aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Monday, February 06, 2006

Abortion, compromise & me

I’ve written twice before in favor of Will Saletan’s argument for what I see as an abortion compromise. A commenter here has made me rethink.  So I read the full exchange between Will & Katha Pollit of the Nation, and a good bit of the commentary that’s gone on around them, both at Slate and in the blogosphere. It’s the kind of debate I’d like to see more of. But in the end I still find myself in agreement with Will: “It’s time to shake up this debate. It’s time for the abortion-rights movement to declare war on abortion.”

Will says that he and Katha agree on most of the issues. I agree too:

1) It’s better to avoid an unwanted pregnancy than to have an abortion. 2) We need more birth control and realistic sex education. 3) We need emergency contraception to be widely available over the counter. 4) Men must take more responsibility through condoms, etc. 5) Parents should talk to their sons about condoms. 6) Women have the right to choose to bear no children. 7) We should respect women’s ability to make these decisions for themselves. 8) We’d both press health insurers to pay for birth control if they pay for Viagra, and we’d “ask stern questions about how that male pill is coming along,” though I might leave the sternness to you. Also, I’ll concede 9) we won’t get to zero abortions. “As few as possible” gets the point across well enough.

The problem is, of course, that in his argument Will says, “It’s bad to kill a fetus.”

I accepted that statement but not for any moral reason - I do not agree that life begins at conception or that a fetus is a person with rights equal to or greater than the mother. I accepted it because the women I know who have been through abortions have had a difficult experience. I’d even go so far to say it was a bad experience. And I’m not at all sure that we can ever make it a good experience.

My recent turn around on Bible study in the classroom underscored for me how attempts at compromise can backfire. I know that words matter and I agree completely with Katha (and, yes, I have talked this way before):

Legal abortion is a good thing, and not just because it prevents illegal operations. Without abortion, women would be less healthy, less educated, less able to realize their gifts and talents, less able to choose their mates; children would be cared for worse and provided for less well; sex would be blighted by fear of pregnancy, as it used to be back in the good old days; families would be even more screwed up than they already are; there would be more single mothers who can’t cope, more divorce, more poverty, and more unhappy people feeling sandbagged by circumstance. We hear a lot now about regret and sorrow, and I know some women who have abortions feel that way, but we don’t hear about the regrets and sorrow women feel who went ahead and had the baby, and we don’t hear much from women who are just completely relieved and thankful that the clinic was there for them and they can get on with their lives-lives that are good and moral.

But here’s the problem - WE ARE LOSING. From the introduction to the Frontline documentary, The Last Abortion Clinic:

According to one abortion provider in the South, who prefers to remain anonymous: “The assault on abortion rights is very clever. It’s very smart. And we are losing.”

In the summer of 2005—more than 30 years after Roe v. Wade established that access to abortion services is a fundamental right—a FRONTLINE documentary team spent two months traveling across the South where states have been particularly active in passing restrictions on abortion. In interviews with abortion providers and their patients, staff at a pro-life pregnancy counseling center and key legal strategists on both sides of the national debate, FRONTLINE producer Raney Aronson (The Jesus Factor) documents the success of the pro-life movement and the growing number of states with regulations limiting access to abortion.

If you haven’t seen it you have to watch that documentary. Me, I’m ready to see Roe overturned. I buy the argument that it mobilized the Right and I’d like to see a mobilized Left. And I wonder, do people realize how limited the abortion right is? There is no clinic within 100 miles of me; women here must go to Atlanta. In Alabama and Mississippi it’s worse. But don’t kid yourself it’s not just in the South. It’s in California and Ohio and Idaho and Iowa and all over America. We think we have an abortion right because we have that ruling. I think it’s not a whole heck of a lot better than when i was in high school and there was no Roe.

So we object to Will on moral grounds. I say take the “bad” out and his argument makes a lot of sense. Frances Kissling of Catholics for a Free Choice:

While I think there is more work to be done on Will’s statement that “It is bad to kill a fetus”, he does a service by putting it out there so boldly. There are many problems with the word “bad” and how it is heard. A more nuanced way of saying this is that the act of abortion is not a moral good. Things that are not moral goods are not necessarily immoral or bad. And they may, as is the case with abortion, be often justifiable and almost always have positive outcomes.

Finally, my take on the morals issue. I know something from moral opprobrium; I understand what it is to be judged by other people’s morality. What I have learned is to accept that it is morally difficult even I dare say impossible for some, steeped as they are in their tradition, to ever come to terms with what they consider to be my “lifestyle choice.” To win I will win the battle without them.

And I understand the absolutist pro-choice view. I’m an absolutist in the same-sex marriage debate. Some suggest that gays should keep a lower profile and wait out demographic trends. Others say domestic partnership is just as good (or an incremental step*) so we should not demand marriage. Me, I say go for it and take nothing less. But if domestic partnership benefits were on the table, I’d take them. I wouldn’t stop fighting for gay marriage but I’d take them.

So I understand if you’re not with me when I say that, like will, I’d like “to pit contraception squarely against abortion, not as an offstage concession but as our central message. A lot of people who yawn at contraception when it’s part of a campaign to reduce teen pregnancy will wake up in a hurry when it’s part of a campaign to reduce abortions.”

Let’s try the contraception argument. And when the pro-life people show their anti-contraception colors, we’ll win. I’m not saying stop fighting to keep abortion safe and legal and yes, make it available in those places where today it is not. But we’ve got to do something to win this debate. And promoting sex education and contraception doesn’t sound bad to me.

* Steve Miller also believes that linking gay marriage and abortion hurts the cause. I don’t agree.