I have a question. What's so bad about abortion?
Pro-choicers consistently talk about wanting to "eliminate the need for abortion" or "lower the abortion rate." For one, during his famous speech at Notre Dame last May, Obama called for pro-choice and pro-life Americans to come together to "reduce the number of abortions." Similarly, Hilary Clinton says she has a goal of "keeping abortion safe, legal, and rare." Even Planned Parenthood, no less than the leading abortion provider in the nation, wants the public to think they are in the business of lowering abortion numbers (though their private words and actions suggest otherwise).
If these people truly believe abortions empower women, why would they want to reduce them? If anything, they should be encouraging more women to abort their children. And if they are so convinced that the abortion choice is absolutely fundamental to a woman's freedom and societal status, why wouldn't they want it to not only be chosen, but chosen often?
My confusion continues. Pro-choicers also have a tendency to make exceptions and qualifications for their position. I call this common position "pro-choice-but." They will say things like, "I'm pro-choice, but I would never get an abortion," or, "I'm pro-choice, but I would never recommend abortion to anyone." Well, why wouldn't you get an abortion? Why wouldn't you recommend it? Please, tell me: What's wrong with abortion?
When I consider this phenomenon, I also think about pro-choice rhetoric. Nearly all pro-choicers insist on being labeled pro-choice– not pro-abortion. Never pro-abortion. And yet, it's obvious abortion is the choice they are defending when they say they are pro-choice, as no one is trying to take away the choices of parenting or adoption. Why such opposition toward being associated with abortion? Why not come out and say what choice you support?
My point is this. If abortion doesn't take an innocent human life, no justification is necessary. But if it does, no justification is adequate.
I truly believe the reason pro-choicers are so uneasy about abortion is the same reason pro-lifers are. It doesn't sit well with anyone. All of us know it is wrong to kill an innocent human being. And all of us know that is exactly what abortion does.
Pennsylvania governor Robert Casey once said, "Legal abortion will never rest easy on this nation's conscience. It will continue to haunt the consciences of men and women everywhere." My pro-choice friends make me think these words are true.
So let's be honest. I think we all know what's so bad about abortion.
Vita Pro Omni!
As a pro-choice woman, I have to argue that pro-choicers who claim that they want abortion kept "safe legal and rare" are coming from a historical standpoint. Being pro-choice does not mean that one believes abortion is a perfect solution. It's not. It's a difficult decision to horrible predicament, and it's a decision that women having been making forever, even when abortion was illegal. The fact of the matter is that abortions rates around the world have stayed about the same regardless of legality. Abortion is a scary and heartbreaking decision, but legality doesn't stop women from seeking them out. The difference is not the number of children saved, but the number of women brutally hacked up by back-alley "doctors". In fact, legitimate doctors were the first to question legalizing abortion- because they were the ones who saw the horrible things that were happening to women who ignored the law in their most desperate moment. If we truly want to reduce abortions the answer lies not in the legal status of the procedure, but in educating the general public about reproductive safety and increasing public assistance for single or low income mothers. The best way to eliminate abortion is to eliminate the need for abortion. We need to teach young people that safe sex is the only way to practice sex. Whether you believe in abstinence until marriage or not, teens and young adults are going to have sex. Adults might not like it, but it's happening. If we ignore the needs of teens when it comes to sex, we are only hurting our children by putting them in the position to make a decision to either raise a child, give their baby up for adoption, or have an abortion. Regardless of the choice, the situation will be heartbreaking for a sixteen or seventeen year old. These kids need to know how to get birth control, and to know that it's better to be safe than sorry. We need to reinforce that lesson throughout adulthood. We also need to step up our game on providing funding to assist single mothers. Many programs and charities that promise to provide financial support for children as an alternative to abortion turn away as soon as the child reaches a certain age, but the cost of raising a family certainly doesn't stop at age two. If society is going to claim to assist women, then it should do so whole-heartedly. Making abortion illegal isn't stopping abortion, it's turning a blind eye. It's pretending everything is better. It's forcing women back into back-alley horror stories. It's abandoning young uneducated people. Pro-choice isn't about wanting abortion to be prevalent. Safe, legal, and rare isn't about hypocrisy. It's about realizing that we can't turn away from the reality that women will do anything in desperation- even if it's illegal and even if it's fatal. It's about realizing that in order to end abortion we have to end unwanted pregnancies through education. It's about realizing that if we expect women to kept their children, we have to make it possible for them to do so. Pro-choice isn't about liking abortion, it's about recognizing reality.
ReplyDeleteHey! Thanks so much for your comment. Although you and I disagree, I feel like I kind of was able to “get inside your head” as I was reading your post- it was well written. So know that I think/ hope I really do “hear” you.
ReplyDeleteBeing pro-choice may not mean you think abortion is a perfect solution, but it does mean you think abortion is a legitimate solution. This seems to be where the pro-lifer and pro-choicer differ. All of us are in agreement that difficult life circumstances exist. They definitely do. The question is whether or not we can kill in response to those difficult life circumstances. The pro-lifer measures the moral dimensions and says no; the pro-choicer measures the moral dimensions and says yes.
