assume we can all agree that rape and incest are never good. (Although using said admission to justify an abortion is an entirely different discussion.)
My fear, though, is that some in the pro-choice camp may be apprehensive about admitting this. From a certain extreme pro-choice view, we are to be entirely neutral as to the act of an abortion. We’re to ignore that it can be gruesome and inhumane, and we’re also to disregard that it often hurts women (or stick our heads in the sand and believe that it doesn’t). I don’t know how large of a segment a fair moderate camp might be (I suspect it’s quite large), but I imagine that, by admitting my middle-of-the-road statement, these firm-yet-moderate pro-choicers may believe they risk a divide in their own camp with those who are of a more extreme pro-choice persuasion – that somehow they’re less pro-choice for admitting abortion is less than ideal.
I also hope that the pro-life camp will be willing to embrace this outside-the-box ethos. It involves, for the pro-lifer, a twofold admission: the end of abortion is the end in mind, irregardless of abortion’s legality, and ending abortion and banning abortion may not be one in the same. I fear that firm-yet-moderate pro-lifers may have a similar fright to their side’s extreme wing; that by being open to the possibility of abortion ending in a society where it remains legal somehow makes them less pro-life.
I think that open-minded moderates from both blocs can forward an enhanced dialogue centered on this admission. Its application may include the following:
1.) A respect for families’ and women’s privacy surrounding their healthcare decisions. This includes, at least for the foreseeable future, the status quo as to abortion’s legalization.
2.) The price of said respect for healthcare privacy is sexual responsibility. I happen to think that’s more than fair.
3.) Sexual responsibility includes at best a society-wide preference for abstinence’s 0% failure rate, or at worst a firm resolve to maintain a healthy pregnancy should artificial contraception fail.
4.) A public proclamation that abortion, while legal, is not ideal. People who do not want to see abortion banned should not find the phrase, “Choose Life” at all weird or offensive. Those who do not want to see abortion occur at all should not find the phrase “Respect Privacy” the same.
5.) Dialogue of sex, abortion, family planning and the decisions inherent therein ought lose their current taboo status.
Both camps at present have a certain attachment to what the law says, and to seeing to it that their abortion ethos be legally codified. Pardon me while I suggest that it may be more important to maintain a certain legal status quo for those of the pro-choice camp, while not being inherently necessary to achieve the preferred end for the pro-life camp — serious reduction/elimination of abortion.
The current abortion debate has no moderate voice; with extremists dominating dialogue, progress may be impossible. Consider this essay as the first working paper of a discussion that leads to respect for both “reproductive freedom” and the unborn.
September 18th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
The discussion you’re trying to start here is reasonable conceptually, but odds are against it in practice. The largest counterpoint to your argument will come from the pro-life camp as they will not stop their cause short of their goal: to end legalized abortion. They believe that each and EVERY life, born or unborn, is worth fighting for (at least the reasonable ones who aren’t contradicting themselves by blowing up abortion clinics think this way), so they will not make room for any convenient, private abortions because a life will still have been lost. An unborn child will have been terminated with no one fighting for it. That will be unacceptable to the pro-life group regardless of the conceptual value of this vision.
September 18th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
I think Scott has a point. Both sides claim to represent an exclusive moral imperative. From the perspective of either a pro-life advocate or a pro-choice advocate, the “moderate option” has little appeal. There doesn’t appear to be a conceptual middle ground that even partially satisfies both sets of claim to truth. How would you respond to that observation, Tom?
September 19th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
Actually, I think there is a middle ground in the abortion debate, but not one necessarily contemplated in this essay. It’s one where abortion is lawful, but restricted. Specifically, one where abortion is legal in the first trimester, but not the third trimester. (Medical science makes the second trimester trickier all the time. I’ll come back to that.) Though they are not vocal about it, I think the majority of Americans’ views fall into this middle ground. (The statistics on support for legal abortion by trimester bear me out - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_United_States#Number_of_abortions_in_United_States.)
The vocal pro-lifers say that all fetuses are living babies. The vocal pro-choicers say that all fetuses are lumps of tissue growing inside of women who should be able to choose whether to keep them. The silent moderates seem to think that somewhere along the way - somewhere between conception and birth - the lump of tissue turns into a living baby. It’s not that surprising a position. Ultrasound imaging creates that impression in people who see pictures of developing fetuses, and most people know someone who was born premature, sometimes at a stage early enough for their parents to have lawfully aborted them. (It’s interesting to note that technically, though its holding has since been expanded, even Roe v. Wade was limited to non-viable fetuses.) For this reason, I don’t think that the moderates, to whom this essay’s argument will most appeal, will ever support an unlimited right to privacy regarding abortion. Just based on the statistics in Wikipedia, 54% of Americans (the number who believe that abortion should be illegal in the 3rd trimester less the number who believe it should be illegal in the 1st trimester) appear to think that, although a handful of cells two weeks in a woman’s womb is not a baby, a fetus that has been in there eight months is. Those people won’t support an abortion policy that allows the eight-month fetus to be terminated.
