Bridging the Abortion Gap

After much anticipation, the confirmation fight for Samuel Alito to join the Supreme Court is now well under way. The battle lines, which date from even before the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in America 33 years ago this week, are well-defined. Those most opposed to abortion see this nomination to replace Sandra Day O’Conner as long-awaited chance to reduce abortion by placing restrictions on the procedure. This is also why the pro-choice side adamantly opposes Alito. This is the simple part of the story. The hard part lies in the details.

Unlike many politicians, most Americans realize intuitively that abortion is a difficult and complex question. Poll after poll shows people have mixed feelings about the whole thing. A November 11, 2005 CNN/USA Today poll put support for abortion under all circumstances at 26 percent while a complete ban was only supported by 16 percent of respondents. Most people (56 percent) thought it should be only legal sometimes. This ambiguity makes sense because this issue involves a conflict of important values – respect for a human being “under construction” and the right of people to control their bodies.

On one part, abortion is an emotional issue because it will end the life of a potential human being. As a fetus matures it develops more human characteristics. It goes from being a union of sperm and egg through to a fully formed human being nine months later. The one-cell zygote develops hands, feet, a heart, lungs and a brain, most of which are developed between the third and sixth months of pregnancy. On the other hand, organs such as the brain and lungs continue developing almost to the ninth month. At that point virtually everyone would agree a fetus is a human being. The problem is figuring out what it is between those times. The view of the pro-life camp is unambiguous – life begins at conception and killing this human is murder. For others, a fetus is a human under constriction which is not the same as a human, but it is not a blob of tissue or an organ either.

However, there is a huge complication: Babies develop inside women who want to have control over their bodies. The pro-choice side points out that banning or restricting abortion would force victims of rape to give birth to babies fathered by their attackers and drive women to unsafe illegal abortions that kill thousands of women annually in places that ban it. On top of it, recent evidence from Latin America indicates that banning or restricting abortion does not make it common, just much less safe especially for the poor. There is also the question of privacy – and how far the government would intrude into women’s lives to “protect life”. To protect the fetus, Ireland even tried banning women from getting abortions overseas. How much privacy would women lose if abortion were banned? Even some popular restrictions have consequences. Parental consent laws could force victims of incest to get permission of an abusive parent. Consent could also expose a teenager to violence if they are forced to tell a parent about a pregnancy. Any consent law must have a meaningful alternative available.

Forcing people to give birth because they had sex also increases poverty because young mothers have difficultly going to school and finding work. Unplanned pregnancy has also been tied to increasing crime. However, at its most fundamental level, restricting abortion imposes government control over the most private part of a woman’s life. It also raises questions of enforcement. For example, in these days of international travel, affluent women may fly to another state or country for an abortion, like Spanish women did during in past decades. Will any women suspected of pregnancy be banned from traveling? Ireland used to have a just like it (it didn’t work). Strong restrictions on abortion are inevitably connected to how far the state will go to prevent it.

The only way out of this conflict is to recognize the validity of both moral arguments and accept that any resulting decisions will always be an uneasy compromise. The pro-life side needs to recognize the legitimate concerns of women’s privacy, the dire consequences of some abortion restrictions and the fact that killing is fetus is not the same as killing a fully-developed person. If the fetus is a threat to the life or well-being of the mother, ending a pregnancy could be thought of as a kind of self-defense. It is killing but not murder. We could also help reduce abortion by expanding social support for single mothers and providing more vigorous attempts to place babies in adoption, especially of handicapped children.

It would be especially helpful if they could reverse their strenuous opposition to sex education and access to birth control, which both can prevent unwanted pregnancies. They need to acknowledge that sex education is critical because many people even if taught abstinence will still engage in sex. When the abstinence “firewall fails”, there needs to be another option – and prevention is the best way to avoid unwanted pregnancies. Since virtually every study has shown that teaching the use of contraceptives does not increase the risk of having sex, this should calm fears. If pro-life people believe abortion is murder, the priority should be to eliminate the greater evil of killing an early human life. Premarital sex should be far less evil. After all, preventing murder should come first.

The pro-choice side needs to understand that a lot of people are horrified by abortion and most other people have deeply mixed feelings about it. They need to reach out to the average American who is rightly queasy about the whole thing. They also have to concede that sex education needs to give present the case for abstinence as well as birth control and other options. They also need to tread lightly when it comes to the use of taxpayer money for abortions. It is one thing for people to reluctantly tolerate the procedure in someone else but another to be asked to pay for it.

In the end, the only choice on abortion is to muddle through because of the conflict between respecting a developing human and respecting a woman’s privacy. Dialogue between the sides is a critical first step, to be followed with approaches that both save life and give more choices. More access to birth control, more education to empower young women to say no to sex if they are not ready for it, more support for women to choose to put their babies up for adoption and more support for those who keep them would be good first steps. This would help move us to a place where we respect both life and choice.