To say that one’s stance on abortion comes from a historical standpoint seems pretty arbitrary. Why don’t we keep any other crime, like rape, legal since it has been committed historically whether it was legal or not? That may sound silly, but if the goal is saving lives of women, legalizing rape makes just as much since as legalizing abortion: rapists often kill the women they rape to keep from being reported to the police, so legalizing rape would take away that incentive. And while it is true that abortions always have happened and always will happen (legal or illegal), to say that “abortion rates around the world have stayed about the same regardless of legality" is false. They actually drop dramatically when abortion is illegal, because illegality substantially deters people from an act. That’s why we have laws. We can never keep everyone from breaking them, but we can set a standard that teaches what behaviors are and are not acceptable in society in hopes that everyone can live together relatively peacefully.
You might be surprised to learn that the Alan Guttmacher Institute (Planned Parenthood’s research arm) shows that in the 15 years prior to the legalization of abortion, the average number of women dying from illegal abortions in the entire U.S. was 136 per year and dropping. Of course it is a tragedy when even one woman dies in this way, but there are actually far more women dying from abortions today than when abortion was illegal- not because abortions are less safe (obviously, they are generally more safe when legal), but because they are so much more prevalent. Today, though a smaller proportion of women are physically hurt by abortion, a much larger number of women are physically hurt by abortion since so many more women are getting them.
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ReplyDeleteAs for reducing abortions, I am completely with you that we need to have phenomenal public assistance for single or low-income mothers. Nothing less is acceptable. It is encouraging that the hundreds of pregnancy care centers across the U.S. today create what is arguably the largest grass roots/ volunteer movement in history, but it is still not enough, and we need to be doing more. Where I disagree is that “safe sex is the only way to practice sex.” Recent studies show that abstinence really does work, and that “safe sex” doesn’t (One such article suggesting this was in the Washington Post on February 2. You can go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/01/AR2010020102628.html?hpid=topnews if you’re interested). The fact of the matter is, there is no such thing as “safe sex.” Putting the moral component of birth control aside, every birth control method runs a risk of failure resulting in pregnancy. Condoms are incredibly cheap, available, prevalent, and easy to get in the U.S… yet we still have almost 4000 abortions every day. If birth control is supposed to solve the abortion problem and we have tons of birth control in America, where are all these unwanted pregnancies coming from? Some, yes, do come from underprivileged teens who may not be educated about sex, but educating them should involve teaching abstinence, since that is the only fool-proof method of preventing unwanted pregnancies. Teaching them “safe sex” with birth control when we know birth control doesn’t always work is setting at least some of these teens up for failure. And finally, I would argue that contraception is not only not the solution to the abortion problem, it is the root of it. The contraceptive mentality is, by its nature, against life (“Contra” is Latin for against or opposite. “Conceptio” is a Latin verb meaning "to conceive."). So when a teenage girl who is on the pill has sex, learns that her pill didn’t work, and then becomes pregnant, what is she almost certainly going to do? She will get an abortion. The fact that she was on the pill tells us that she was opposed to having a child from the start.
Being pro-life is not about turning a blind eye to the abortion problem. Pro-life groups are the ones trying to reach out to women with unwanted pregnancies to give them the safest and best option, which is letting their child live. And pro-lifers don’t force anyone to get a back alley abortion- quite the opposite, pregnancy care centers and support groups are there to help women specifically so they don’t feel like they have to make the devastating choice to self-abort. Just for the sake of your argument, though, let’s assume that no one was doing anything to help women who have unwanted pregnancies. Would abortion be okay? I don’t think so. Think about it like this. Imagine if Rob goes up to Bill and says he (Rob) is going to kill his wife unless Bill gives him $10,000. Bill says no. Rob kills his wife. Rob is caught and tried for murder. Do you think it would help his case to say, “Well, it’s morally permissible that I killed my wife because I told Bill I would do it if he didn’t give me $10,000 dollars and he didn’t. It’s not my fault that I went ahead and killed her”? I doubt it. Sometimes it feels like pro-choicers are saying to pro-lifers: “Unless you come up with enough money, we’re going to kill unborn children, and there’s nothing you’ll be able to say about it.”
Thanks again for your response. At the end of the day, you and I will probably still disagree on a lot, but we can agree that care and services for women with unwanted pregnancies are so so so important… let’s work together to give them more of the support they need. Both them and their child deserve better than the “cheap love” of abortion.
One final thought! I am reading Randy Alcorn's book "Why Pro-life?" and just came across a few sentences that I think pertain to our conversation perfectly:
ReplyDelete"Many women believe that abortion is wrong, but that it’s the least of evils—bad as it is, they think it’s still a better alternative to having a baby, raising a child, or surrendering a child for adoption.
We must show them that, while the other alternatives are challenging, abortion is the only one that kills an innocent person. Precisely because it does so, it has by far the most negative consequences in a woman’s life."