I'm about to do the unthinkable. I'm about to write a pro-choice column ... against abortion.
A few weeks ago, I went to see the pro-life documentary, "The Silent Scream." As I expected, I left the film horrified at the brutality it represented. I even agreed with its message that abortion is evil. But, again as I expected, I walked out as unshakably pro-choice as ever. Does that make any sense?
It's not really so unthinkable after all. I'm certainly not alone in the ambiguity of my attitude about the issue. In fact, I fit right into the "muddled majority" of Americans who seem to accept abortion as both legal and something they hope to avoid. That attitude is reflected by the latest fracture within the Republican Party, now debating whether to withdraw the pro-life plank from its party platform. Some GOP members believe this would remove a major impediment to Dole's candidacy in the minds of the majority of Americans, many of whom agree -- whether they support abortion itself or not -- that a woman's right to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy before viability is essential to liberty under the Constitution.
But even those who support abortion as a right often need to condemn it morally. This highlights a major weakness in the pro-choice movement. As Naomi Wolf noted in the October 16 issue of The New Republic, pro-choicers have relinquished the "moral frame" around the issue of abortion, relying on political rhetoric which avoids the issue of life and death, rhetoric in which the fetus means nothing. Because the Constitution defines rights according to the legal definition of a "person," some in the pro-choice movement have adopted a language that denies that personhood to the fetus, dehumanizing it. It becomes "uterine material" or "tissue." I consider this a cheapened view of human life.
Of course, this dehumanization isn't limited to the pro-choice movement. In "The Silent Scream," the pregnant woman was herself dehumanized, portrayed as merely a "vessel." But still, the pro-life slogan "Abortion stops a beating heart," is unquestionably, medically, true.
The pro-choice movement actually weakens itself politically when it fails to speak to the lost middle of Americans, people who are willing to support abortion but not for trivial or selfish reasons, not without an appreciation of its ethical complexity.
Freedom means that women must be free to choose themselves over a child. Indeed, women with few economic choices may be obligated to choose themselves.
A woman, I believe, has that right, but she can't lie to herself about what she is doing. She needs to take responsibility for the decision. Only when the pro-choice movement calls for abortion rights in the context of personal responsibility and individual conscience can it consolidate the support of our country's center. Abortion rights will be safest when we're willing to bring morality into the picture.
Actually, both sides of the abortion debate are really asking the wrong questions. The issue is not black-and-white, legal or illegal. When President Clinton campaigned in 1992, he envisioned a world in which abortion would be "safe, legal and rare." The rare part never really became a political goal for either side. Pro-life advocates seem to feel that making abortion illegal would make it suddenly disappear, forgetting the crowded back alleys of the years before the Roe v. Wade decision.
Being pro-choice, I'm sometimes nervous about advancing the idea that we should work to lower the abortion rate. Abortion is a right, the response comes, why should it have to be rare?
I will fight for a woman's right to make her own moral decisions and to control her own destiny, but I would rather fight to eliminate her need to avail herself of that right. Abortion ends over a quarter of pregnancies in this country, particularly among women in my age group.
That high rate is a sign of failure. But there are steps Americans can take to lower it. We can continue funding Title X, the family planning program nearly eliminated last year by the House Appropriations Committee. We can promote realistic sex education and contraceptive research. We can look at adoption as more than just a tool of the pro-life movement.
Instead of forever debating the question of legality, we should be working to address the problem of abortion by working to create a world where coerced sex results in serious jail time, contraceptives are affordable and safe and the basic economic needs of every baby born are met. We'll never completely eliminate the need for abortion, but it would be a rare and grievous event in such a world. In that world, as Naomi Wolf writes, "Passionate feminists might well hold candlelight vigils at abortion clinics ... commemorating and saying good-bye to the dead."