I also don’t think either group of extremists will willingly surrender their positions for a more moderate one. To admit to a middle ground between one extreme (”it is a baby from conception!”) or the other (”it’s a lump of soulless tissue until it exits the mother’s body!”), would put the extremists in the same position that the silent majority is in - a position that people are uncomfortable articulating (hence the silence) because it suggests a blurry line between abortion and infanticide. Absent a handy mandate from God or Science that viability begins at X weeks, no later and no earlier, it’s frankly easier, for the purposes of moral consistency, to hold an extreme view on abortion.
September 19th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
The trick is twofold:
a.) Pro-choicers have to embrace the idea of blasting the practice of abortion, whilst still feeling that it ought remain legal, and
b.) Abortion’s end should come faster if it were legal and publically shunned, then illegal and underground.
Should the pro-life camp be more concerned with what the law says about abortion, or about protecting the lives of the unborn? Should the pro-choice camp be more concerned about what women actually choose, or with their right to make said choice? I’m asking the world - regardless of your stance on abortion’s legal statues - to prefer a world where abortion is rare and legal vs. a world where it is prevalent and legal. In such a world, fewer unborn babies die (yay pro-lifers), while “reproductive freedom” is not infringed (yay pro-choicers).
As both camps are, by and large, used to dealing with their opponents’ extreme sects, this won’t happen over night. If only there were a website where free dialogue like this were possible that don’t bank on biases and intellectual prejudice and make such a dialogue impossible…
September 19th, 2007 at 6:24 pm
Anne,
I like where you’re coming from, but you’re still not divorcing the issue’s legality (or illegality) from its morality (or immorality). That is at the heart at the debate’s retarded dialogue.
Many - perhaps not most - pro-choicers recognize abortion as immoral, but hesitate to ban it. By removing the legality issue, we focus on it as a moral act. In a society where it were legally free, but highlighted as morally wrong from all conceivable angles, its rate of occurrence, I suspect, would nosedive.
September 19th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
there are other ways to be socially moderate than focusing on 1) private morality or 2) viability.
e.g: economically. ‘Feminists for Life’ are a wonderful, moderate group. they view abortion as a form of exploitation of poorer women who want to go to college and work for powerful men. they also view it as a cop-out for an improved government/social system of helping poor families have children. or… the whole industry is supported by a nation of selfish men who are not fully committed to their wives and families. on all of these accounts, FFL wants to illegalize all elective abortion in addition to pushing economic reform. at my med-schoo, we even had their president, Serrin Foster, come and speak.
yet another way to be moderate would be to support the illegalization of abortion for all reasons except ones precisely delineated by a codified system. ectopic pregnancy (of course. always was before ‘73), rape, incest. perhaps even a host of Ob/Gyn situations but this might not pass due to impossibility of medical consensus. (yeah, doctors do lie about risk). it’s always interesting to ask a pro-choice person, would you be willing to ban the majority of abortions which are purely elective?
i like Tom’s thoughts on sexual responsibility. it’s precisely what FFL advocates. our entire society needs sexual responsibility in terms of where we put our money… into families or into materialism?
October 1st, 2007 at 9:56 pm
Two problems that I see.
First, I don’t think the program you outline would actually lead to abortions becoming rare. A great many abortions are committed by people who already think they’re wrong, so I don’t think that propaganda on the wrongfulness of abortion will actually reduce the number of abortions by the orders of magnitude you suggest here.
Second, your proposal is essentially one for mutual disarmament. Any contracts prof will tell you that the trickiest thing about a bargained-for exchange of promises is who goes first, because the person who goes first very often puts themself at a disadvantage. And that’s where you have clear parties to the agreement and legal enforcement mechanisms. The pro-life movement and the pro-choice movement are nowhere near being that clearly defined and clearly organized. And there’s no possible legal enforcement mechanism, even if you’re proposed grand bargain was enshrined into law. You’re asking pro-choicers to actually propagandize the moral evils of abortion and there is just no way the law can do that (in fact, it would probably be an unconstitutional infringement on free speech rights); you’re asking pro-lifers to agree that abortion should be legal in perpetuity but there’s no way of doing that law that cannot be reversed.